When you look at all common advice when it comes to produce content, it highlighting the importance of high quality content.
I agree that we need to provide value. As conscious creators, we also want to create value. We don’t want to add more to the noise but be of value to others.
But the thing is that we have to be willing to suck first in order to be great at some point. We first have to build our skills. And that’s something that’s really hard for many of us.
At least for myself, it’s something that has held me back for years.
In essence, quantity creates quality.
There is this story from the book “Art & Fear y David Bayles and Ted Orland on how quantity leads to quality:
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality.
His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”.
Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
It’s a lesson that I definitely have to remind myself off over and over again.