For Any Creative Project, Volume Beats Perfection

Volume always wins.

When we start a new creative project (writing, coding, or painting), we aim to create something “perfect” on our first attempts. And we wait for perfection before we share our work with the world.

The truth is, those first attempts will be crap. Our first posts, programs, and paintings will be crap. Well, 90% of everything is crap.

But the more we practice, the better we become, and the closer to “perfect” we get.

That’s a lesson I learned when binge-reading Herbert Lui’s blog the other day. I read about the pottery class experiment. One half of a pottery class was graded on quality and the other half on quantity. At the end of the course, the half who went for quantity did better and got better grades. They focused on experimenting, learning, and improving along the way.

The more tries we do:

For your next creative project, go for volume: write 100 blog posts, write 100 short programs, or do 100 paintings. And don’t be afraid of showing your work. The more you create, the closer you get to “perfect.” Volume always wins.