Quality vs. quantity.

Which is better?

If you want to create great work—music, video, photo, writing—which one should you prioritize?

And if you want to grow an audience who loves your work, you can’t just create trash, right?

Well, yes, and no.

Quality work wins, no doubt, but there is no shortcut to reaching the milestone of making things that are good, that an audience actually enjoys.

As a creative person, it’s easy to lean toward perfectionism (*ahem 👋) in the pursuit of quality work, but if you want to get good at something, it’s important to suck first.

Enter, quantity.

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Put in the reps

As they say in martial arts, the mat doesn’t lie.

In any endeavor, we have to show up over and over again and be really bad at it if we ever want to get better.

We have to get our butts kicked time and time again until one day we figure out how to not get hit every time we step foot in the ring.

Creating quality work we can be proud of is no different.

As we progress down the path of putting in the reps, the quality of our work will naturally get better, and if we can consistently produce work of higher quality and greater impact, the necessity of producing it as frequently will go down.

Example:

This is how it works, right?

Well, in theory.

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The problem

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy because creative work is never that straightforward.

No two projects are the same—no two songs, videos, or blog articles. Every bit of work we put out into the world is nuanced and varied, so the path forward is anything but simple.

And on top of that, as we continue on our creative journey, we will inevitably adjust course along the way, discovering new pursuits we never even considered before while discarding those we thought we wanted but have come to realize no longer serve or interest us.

This is all part of finding our own creative voice.

Where we start is not where we end up.

The reality is that the journey looks more like this:

But no matter how many twists and turns there are, the mat still doesn’t lie.

When adjusting course, we may find ourselves in repeated seasons of quantity, where it’s time to once again put in the reps in an effort to quickly come up to speed and produce quality work we can be proud of.

So as we wind down at the end of 2023 and begin to look ahead to 2024, I would encourage all of us to create a ton of work in the new year.

Whatever your passion is, do a lot of i, hit publish on it, and earn the right to create something of quality.

Because, again, there are no shortcuts.

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