Quantity > Quality
When it comes to work (be it art, music, startups, movies, or anything else), one common thing that you hear people say is "quality over quantity". But when it comes to producing great work, the counterintuitive truth is the exact opposite: quantity over quality.
I asked ChatGPT to prove this statement. And it gave a rather conventional answer:
What ChatGPT and most people don't realize is that this notion of "quality over quantity" is only used to describe the OUTCOME of your work, not the PROCESS. Unfortunately, many people falsely apply this to the process of their work. And mistakenly think that if they can just spend a lot of time and effort on that one thing, they would have a higher chance of producing great work.
Obviously producing 1 masterpiece is better than producing 10 pieces of average work. We all know that. But can you really produce a masterpiece by being laser-focused on that one piece of work and working on it for a long time?
History says otherwise, as demonstrated in Adam Grant's book Originals (Grant, 35-37):
- In the world of literature and operas, most people only know a few classics from Shakespeare, such as Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. But what people ignore is that he produced 37 plays and 154 sonnets within 2 decades. And he created most of his best plays AND worst plays in the same five-year period.
- In the world of classical music, Mozart composed more than 600 pieces before he died at the age of 35, Beethoven produced around 650 in his lifetime, and Bach produced over a thousand... Yet only a handful of their work is considered masterpieces.
- In the world of technological innovations, most people deem Thomas Edison as the genius that came up with the incandescent lightbulb and the carbon telephone. But in the same period, he actually filed more than one hundred patents. Most of which had minor impacts compared to the light bulbs.
- In the world of scientific discoveries, Albert Einstein is well-known for his work on general and special relativity that revolutionized physics. But most of his 248 publications had minimal impact compared to his relativity theories.
- In the world of art and paintings, Picasso produced more than 1800 paintings, 1200 sculptures, 2800 ceramics, and 12000 drawings over his lifetime.
I also found other real-life examples in different fields:
- In the world of product design, Jony Ive, the Chief Design Officer (CDO) of Apple for over two decades, played a vital role in the design of the iMac G3, iPod, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Apple Watch. But before this, he designed hearing aids, sinks, microwave ovens, toilets, bidets, drills, and toothbrushes... (Sources: Vogue, iNews, ImpossibleGenius)
- In the world of tech startups, Mark Zuckerberg didn't just focus on secretly building Facebook for years as a teen and became an overnight success. Before Facebook, he built many different programs/games since middle school, including a messaging program called Zucknet which he built when he was only 12, and a music software called Synapse back when he was in high school. (Source: Biography)
To summarize, a high quantity of work leads to a higher chance of producing high-quality work.
To simplify, quantity leads to quality.
*This is NOT to say that quantity is more important than quality regarding the work outcome. Quality is important. But the way to achieve high quality is through high quantity. And these two words are not mutually exclusive. Producing a high quantity of "work" doesn't mean producing a high quantity of "shit work". The notion of "quantity over quality" is that you should continue creating more and more things, regardless of the quality of your work. On the contrary, the notion of "quality over quantity" becomes an excuse for people to do less work, reducing a person's probability of producing masterpieces in the long run.
Thanks to Bryce Yao, Kelvin Mo, Mike Kong, Jan-Michael Marshall, Ivy Wu, Rich Chuang, Raymond Yip, Daphne Chao, Jonron Kogawa, and Courtney Qi for reading drafts of this.
Reference:
Grant, A. M. (2017). Originals. Penguin Books.
[[Quantity = Quality]] from [[0. Originals]]