Quantity, Quality, and Taking a Seat (Patreon)

There is an antidote that goes around the art world every few years I want to share with you, and break down. You can read one take on this story, but I’ve got the full excerpt here:

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 pounds 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.

At first glance, this seems to be talking about the importance of doing multiple projects and pushing you away from looking to make works the best they can be. When it has come up in general conversation, I felt the story has shown the important of pushing you to create a lot of work, and if you read the story like that, you might fall into that trap. Indeed, when I first envisioned talking about this, I was going to offer a soft rebuttal about why I felt the story didn’t quite reflect how I saw writing. Thankfully, while researching this, I realized I had a copy of the book that this story comes form, Art & Fear written by David Bayles & Ted Orland. Looking through the passages that come after this, there is a deeper meaning here that can be overlooked.

The above excerpt opens the section in the book on perfection and discusses the danger of focusing on creating perfect work after the excerpt. I do think it’s important to realize that there is no perfect creation and the story above illustrates this well. You can’t create that perfect piece, and no one thing will ever be ideal in every way. The students focused on quality in the story failed to refine their skills. The students who focused on quantity got better by doing a lot of work. They practiced. 

Quality work comes from practicing. This does not mean constantly creating new work and never doing refined work is going to get you there. Meaningful practice is what will help you achieve your goal and establish expertise. I generally favor complex work, so I will create less work that someone who favors writing flash fiction. That does not mean I cannot learn by writing flash fiction or doing complex work that requires a significant research investment. What’s important is that I am doing the work. I’m taking a seat.

Sitting down to do the work is another important thing required to advance. The group in the story that were focused on quantity had to take a seat and work. That’s what their grade was about. The group focused on quality needed to only take a seat one time to complete the job, when they were ready. Quality was their goal, but they had no direction on how to pursue that goal. They suffered from analysis paralysis, and focused in a way that didn’t help them advance their skills as much. Quality comes through practice, but focusing on sheer quantity is also not the best way to advance in a creative field. For sure it gets you into that chair doing that work, but it alone is not enough. Research on what makes someone an expert has found it is important to focus on how you learn and practice. Pushing your skills are critical, and you need to work to improve them. There are no prefect works, but even experts can still advance and need to practice to stay sharp.

Obviously, if your writing is a side gig like it is for me, you can’t fully devote all your time to it. I do have a day job to keep and important things in that realm to accomplish. I can’t work as much during the week on my writing as I would like, and I have to do it outside of working hours. This makes it even more important to use time effectively. Taking the seat still has to happen, but I also need to take care of myself. 

There is also a final piece here that comes into play. Writing should be a fun activity, and while I take it seriously, I’m here to enjoy what I do also. I already have a day job to do, so I want this to be satisfying. You should enjoy your work, and be happy with the time you put into it. It’s not always easy though, and there are times where I would be happy to be in bed sleeping and yet I’m still at the keyboard working. There’s also the issue of making sure you are not beating yourself up about how much time you dedicate to you work while also being honest on how you are using your time. It’s a balance, and like there being no perfect work, there is no perfect answer. How much time you can devote to your work also changes as your life happens.

Anyway, that’s all for today, and I hope everyone has an amazing 2020. I actually did some pottery in high school and threw pottery in college for a while as a way to relax, so this story always has interested me. I’ll close with a pic of some of my work from back then.