Quality and Quantity: Which is More Important?

Quality and Quantity

I recently stumbled on the question, “which is more important between quality and quantity?” on Dunmola’s status, and I thought to give an answer with this post.

The quest for quality often limits us from producing and throws us into an unending need for consumption. While this is not necessarily a vice, it can be an impediment to our growth by delaying action and, subsequently, results.

Most learning happens when we are carrying out the desired action. So while it is easy to get trapped in the consumption mindset where we think we are learning the most, we should spend more time doing that thing we are consuming to learn and grow faster.

For instance, instead of reading all the resources about writing, you should start writing. The better writer is not the person who has read the most about writing but has written the most.

Hence, by writing more, you become a better writer in a shorter period than reading about writing in a bid to produce quality.

“Quality” is a vague word that means better or best. However, quality is most subjective to the user/ audience of a piece of work of art. What I define as quality is different from what you define as quality.

For instance, you would hardly find a bestseller that does not have readers who did not enjoy their read. Those who loved the book can choose to define it as quality, while those who did not enjoy the book might refer to it as otherwise.

As a writer, it is thus vital to find out what your audience defines as quality and go on to serve them, but the only way to know this is by giving them enough (quantity); then, you derive the data from their interactions with these many posts. However, I am not advocating that you get hooked by what your audience wants

More so, I see quantity as a series of experiments to find the vaccine – quality. If you have just started as a writer, you must find your niche, style, and audience. The way to do it is to produce as many posts as possible.

You get to learn which niche you enjoy the most and your preferred style of writing while finding what your audience loves the most.

Quality is an abstract metric we use to empower our self-judgment. But unfortunately, it goes on to limit us and gets us trapped. This is why many people have refused to get to or continue writing. Instead, they are obsessed with quality.

You cannot measure quality, can you? So we mostly trust our guts to define quality for us. Or is there a metric to determine how much we like work before tagging it as quality? or how do we conclude that a particular work is “quality?”

Quite problematic, right? Exactly. But you can measure quantity. You can measure how many articles you’ve written, how many people have read your articles, etc. So why not start with that?

The obsession over quality is usually towards making a good first impression. So we think that the first article has to be a banger, but we do nothing but pressure ourselves.

Ask the best creators, and they will tell you that the work of art they put in least effort and concern into is what gives them the most buzz. The truth is that it takes a quantity of action to develop the quality of results.

It is important to note that this post does not sponsor mediocrity. Quality and quantity work together. But to find quality, you need to give all you have.

to be continued