Don’t Be Perfect, Be Prolific

Too many people worry about being perfect rather than being prolific.

While it feels righteous to demand nothing but perfection, it’s usually a closeted excuse not to do the work or share your ideas. It’s your ego protecting you from what’s hard. As the saying goes, perfection is the enemy of progress.

Instead of perfection, prioritize being prolific. Generate and share more ideas. Create more art. Compose more music. No matter the task, great work is achieved through repetition and quantity.

Want to be a better public speaker? Stop reading public speaking books and get out and speak. Don’t let preparation get in the way of the actual work.

Quantity is the foundation of quality. Quality is a byproduct of quantity, not independent of it. To be sure, quantity can’t be throwaway effort or just going through the motions. You have to at least try.

As Jerry Seinfeld recommends, “The way to be a better comic is to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes is to write every day.”

It’s the “writing every day” part that bothers most aspiring writers. There’s no shortcut. No hack. Real progress is hard and slow, one repetition at a time.

Enough theorizing and planning. More action. Feedback, learn, and iterate. Then repeat.  

You make good work by (among other things) making lots of work that isn’t very good, and gradually weeding out the parts that aren’t good, the parts that aren’t yours. It’s called feedback, and it’s the most direct route to learning about your own vision. Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

No one is tracking your bad work. People are more concerned about themselves. But they will remember what’s exceptional. Exceptional things rise, and stay, at the top.  

As Andy Warhol said, “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

In most domains, you can’t predict which article will go viral, which stock will go up, or which product will succeed. The only option is to be prolific and increase your odds. The critics and experts are no better than random at predicting success. Quantity not only improves your skill, but it also improves your chances of producing something unique.

There’s a common misperception that if your struggling, you are doing something wrong, which is nonsense for the most part. The struggle is part of the process. This is where the grifters thrive, promising to remove this pain with the latest hack.

We hear stories about overnight successes, but never about the decades that came before the “overnight.” When we see success, we see a fraction of the work. We never see the full effort that was invested, just the part right before the success.