A teachers splits the class into two groups – one group is to create one finished product and the end of the year, the other group is to create a finished product each week. The first group will be judged on quality, the second purely on quantity. At the end of the year, all of the students work is put together in one pile and an independent evaluator is asked to come in and choose the top 5 quality products of the lot.
The products she chooses all belong to students who were part of group 2, the quantity group.
The quantity tends to have less fear of failure and more willingness to experiment, try different approaches, and ultimately learn. The product created at the end of each week may not be ‘better’ than the week before, but the overall trajectory or trend is improvement. The first group, the quality group, tends to get paralysed by fear and perfection; they get stuck in their head, do not try, and don’t learn as they go.
Quantity not only helps us learn and ‘get better’, it helps us become clearer on our own expression – what we want to say, what is important to us, our style, etc.
This is how change happens, not one big burst of glorious perfection, but drip by drip by drip continually showing up, figuring out where to step next.
What will you create today? this week?
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