A ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right side 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” groups: 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, come grading time 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 busy 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.
I’ve heard this story as a child and then again and again later in my life. It really left an impact on me when I first heard it in my childhood, when I had questioned about the need to practice Math skills everyday.
It seems that quantity may lead to quality. So, if you’re an Entrepreneur, instead of putting all your energy in one company, you do one company each month. Or if you want to learn how to code, instead of working on one project all the time, you create a site everyday. 🙂
So there you go. Wanna master anything? Just keep doing it again and again!