The old adage “quality over quantity” has a nearly universal acceptance among accomplished men and women. It is the advice which parents give to their children and teachers to their students when they have more energy than sense. Certainly, no amount of worthless work is better than a small amount of good work. That said, the pursuit of perfectionism is itself a trap: you cannot have both production and perfection.

I am a highly ambitious, highly competitive, highly critical person. This has led me to improve greatly over time, but it has also handicapped my productivity when taken too far. For example, twice this semester I missed an application deadline for various programs because I did not feel satisfied with my question responses. I ended up submitting nothing, and instead of having a modest chance of acceptance, I had zero chance.

One of the best systems for improvement and achievement is hyper-experimentation (like trial and error, but on steroids). This is vital for almost any type of productive task, and especially so for creative endeavors. Hyper-experimentation does not violate the 80/20 rule; in fact, it enables improved effectiveness by allowing mistakes to guide future efforts in a better direction.

This sounds counter-intuitive. Consider this: one writer spends five years polishing a single novel, while another writes two per year. Initially, the second writer is making garbage. However, as long as he is bold in his experimentation and learning from mistakes, he will eventually improve. The idea of quality over quantity actually conflicts with an even more famous saying: “practice makes perfect”. This should be really amended to “perfect practice makes perfect,” because without the experimentation and learning, there is no improvement.

If only 20% of the second writer’s works are good, he will have still made twice as many good works within five years. It gets better than this, however. Say that after another five years, 40% of the writer’s works are good. He is now quadrupling the quality output of the first writer.

For my own life, if I spent less time worrying about how I responded to a simple question like, “what do you hope to gain from this experience,” and just hit submit, I would have completed many more applications, and I would have even more opportunities before me to choose from.

Once again, quality is very important, and more so than quantity. The important thing to remember is that a three word quip cannot encapsulate the vast complexity of life, and the quantity itself, when done right, can lead to both better performance and more quality output. Hit the submit button.

Go forth and conquer!