Quality over quantity they say.
I agree, less is more and all that. But don’t write quantity off completely
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A Star
In 1895 a 14 year old Pablo Picasso made an oath.
If his sister, Conchita, recovered from her illness he would never paint again. Tragically she didn’t.
Picasso threw himself into painting and the rest is history.
He was fiercely productive. In a career spanning 80 years he’s thought to have produced 50,000 works across different media.
That’s 625 a year. Or nearly two a day. Every single day.
The result was perhaps the brightest star in the 20th century art world.
There’s no doubt Picasso mastered quality. His most expensive painting sold for $180m in 2015. But quality from Picasso was not in spite of quantity. It was because of it.
Beatling
Prolific creators popup at the top of every field. It makes sense: Churn out enough work and eventually you’ll stumble onto something good. But it’s more than that.
You learn faster. Much faster. The key is to get it out into the world. That’s where you get feedback and the real learning takes place.
Take The Beatles. They formed in Liverpool but were forged in Hamburg. That’s where they spent their early years. Performing 5 hours a day, 6 days a week.
Compare that with one 5 hour performance a month. A year gives:
1,560 hours performed by The Beatles vs just 60.
No competition.
A level of self awareness is key too. You need that to learn. But if you have it? Perhaps it’s time to get some reps in.
The good news is that you have more potential than you think. Think of the most energetic person you know. That force of nature. I have some good news… You have just as much energy as them.
Surprise
In fact we all have the same energy budget, relative to size. A wonderful experiment by anthropologist Herman Pontzer found as such.
Pontzer observed two groups:
Members of the Hadza, an indigenious tribe in Tanzinia.
Average Americans.
He wanted to see how much energy they both expended.
Hadza adults walk 6 to 9 miles a day. They also live an active life running, climbing, and digging.
Americans average 6 hours a day in front of a screen. I expect that figure is now much higher.
A forgone conclusion you might think. But the result shocked Pontzer.
The two groups expended the same amount of energy. It turns out each human has roughly the same allowance.
The American’s energy, unused by physical activity, is used elsewhere.
One culprit is a ramped up inflammation response. Surplus energy causes inflammation which heats up the body. This spans an endless string of health problems. Yikes.
So we have the energy. We have the potential to be prolific. It’s down to you.
The more you produce, the easier producing becomes. But wallow in inactivity and that energy disappears into the ether. The choice is yours.
By all means start small. But get it done. Start. Press send. It gets easier from there.
My Week in Books📚
The Voltage Effect by John List
How ideas and companies scale, and why some don’t. Really good. List was formally Chief Economist at Uber so he’s had more exposure to this than most.
Thank you HA for the recommendation. 🙏
How Walking Upright Made Us Human by Jeremy DeSilva
The book I’ve been waiting for. DeSilva is a paleoanthropologist so much of the book is about bones. Fascinating and an enjoyable read.
I’ll be updating the books I’ve read this year here. Any recommendations? Let me know! See 2021’s books here.
A Final Thought 💡
“Vision without execution is just hallucination.”
― Henry Ford