14 ms·

The Key to Higher Quality is Higher Quantity

99 points by 0x54MUR41 11y ago

tetraodonpuffer 11y ago
makes me wonder if the reason why it is a lot harder to pick things up when one is older is primarily the lack of large blocks of available time as opposed to the brain being less "plastic" or adaptable as one sometimes reads. When you read famous musicians' bios, for example, there always seems to be something along the lines of "I practiced 8 hours a day every day", hence lots of quantity over several years, but this is of course next to impossible to do in adulthood with all the demands on our time.
- EC1 11y ago
  I manage to practice 6-8 hours a day and I work full time. Just leaves me with absolutely no time for anything else once chores are taken care of. Can't wait to buy a tiny remote cottage so I can practice full time with minimal bills.
  - anonymousDan 11y ago
    What do you practice?
    - EC1 11y ago
      Theory and history, then technical training (scales, chords, arpeggios, ear training, sight reading, and etudes), then my repertoire which currently consists of Bach's BWV 903, LVB's op. 13, Brahms op. 118 no. 1 & op. 118 no. 2, Gershwin's three preludes, Berg's Sonata op. 1, and Webern's Variations.
vinceguidry 11y ago
Eventually you run into limits, that's when the real work begins. It took me 3-4 months to work up to where I could do cardio 3 times a day for an hour a pop. I use a hybrid cardio machine called the Arc trainer at Planet Fitness. I did that routine exactly once before my right calf muscle developed strain. I've played this game before a dozen times with a dozen different activities. Every time I wind up losing focus and that's why I have a dozen of them and not three of them. So rather than drop cardio entirely, I'm backing off to three or so sessions a week and cutting down the length to a half-hour to 45 minutes depending on how I feel. I'll pick the frequency back up as my muscles heal. You really do have to get obsessive over little details to be able to do this. I have a fairly strict routine that I follow every single time I go out to the gym. One time my iPhone decided to start updating against my wishes just as I was about to get on the machine. After some choice swear words, I packed it up and went back home. It wasn't worth sitting at the gym waiting for music and trying to work out without music wasn't going to give me a good workout. Focusing on quantity allows you to skip sessions knowing another one is coming.
- SyneRyder 11y ago
  I'd be curious to hear more about this, both why you were wanting to train 3 hours a day and how you approached refining your routine. Any chance you've blogged about this somewhere? (The idea of building a precise routine so your music trigger lands at the right moment resonates with me.)
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    I trained three times a day because my body can't handle doing one 3 hour session. When I started really going heavy, I was going through a heartbreak and wanted to throw my efforts into something other than wallowing in self-misery. I kept it up even after I pulled out of it. Never let a good heartbreak go to waste. My routine evolved slowly over time. The key is spotting and removing barriers to doing more. I put my jacket on the machine on the left, my towel goes on the right. My iPhone goes in the cup holder, my gym bag just under the cup holder. My gym bag has an organization scheme, everything in there has a place and there's a routine for putting everything there before I get in my car. Basically, every little thing I can look at and try to improve, I do, and don't worry about the time or expense. I've gone through three pairs of sneakers to try to find the right kind that won't hurt the balls of my feet. Cheap ones don't work well, so I'm moving on to New Balance. I had minimalist shoes, those hurt my feet, but not enough to where I can't work out. The shoes have to be 8 1/2 or 9 wide, normal doesn't cut it. My music routine has shifted over time. I used to just play anything, then I went to a specific playlist so I could try HIIT. Whenever the chorus would come on, I'd go really hard. That got unsustainable as my times on the machine went up and now I just do it flat, with my whole playlist so I don't get bored of the music. Maybe in six months to a year I'll be able to experiment with it again. The machine itself has settings, my approach to these have refined over time as well. I used to set the incline all the way to 20 and slowly increase the resistance over time. Now I set both the incline and the resistance as I'm comfortable and just trust that over time my body will adjust and the numbers will go up. The key to getting started, I think, is to pick something that can be "routine-ized". I use a machine instead of running because I have a lot more 'knobs' to tweak. Classes I have to take on someone else's schedule, I used to do dance classes but not anymore. I tried the bike machine when I first started going to the gym but gravitated to the Arc machine pretty quickly and fell in love with it. At first the big battle will be just showing up. I started with the simple goal of going there once every day. Didn't matter if I actually worked out or not, or what I did, just get to the gym that day and I gave myself permission to feel like I'm accomplishing my fitness goals. Then when it starts getting hard, I gave myself permission to fall back to earlier goals as needed / desired. I can cut workouts short, but not skip them. I always make sure I'm moving forward. There finally comes a point where moving forward is moving backward. You don't want working out to overtake the rest of your life. But you have to cut back with purpose, not just do it because of reasons. You can put it on the back burner, but know why you're doing that and when you're ready to put it back on the front burner. I'm injured right now, so I'm allowing other things to take priority. They may keep priority even after I heal up. But getting back in the saddle and getting back to work pushing my limits is always on my mind.
ranko 11y ago
Quantity, as someone once said, has a quality all of its own. That said, practice doesn't always make perfect; it forms habits. It's easy to form bad habits, and reflective practice, mindfulness, etc, are only partial solutions to that problem.
elliotec 11y ago
I love this concept, and think the premise is absolutely true. As others have pointed out, practicing and just churning out quantity often develops habits and bad practices. One way of combatting that seems to be switching up your routine and deliberately avoiding these habits. This article explains a little more on that: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/researchers-uncover-method-learn-new-skills-twice-fast http://www.iflscience.com/brain/researchers-uncover-method-l... But I think it's apparent all over. People who are able to produce a large quantity of new ideas/methods/etc. almost automatically are of higher quality. Take the Beatles for example. The produced a huge amount of music in their relatively short recording history. But they didn't just follow the same patterns, they experimented and look where they got. Writers can be the same, and athletes, and why not developers too?
6stringmerc 11y ago
A wise lesson once given to me by a person I can't recall: If you're going to "practice" guitar, then actually concentrate on what you're doing - don't just have one in your hands and fumble around with it while you're watching TV - focus and you will improve. ...which blends with another maxim I picked up: There are some guitarists who can truthfully say they've played for 40 years - and it sounds impressive until you find out they've only played the same 9 chords the entire time. So I can appreciate what the article is kind of pointing out in a lot of words - "Practice makes better" - it's a perfectly reasonable message to put forward. The examples are okay overall. There's a lesson in there about the ceramics class, but it seems like a setup from the beginning - a lot of varibles in the outcome depending on the professor, right? I mean, just letting the non-quantity group sit there and drool or goof off isn't maximizing the actual concept of reaching for perfection. Oh, and I listened to a 60 minute long tape of Kanye from that prolific period. The end results are really cookie-cutter. He basically found a sample of music that somebody else wrote & recorded, stretched/looped it, added a hip-hop sounding MPC kit line under it, and called it done. It's a strong example of mechanical repetition to hone the tools of a trade (production/sound engineering). Personally I view it as the antithesis of writing original material, but like I said, personal opinion.
- Jormundir 11y ago
  I think your analysis is spot on. Improving is a slightly more complex cycle. Improvement looks something like this: Do -> analyze strengths and weaknesses -> try to do better. That middle part is way more successful with the help of a good coach. Really quick learners ("talent") can fill in that middle step on their own, but would ultimately benefit from a coach. When your work cycle is: do -> do again -> do again -> do again you'll improve a bit, but pretty quickly plateau.
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
    Nicely laid out in the flow chart style. I agree that the middle part is essential in the conversation. Also on the point a good coach should show value! Now and then I see 'self-help' or motivational type pieces encouraging a type of "Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses" which can be applicable in a lot of arenas. However taking on that mentality fully strikes me as missing an important long-term perspective. I say this as a person who was really deficient in one digit's dexterity (pinkie) and instead of just kinda shrugging it off, I spent many years and sessions trying to bring it up to par. Now I'm happy to say I can really only remember it as a past weakness, due to the focus and attention to improvement!
halis 11y ago
This is absolutely true. Stephen King said that if you want to be a writer then write a lot. 2,000 words a day. When I was in 6th grade, I used to shoot free throws every night for hours. Just for fun. We had a track and field day at the end of the year and I beat out two guys for first place in the free throw competition who went on to play basketball on our high school team. I beat them at something that they cared about a great deal and I didn't care about at all, simply by inadvertently practicing a lot.
- wallflower 11y ago
  > I beat them at something that they cared about a great deal and I didn't care about at all, simply by inadvertently practicing a lot. While some may argue that shooting free throws every day for hours counts as 'caring', I would argue that it was your emotional detachment from the results/outcome that made you really good.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
I'm not a writer or web designer. Have no opinion on that aspect. For IT and QA, this is terrible advice. You shouldn't just try random stuff over and over. Instead, you should first look for people who get the job done on a regular basis. Look for what principles or techniques they used to do that. Start there. Observe in your own work or field reports what problems people run into with what solutions were tried. Reuse what worked, experiment with what didn't in new contexts, and so on. Essentially, get a good start using what's already been done then use creativity and scientific method to quickly become better. Publish lessons you learned from solving problems with certain goals and constraints. Contribute back to this overall process of learning. Alternatively, people can try the author's advice and re-create the modern web experience from HTML, JavaScript, C, and assembler via trial-and-error, exploratory programming. I'll pass. ;)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
brenschluss 11y ago
Analogy: The larger your training set, the better your neural net. Of course, having a good quality training set is important as well. But with enough data, even not-so-great-data at huge quantities helps generate a well-performing neural net.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
cJ0th 11y ago
This kind of advice is a double-edged sword. It does point you in the right direction but when you meditate shortly on the meaning of the words "quality" and "quantity" I think you're likely to conclude that the thesis "The Key to Higher Quality is Higher Quantity" can imply almost anything. For a long time I've been an opponent to this mantra and in a way I still am. This is because in my opinion a lot of people define "higher quantity" wrongly. Learning flash cards mindlessly all day will hardly help you become more fluent in a foreign language; preparing loads of meals or even the same meal very often doesn't help you become a chef if you aren't fully concentrated on what you're doing. Lately I am of the opinion that you have to practice with a zen attitude, like it is described in "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind". And because of that I think the author of this article also gets it wrong when he says: As Ira Glass so famously put it, the best way to refine your craft is to create a huge volume of work. Not to create the most perfect piece you can, but to create many pieces of work. I guess what Mr. Glass hints at is that you shouldn't become paralyzed by being caught up in thoughts. That is: It is useless to think "Oh this needs to be perfect" or "Oh this needn't be perfect because some clever guy said so" because in that instance you've already lost concentration and you are not really stretching your skills. You certainly have to TRY your best every time. In other words: Strive for perfection but don't get distracted by having dualistic thoughts about your practice.
- iolothebard 11y ago
  The Ira quote reminds me of my opinion on startups, fail early and fail often. Maybe you'll get lucky and one won't fail. Failure is all in how you define it though.
- EthanHeilman 11y ago
  Practicing is not the same thing as doing something many times. Refinement requires identifying failure and the causes of that failure. Fail fast is a great mantra, but the fast part requires understanding that you have failed and using that failure to understand how to succeed. People don't get great at chess by playing lots of chess, they get good by studying and learning techniques often with advice from a teacher.
  - 11y ago
overcast 11y ago
I (sort of) adopted this philosophy in December of last year. Instead of toiling away on a single project for months on end, attempting to perfect every last inch of it. I've decided that I'm going to release a project every month, for a year. Get all my ideas out there, and just see what happens. I've gained way more experience switching gears between projects, than I would have sitting, staring at the same code day in and day out. The third project launched yesterday, and starting the fourth this weekend!
fnordsensei 11y ago
Producing many of the same crap won't increase quality. Producing one crap, testing it, and improving it will. This is almost definitional. The state of "many things" is irrelevant, it's the process that links those things together that makes the difference. The ability to learn from the results of the first crap is crucial. There are too many examples of processes that result in the same crap over and over even though the process is iterative. The "quantity vs. quality" reasoning is sort of a red herring here, the real discussion is about how to maximize learning while minimizing investment and baseless assumptions.
fsiefken 11y ago
Almost 20y earlier Eric S. Raymond wrote that famous line in his essay 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar': "Release early, release often". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often
swehner 11y ago
As in Greasing the Groove, GTG

99 points by 0x54MUR41 11y ago

makes me wonder if the reason why it is a lot harder to pick things up when one is older is primarily the lack of large blocks of available time as opposed to the brain being less "plastic" or adaptable as one sometimes reads. When you read famous musicians' bios, for example, there always seems to be something along the lines of "I practiced 8 hours a day every day", hence lots of quantity over several years, but this is of course next to impossible to do in adulthood with all the demands on our time.

EC1 11y ago
I manage to practice 6-8 hours a day and I work full time. Just leaves me with absolutely no time for anything else once chores are taken care of. Can't wait to buy a tiny remote cottage so I can practice full time with minimal bills.
- anonymousDan 11y ago
  What do you practice?
  - EC1 11y ago
    Theory and history, then technical training (scales, chords, arpeggios, ear training, sight reading, and etudes), then my repertoire which currently consists of Bach's BWV 903, LVB's op. 13, Brahms op. 118 no. 1 & op. 118 no. 2, Gershwin's three preludes, Berg's Sonata op. 1, and Webern's Variations.

vinceguidry 11y ago

Eventually you run into limits, that's when the real work begins. It took me 3-4 months to work up to where I could do cardio 3 times a day for an hour a pop. I use a hybrid cardio machine called the Arc trainer at Planet Fitness. I did that routine exactly once before my right calf muscle developed strain. I've played this game before a dozen times with a dozen different activities. Every time I wind up losing focus and that's why I have a dozen of them and not three of them. So rather than drop cardio entirely, I'm backing off to three or so sessions a week and cutting down the length to a half-hour to 45 minutes depending on how I feel. I'll pick the frequency back up as my muscles heal. You really do have to get obsessive over little details to be able to do this. I have a fairly strict routine that I follow every single time I go out to the gym. One time my iPhone decided to start updating against my wishes just as I was about to get on the machine. After some choice swear words, I packed it up and went back home. It wasn't worth sitting at the gym waiting for music and trying to work out without music wasn't going to give me a good workout. Focusing on quantity allows you to skip sessions knowing another one is coming.

SyneRyder 11y ago
I'd be curious to hear more about this, both why you were wanting to train 3 hours a day and how you approached refining your routine. Any chance you've blogged about this somewhere? (The idea of building a precise routine so your music trigger lands at the right moment resonates with me.)
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  I trained three times a day because my body can't handle doing one 3 hour session. When I started really going heavy, I was going through a heartbreak and wanted to throw my efforts into something other than wallowing in self-misery. I kept it up even after I pulled out of it. Never let a good heartbreak go to waste. My routine evolved slowly over time. The key is spotting and removing barriers to doing more. I put my jacket on the machine on the left, my towel goes on the right. My iPhone goes in the cup holder, my gym bag just under the cup holder. My gym bag has an organization scheme, everything in there has a place and there's a routine for putting everything there before I get in my car. Basically, every little thing I can look at and try to improve, I do, and don't worry about the time or expense. I've gone through three pairs of sneakers to try to find the right kind that won't hurt the balls of my feet. Cheap ones don't work well, so I'm moving on to New Balance. I had minimalist shoes, those hurt my feet, but not enough to where I can't work out. The shoes have to be 8 1/2 or 9 wide, normal doesn't cut it. My music routine has shifted over time. I used to just play anything, then I went to a specific playlist so I could try HIIT. Whenever the chorus would come on, I'd go really hard. That got unsustainable as my times on the machine went up and now I just do it flat, with my whole playlist so I don't get bored of the music. Maybe in six months to a year I'll be able to experiment with it again. The machine itself has settings, my approach to these have refined over time as well. I used to set the incline all the way to 20 and slowly increase the resistance over time. Now I set both the incline and the resistance as I'm comfortable and just trust that over time my body will adjust and the numbers will go up. The key to getting started, I think, is to pick something that can be "routine-ized". I use a machine instead of running because I have a lot more 'knobs' to tweak. Classes I have to take on someone else's schedule, I used to do dance classes but not anymore. I tried the bike machine when I first started going to the gym but gravitated to the Arc machine pretty quickly and fell in love with it. At first the big battle will be just showing up. I started with the simple goal of going there once every day. Didn't matter if I actually worked out or not, or what I did, just get to the gym that day and I gave myself permission to feel like I'm accomplishing my fitness goals. Then when it starts getting hard, I gave myself permission to fall back to earlier goals as needed / desired. I can cut workouts short, but not skip them. I always make sure I'm moving forward. There finally comes a point where moving forward is moving backward. You don't want working out to overtake the rest of your life. But you have to cut back with purpose, not just do it because of reasons. You can put it on the back burner, but know why you're doing that and when you're ready to put it back on the front burner. I'm injured right now, so I'm allowing other things to take priority. They may keep priority even after I heal up. But getting back in the saddle and getting back to work pushing my limits is always on my mind.

ranko 11y ago

Quantity, as someone once said, has a quality all of its own. That said, practice doesn't always make perfect; it forms habits. It's easy to form bad habits, and reflective practice, mindfulness, etc, are only partial solutions to that problem.

elliotec 11y ago

I love this concept, and think the premise is absolutely true. As others have pointed out, practicing and just churning out quantity often develops habits and bad practices. One way of combatting that seems to be switching up your routine and deliberately avoiding these habits. This article explains a little more on that: http://www.iflscience.com/brain/researchers-uncover-method-learn-new-skills-twice-fast http://www.iflscience.com/brain/researchers-uncover-method-l... But I think it's apparent all over. People who are able to produce a large quantity of new ideas/methods/etc. almost automatically are of higher quality. Take the Beatles for example. The produced a huge amount of music in their relatively short recording history. But they didn't just follow the same patterns, they experimented and look where they got. Writers can be the same, and athletes, and why not developers too?

6stringmerc 11y ago

A wise lesson once given to me by a person I can't recall: If you're going to "practice" guitar, then actually concentrate on what you're doing - don't just have one in your hands and fumble around with it while you're watching TV - focus and you will improve. ...which blends with another maxim I picked up: There are some guitarists who can truthfully say they've played for 40 years - and it sounds impressive until you find out they've only played the same 9 chords the entire time. So I can appreciate what the article is kind of pointing out in a lot of words - "Practice makes better" - it's a perfectly reasonable message to put forward. The examples are okay overall. There's a lesson in there about the ceramics class, but it seems like a setup from the beginning - a lot of varibles in the outcome depending on the professor, right? I mean, just letting the non-quantity group sit there and drool or goof off isn't maximizing the actual concept of reaching for perfection. Oh, and I listened to a 60 minute long tape of Kanye from that prolific period. The end results are really cookie-cutter. He basically found a sample of music that somebody else wrote & recorded, stretched/looped it, added a hip-hop sounding MPC kit line under it, and called it done. It's a strong example of mechanical repetition to hone the tools of a trade (production/sound engineering). Personally I view it as the antithesis of writing original material, but like I said, personal opinion.

Jormundir 11y ago
I think your analysis is spot on. Improving is a slightly more complex cycle. Improvement looks something like this: Do -> analyze strengths and weaknesses -> try to do better. That middle part is way more successful with the help of a good coach. Really quick learners ("talent") can fill in that middle step on their own, but would ultimately benefit from a coach. When your work cycle is: do -> do again -> do again -> do again you'll improve a bit, but pretty quickly plateau.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  Nicely laid out in the flow chart style. I agree that the middle part is essential in the conversation. Also on the point a good coach should show value! Now and then I see 'self-help' or motivational type pieces encouraging a type of "Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses" which can be applicable in a lot of arenas. However taking on that mentality fully strikes me as missing an important long-term perspective. I say this as a person who was really deficient in one digit's dexterity (pinkie) and instead of just kinda shrugging it off, I spent many years and sessions trying to bring it up to par. Now I'm happy to say I can really only remember it as a past weakness, due to the focus and attention to improvement!

halis 11y ago

This is absolutely true. Stephen King said that if you want to be a writer then write a lot. 2,000 words a day. When I was in 6th grade, I used to shoot free throws every night for hours. Just for fun. We had a track and field day at the end of the year and I beat out two guys for first place in the free throw competition who went on to play basketball on our high school team. I beat them at something that they cared about a great deal and I didn't care about at all, simply by inadvertently practicing a lot.

wallflower 11y ago
> I beat them at something that they cared about a great deal and I didn't care about at all, simply by inadvertently practicing a lot. While some may argue that shooting free throws every day for hours counts as 'caring', I would argue that it was your emotional detachment from the results/outcome that made you really good.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

I'm not a writer or web designer. Have no opinion on that aspect. For IT and QA, this is terrible advice. You shouldn't just try random stuff over and over. Instead, you should first look for people who get the job done on a regular basis. Look for what principles or techniques they used to do that. Start there. Observe in your own work or field reports what problems people run into with what solutions were tried. Reuse what worked, experiment with what didn't in new contexts, and so on. Essentially, get a good start using what's already been done then use creativity and scientific method to quickly become better. Publish lessons you learned from solving problems with certain goals and constraints. Contribute back to this overall process of learning. Alternatively, people can try the author's advice and re-create the modern web experience from HTML, JavaScript, C, and assembler via trial-and-error, exploratory programming. I'll pass. ;)

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

brenschluss 11y ago

Analogy: The larger your training set, the better your neural net. Of course, having a good quality training set is important as well. But with enough data, even not-so-great-data at huge quantities helps generate a well-performing neural net.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

cJ0th 11y ago

This kind of advice is a double-edged sword. It does point you in the right direction but when you meditate shortly on the meaning of the words "quality" and "quantity" I think you're likely to conclude that the thesis "The Key to Higher Quality is Higher Quantity" can imply almost anything. For a long time I've been an opponent to this mantra and in a way I still am. This is because in my opinion a lot of people define "higher quantity" wrongly. Learning flash cards mindlessly all day will hardly help you become more fluent in a foreign language; preparing loads of meals or even the same meal very often doesn't help you become a chef if you aren't fully concentrated on what you're doing. Lately I am of the opinion that you have to practice with a zen attitude, like it is described in "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind". And because of that I think the author of this article also gets it wrong when he says: As Ira Glass so famously put it, the best way to refine your craft is to create a huge volume of work. Not to create the most perfect piece you can, but to create many pieces of work. I guess what Mr. Glass hints at is that you shouldn't become paralyzed by being caught up in thoughts. That is: It is useless to think "Oh this needs to be perfect" or "Oh this needn't be perfect because some clever guy said so" because in that instance you've already lost concentration and you are not really stretching your skills. You certainly have to TRY your best every time. In other words: Strive for perfection but don't get distracted by having dualistic thoughts about your practice.

iolothebard 11y ago
The Ira quote reminds me of my opinion on startups, fail early and fail often. Maybe you'll get lucky and one won't fail. Failure is all in how you define it though.
EthanHeilman 11y ago
Practicing is not the same thing as doing something many times. Refinement requires identifying failure and the causes of that failure. Fail fast is a great mantra, but the fast part requires understanding that you have failed and using that failure to understand how to succeed. People don't get great at chess by playing lots of chess, they get good by studying and learning techniques often with advice from a teacher.
- 11y ago

overcast 11y ago

I (sort of) adopted this philosophy in December of last year. Instead of toiling away on a single project for months on end, attempting to perfect every last inch of it. I've decided that I'm going to release a project every month, for a year. Get all my ideas out there, and just see what happens. I've gained way more experience switching gears between projects, than I would have sitting, staring at the same code day in and day out. The third project launched yesterday, and starting the fourth this weekend!

fnordsensei 11y ago

Producing many of the same crap won't increase quality. Producing one crap, testing it, and improving it will. This is almost definitional. The state of "many things" is irrelevant, it's the process that links those things together that makes the difference. The ability to learn from the results of the first crap is crucial. There are too many examples of processes that result in the same crap over and over even though the process is iterative. The "quantity vs. quality" reasoning is sort of a red herring here, the real discussion is about how to maximize learning while minimizing investment and baseless assumptions.

fsiefken 11y ago

Almost 20y earlier Eric S. Raymond wrote that famous line in his essay 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar': "Release early, release often". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Release_early,_release_often

swehner 11y ago

As in Greasing the Groove, GTG