Quantity over Quality

On the first day of class, a pottery teacher announced that she was dividing the room into two groups.

Everyone on the left side of the studio, she said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, while all those on the right solely on its quality.

Her procedure was simple: on the final day of class she would bring in a bathroom scale and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on.

Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -- a perfect one — to get an “A”.

At the end of the semester, a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded solely for quantity.

While the “quantity” group was busily 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 effort than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

The lesson here is simple:

Quantity leads directly to quality.

The best way to get better at pottery, at economic development, or at anything, is to do more.

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