What 50 pounds of clay can teach you about productivity and perfectionism

Chanpory over at LifeClever shares this great parable about perfectionism and productivity:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right 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” 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—albeit a perfect one—to get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and 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 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 efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Perfect timing!  Productivity has been on my mind a lot these days as I try to move multiple projects forward while also finishing my dissertation proposal.  As usual, the biggest hurdle is wanting to get everything just right, as if the goal is to emerge from my library chamber with an unassailable finished product in hand.

The insight from this parable isn’t unique, but it’s refreshing.  Along similar lines are Anne Lamott’s “shitty first draft” (I just returned Bird by Bird to the library yesterday), Merlin Mann’s idea of reaching version 1.0, and perhaps more directly, Robert Boice’s argument in Professors as Writers that writing begets more (and more creative) writing.  In all honesty, that’s one of the main reasons I started blogging.