The "Shortcut" to Success? Quality.
Focusing on quality makes everything else easier or irrelevant.
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Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it they will want to come back and see you do it again and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do
Walt Disney
Nothing matters if we can’t deliver a high level of quality.
There is no point in a haphazard workout, a distracted date night, or a flimsy investment.
Sacrificing more than 40 hours a week to create something subpar is a colossal waste of time.
Creating art that we’re not truly proud of is unfair to ourselves and others.
In any worthwhile pursuit, there is one thing that matters more than anything else: craft.
We have to be good at what we’re doing for it to be consequential.
Quantity and consistency can’t replace quality
We can be consistent and develop strong willpower, but if we’re creating and delivering poor-quality work, we’ll never move ourselves forward.
Without quality, none of the other puzzle pieces matter.
It doesn’t matter how many likes our product gets on Instagram or how many preorders we can generate. What matters is whether the product delivers on its promises once it’s in the hands of customers.
It doesn’t matter how many swipes our dating profiles get or how many dates we can line up for ourselves. It matters that we find a person that we care about and want to spend our lives with.
It doesn’t matter how many times we show up at the gym. It matters that we’re doing focused work that is improving our fitness when we’re there.
It doesn’t matter if we put in more hours and respond to emails faster at work. It matters if we deliver meaningful outcomes.
This isn’t to say consistency or high volumes of work have no value. There are many strategies to amplify high-quality work, but none of these strategies change the fact that poor work will lead to poor results.
Garbage in garbage out.
The fundamentals need to be sound before we can think about scaling or expanding our efforts.
Craft is the foundation
No one has ever been praised for the quantity of their work alone. No one cares about a pile of crap or how fast the crap was piled.
The best at what they do spend an incredible amount of time trying to improve their craft and a relatively small amount of time delivering what we see as the final product.
Professional athletes dedicate 95% of their time to training and only 5% is spent competing.
Writers spend decades honing their craft and creating work the world will never see before they get their big break.
The best knowledge workers spend as much time as they can on improving and learning about their industry and role and execute only when they have to.
Craft fuels everything. If we’re not great at what we do then it doesn’t matter.
We can build the most incredible car the world has ever seen and optimize every last screw and panel, but if we can’t put any gas in the tank then it will never go anywhere.
Craft is what allows us to move forward and what makes our efforts worthwhile.
If we focus on craft, everything becomes a meritocracy. The quality of our work cuts through everything else, and if it’s good enough, it will rise to the top regardless of circumstance, productivity, or volume of output.
Prompts
In which area of your life does craft matter the most?
What are you doing today or should be doing, to improve your craft?
Where are you focusing on quantity instead of quality?
Deep Dive
A great read on why skills trump passion and why quality matters more than everything else.
Thanks for reading! I’ll see you next Sunday.
Kevin