Quantity leads to quality

All is solved by doing

Aug 08, 2026

The sharp smell of the whiteboard marker still fresh in my nostrils, I click a photograph of the Blackout Poem and edit it a bit to expose the blacks and whites. It’s the 40th day of my 100 day Blackout Poetry series on Substack.

In the past 40 days, amidst travelling multiple cities, arriving to a new country, attending weddings, family events and hectic work days I have made and posted a Blackout Poem every single day.

A couple of minutes later, my bum feeling one with the chair beneath it, I finally gather the strength to go for the leg workout scheduled for the day. Strava tells me that it happens to be the 220th day of my streak and my 367th activity. On January 1st 2026, I promised to record a movement on Strava everyday come what may. I have ran 300+ kms, hiked 50+ kms, walked almost a 700 kms and went to gym 100+ days.

I have sneaked out to go to the gym during family events, I have completed the steps target at a birthday party, I have gone to the gym after landing in Colombo after 12 hours of travel and I have gone for a run on my wife’s birthday at 11 PM running 6.5 kms within our rented airbnb villa.

This is my 32nd essay of the year. The goal is to write 52 (one per week) by the end of the year. I would have written 150+ essays by this year end. I can’t wait to write my 1000th essay. I hope it comes sooner than the math tells me.

Writing, editing, publishing and marketing the essay every week isn’t easy. There have been days when I have had to burn the midnight oil to complete a piece, I have written from train stations and airports, from moving cabs and weddings (I have attended 10+ weddings this year alone)

Let me share a story I read in Austin Kleon’s blog.

[A] 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.

“Relying on craft and routine is a lot less sexy than being an artistic genius. But it is an excellent strategy for not going insane.” - Christoph Niemann

I truly believe that as a writer, I am quite average. I also happen to be an average photographer, an average runner, an average reader. Because I fall in love with new things all the time, dedicating myself to a single craft always felt too limiting even though writing has been at the forefront of my creative pursuit in the past few years.

Friends and well wishers will rush to make me believe that I am in fact excellent but I find immense peace in thinking of myself as an average writer. I was not born an artistic genius or a child prodigy and I mustered the courage to pursue my creative passions just a couple of years ago. Relying on routine and craft no matter how unsexy it sounds gives me immense prowess over my work as an artist. Since I am convinced that I am average, I am always open to learning from other people, I am always writing about different topics and discovering my style, I am making mistakes and errors without a second thought and I feel liberated in this creative journey.

Dedicating myself to mastering the craft has always sounded arbitrary and directionless but dedicating myself to a curated challenge or a streak has proven to not only give me a sense of direction but a strong curriculum to follow.

Playing the quantity game gives me an anchor to discipline myself to be rooted in the game. When I am making a blackout poem sitting in the train at 11 PM, I may not come out with the best poem, it might not even make sense but the act of attending to it and creating time for it is what empowers me to create more and better the next day. When I am recording a physical activity on Strava, I am prioritising movement for myself. Not every day is a 10k run day but even a 1k walk some days is enough anchor to instil the belief that I show up when promised.

I thrive in such streaks and challenges and I am always thinking of how I can gamify the things I love to do in life. Lately, I have been thinking how I can come up with a sustainable photography ritual for myself. Soon you might find me talk about a photography streak. This is why I feel obsessing over quantity as an average or beginner artist is the best and most liberating way to go deep into the craft. I may not end up being a prolific blackout poet by 100th day of my streak, I may not become an ironman by 31st December, 2026 on the day my streak ends and nor will I get a publisher’s book deal upon having written 150+ essays but these are exactly the things that will get me there. I don’t know any other way to figure out life than by doing things. I have failed at 4+ startups, took multiple career pivots and I am still in the figuring it out phase but I am confident that as long as I am doing things and creating these fun challenges for myself to grow as an artist, I am still in the game. To me, that’s all that matters.