This is a question I’ve been pondering when it comes to books and other inputs like Youtube videos. It started recently when I watched a video Tom Sachs put up where he makes a contraption so that he follows his maxim, output before input.
You can see that here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uySzkoA2Xvw. I made a sign for my corkboard so I do the same. I’m going to make a sticker for my laptop too.
Output before input.
Quality is also something that is in the saying so often said to me by my dad as I was growing up, “If you’re going to do something, do it right.”
He applied that to everything from work to hobbies to play. Everything had to be done right. However, I’ve realised it didn’t mean he was a perfectionist but that there is a right way to do things and you must do it that way. He liked to get things done.
My dad is a voracious reader. He reads everything from tales of the outback to engineering books to adventure stories. He has a deep knowledge of lots of things that people who learn from curated Youtube videos don’t. Most of this is through experience or by quality inputs. By ‘curated’ I mean videos shared by influencers or news outlets that then shape the videos Youtube’s algorithm then shows to you.
There’s plenty of quantity but the quality is questionable.
So, do you need to sacrifice quality to get quantity? I don’t believe so. There are plenty of examples that show this isn’t true.
But, will people sacrifice quality to get quantity? Yes. They absolutely will.
We are not going to be on this earth long enough to read or watch everything that has been produced and I’m taking the stance that quality is going to do more for you and those around you than quantity.
I’d like to challenge you to start taking note of what your inputs are and rating them by a quality scale. You will quickly know whether something is quality. The comments on Youtube videos are a useful tool for this. People soon write whether something works or doesn’t.
As you start to take note of your inputs, think about whether the people you are getting your information from are of a high quality or if they’re just sharing common knowledge.
Most of what ‘we’ know has been written about already. A lot of new stuff is just regurgitation or different viewpoints of the same knowledge and it’s worth going back to the source. The source will always be of a high quality because it wasn’t as easy to be published then as it is now. Things were vetted and peer reviewed.
Good luck with your challenge. I’d love to hear how you get on and what you’ve stopped watching or reading.
Until next week.
Best regards,
Glenn