Sheer volume

Beginning a new craft in many ways mirrors the experience of learning to walk — there are all kinds of trials between losing balance, stumbling, and falling that occur early on, but eventually you figure out how to get somewhere (literally).

The first time you try walking might be decidedly great (no stumbles), the second attempt you might end up falling, the third attempt might being a little smoother to start but then you lose balance a few times, and so forth. Proficiency is never achieved in the first attempt.

It’s persisting through a large enough volume of trials and absorbing lessons along the way on how to better balance, how to recover from a fall, and how to rise more quickly that we end up being able to walk confidently without hesitation.

All new endeavors — whether it’s learning how to walk, pursuing a new profession, or creating change — follow the same principle of sheer volume: the more you do, the more you learn, the more refined your taste becomes, more empowered you are to to turn the dials on the quality of your work and consistently perform.
I feel like your post alluded to more than the title suggested. ;D Sheer volume seems to suggest just putting in the reps, but your points about falling, learning, recovering seemed to be pointing towards something like, deliberate practice/quality+some quantity vs sheer quantity? Or maybe it's about "sheer iterations of trying and learning"? 
2021-02-15 08:46:34
jasonleow
 deliberate practice is definitely part of it. The emphasis on volume is the idea that more work potentiates greater quantities of falling, learning, recovering. I see where you are coming from though, I will do some more thinking on how to best capture the spirit of the deliberate practice it is not super clear in the title alone. Come to think of it there is also a need to actually ship the work that I didn't mention. If we created just for ourselves there's the risk of us being in an echo chamber where we are insensitive to areas that could benefit from improvement. 
2021-02-15 17:54:46
Yeah 100% re: shipping. Even if it's entirely for self-expression with no intended audience, putting it out into the wild helps with growth and learning in more ways than just public feedback.
2021-02-16 08:24:40