Hello hello, welcome to this week's edition of Sunday Chillin'! Although I do love the rain, it would be nice to see the sun more these days. Hope everyone is staying dry, warm, and safe.
Quantity vs. Quality
I recently came across a study conducted by a professor at the University of Florida that attempted to answer the age-old question: which leads to better results, focusing on quantity or quality? This professor informed half of his photography class that they would be graded on how many photos they could take by the end of the term, and the other half would be graded on how good their submitted photos were. So the first group would be graded based on quantity and the second on quality. The goal of the experiment was to see which group ultimately produced better photos. As it turns out, the Quantity group won out in the end, with more high quality photos overall. [1]
Initially I was a bit surprised by these paradoxical results, but once I thought about it more, I realized that it made good sense. In fact, I've read a lot of advice by professionals in different fields that echoes the same idea. We've all heard the classic "you need 10,000 hours to become an expert" and "Thomas Edison made a bajillion versions of a lightbulb before he found the correct configuration." [2] They're all ultimately variations of the same message.
That is, if you want to get better at something, you just have to do it a lot.
Initially I was a bit surprised by these paradoxical results, but once I thought about it more, I realized that it made good sense. In fact, I've read a lot of advice by professionals in different fields that echoes the same idea. We've all heard the classic "you need 10,000 hours to become an expert" and "Thomas Edison made a bajillion versions of a lightbulb before he found the correct configuration." [2] They're all ultimately variations of the same message.
That is, if you want to get better at something, you just have to do it a lot.
Obviously, there are some caveats here. If you just go through the motions every time you do a task, there'll probably be some incremental improvement just due to increased familiarity, but you're unlikely to see meaningful progress. And if you practice "incorrectly," you probably won't improve in the way you want to either. But I think, on the whole, whenever people do a task, they put in a reasonable amount of effort and are at least on the right path. [3]
It seems to me though that the name of the game here is consistency. In the example above, the students who were instructed to take as many photos as they could probably stumbled upon different techniques and cool framings just by chance. And of course, giving them the benefit of the doubt, I'm sure the quantity-focused students also still tried to take the best photos they could each time. But since they engaged in the action more, the probability of a lucky shot here and there increased substantially. Enough lucky shots end up turning into a pretty decent portfolio.
In my case, I've historically held off on seriously pursuing certain tasks or hobbies because I was waiting until I achieved a baseline level of proficiency before putting myself out there. [4] But this year, I decided to set goals for myself that were a function of quantity instead of quality. For each of my hobbies that I want to improve in, I have a fairly simple numerical goal for a given time period.
To get a bit more concrete, one example is actually in photography. I've been shooting photos for over 10 years now, but for the last 5 years, I honestly haven't taken that many. I got into film photography for a while so I was somewhat limited by the cost of film (and required development/printing). [5] But even before that, I used to debate whether it was actually worth it to have my camera on me. After all, if I wasn't going to see anything cool, it mainly just led to neck pain.
But this year, I set myself the goal of just taking 50 photos per week. Digging through The Archives™, I figured out that my success rate is roughly one decent photo out of every 100. So if that's the case, then if I take 50 photos per week, I'll get ~25 good photos by the end of the year. Not bad! That's probably 20 more than I would have had otherwise. And if I'm actually improving a bit every week, then hopefully the results at the end of week 52 will have a higher ratio of good:bad photos.
I'll let you know how it goes by the end of the year but I'm optimistic about the results.
There's a much longer conversation to be had here about the effects of compounding interest (in the context of progress) but that's a topic for another week. Now that this newsletter has given your brain some ideas to marinate in, hopefully you too can join me on this journey and prioritize quantity. I'm sure quality will arise naturally through the process.
Are there even songs this week?
At long last, we have reached the music portion of this music newsletter. For those of you that were looking forward to "quantity-themed" music, I regret to inform you that I don't even know what that is. The songs below come from my current rotation that I listen to as I traipse across the vast expanse that is Stanford. [6] So if you see me walking on campus with my head bippin and boppin, one of these may be responsible for my vaccine-like symptoms. [7]
DRIVE THRU - Tamae, Lyric Le'son
Spotify | YouTube
Trumpets - _BY.ALEXANDER, 070 Shake [8]
Spotify | YouTube
Aston - Prince K
Spotify | YouTube
4K - Duckwrth, Phabo
Spotify | YouTube
Lots of varied stuff this week but hopefully you find something you like. As always, just reply to this email if you have any thoughts on any of the above! I enjoy reading your responses so keep 'em comin'.
See you all next Sunday!
suhaas
————————————————————————————
If you'd like to share this newsletter with your friends, please direct them to this link.
Here are Spotify and YouTube playlists with all the songs so far.
[1] To be fair, this "study" wasn't particularly scientific as far as I can tell by the information available online. But since it motivates the rest of the newsletter, let's just pretend that it was. I think the results are at least backed up by many other real-world examples so this will have to suffice for now.
[2] Malcolm Gladwell popularized the "10,000 hours to become an expert" thing in his book Outliers, but a) he pulled this number out of his ass and b) he's an insufferable "intellectual" who thinks he sees things that no one else does. Of course, even a pile of junk can be mined for scrap metal so we can take what we need from his writing and discard the rest. I'm not his biggest fan, can you tell?
[3] For the mathematically inclined among you, we can at least say that the dot product is positive. For those of you that are not mathematically inclined, if the intended direction is north, most people are at least not moving south. If you're neither mathematically inclined nor directionally oriented...the dot product is positive.
[4] Some people call this perfectionism, but let's not glorify it. I think it's closer to laziness.
[5] Don't get me wrong, I actually love the slower, deliberate process of taking film photos. But with inflation at 7%, sheeeesh, can't be spending $35 for 36 photos. I'll write more about film in the future though, for shore.
[6] This campus is really way too big, but it gives me plenty of time to listen to music I guess. The glass is 3/4ths full and all that.
[7] Is it too soon to make light of these weird vaccine "side effects" videos? Too bad, they made me laugh from Day 1. Imagine if our phones were sentient and had to open their cameras to see you simulate the effects of a magnitude 6 earthquake while moaning and groaning. They'd probably decide that sentience isn't worth it after all.
[8] Some weird imagery in this one, just a heads up for those of you who watch the YouTube videos. Don't know who did the art direction, but I probably won't be contacting them for my music video needs.
It seems to me though that the name of the game here is consistency. In the example above, the students who were instructed to take as many photos as they could probably stumbled upon different techniques and cool framings just by chance. And of course, giving them the benefit of the doubt, I'm sure the quantity-focused students also still tried to take the best photos they could each time. But since they engaged in the action more, the probability of a lucky shot here and there increased substantially. Enough lucky shots end up turning into a pretty decent portfolio.
In my case, I've historically held off on seriously pursuing certain tasks or hobbies because I was waiting until I achieved a baseline level of proficiency before putting myself out there. [4] But this year, I decided to set goals for myself that were a function of quantity instead of quality. For each of my hobbies that I want to improve in, I have a fairly simple numerical goal for a given time period.
To get a bit more concrete, one example is actually in photography. I've been shooting photos for over 10 years now, but for the last 5 years, I honestly haven't taken that many. I got into film photography for a while so I was somewhat limited by the cost of film (and required development/printing). [5] But even before that, I used to debate whether it was actually worth it to have my camera on me. After all, if I wasn't going to see anything cool, it mainly just led to neck pain.
But this year, I set myself the goal of just taking 50 photos per week. Digging through The Archives™, I figured out that my success rate is roughly one decent photo out of every 100. So if that's the case, then if I take 50 photos per week, I'll get ~25 good photos by the end of the year. Not bad! That's probably 20 more than I would have had otherwise. And if I'm actually improving a bit every week, then hopefully the results at the end of week 52 will have a higher ratio of good:bad photos.
I'll let you know how it goes by the end of the year but I'm optimistic about the results.
There's a much longer conversation to be had here about the effects of compounding interest (in the context of progress) but that's a topic for another week. Now that this newsletter has given your brain some ideas to marinate in, hopefully you too can join me on this journey and prioritize quantity. I'm sure quality will arise naturally through the process.
Are there even songs this week?
At long last, we have reached the music portion of this music newsletter. For those of you that were looking forward to "quantity-themed" music, I regret to inform you that I don't even know what that is. The songs below come from my current rotation that I listen to as I traipse across the vast expanse that is Stanford. [6] So if you see me walking on campus with my head bippin and boppin, one of these may be responsible for my vaccine-like symptoms. [7]
DRIVE THRU - Tamae, Lyric Le'son
Spotify | YouTube
Trumpets - _BY.ALEXANDER, 070 Shake [8]
Spotify | YouTube
Aston - Prince K
Spotify | YouTube
4K - Duckwrth, Phabo
Spotify | YouTube
Lots of varied stuff this week but hopefully you find something you like. As always, just reply to this email if you have any thoughts on any of the above! I enjoy reading your responses so keep 'em comin'.
See you all next Sunday!
suhaas
————————————————————————————
If you'd like to share this newsletter with your friends, please direct them to this link.
Here are Spotify and YouTube playlists with all the songs so far.
[1] To be fair, this "study" wasn't particularly scientific as far as I can tell by the information available online. But since it motivates the rest of the newsletter, let's just pretend that it was. I think the results are at least backed up by many other real-world examples so this will have to suffice for now.
[2] Malcolm Gladwell popularized the "10,000 hours to become an expert" thing in his book Outliers, but a) he pulled this number out of his ass and b) he's an insufferable "intellectual" who thinks he sees things that no one else does. Of course, even a pile of junk can be mined for scrap metal so we can take what we need from his writing and discard the rest. I'm not his biggest fan, can you tell?
[3] For the mathematically inclined among you, we can at least say that the dot product is positive. For those of you that are not mathematically inclined, if the intended direction is north, most people are at least not moving south. If you're neither mathematically inclined nor directionally oriented...the dot product is positive.
[4] Some people call this perfectionism, but let's not glorify it. I think it's closer to laziness.
[5] Don't get me wrong, I actually love the slower, deliberate process of taking film photos. But with inflation at 7%, sheeeesh, can't be spending $35 for 36 photos. I'll write more about film in the future though, for shore.
[6] This campus is really way too big, but it gives me plenty of time to listen to music I guess. The glass is 3/4ths full and all that.
[7] Is it too soon to make light of these weird vaccine "side effects" videos? Too bad, they made me laugh from Day 1. Imagine if our phones were sentient and had to open their cameras to see you simulate the effects of a magnitude 6 earthquake while moaning and groaning. They'd probably decide that sentience isn't worth it after all.
[8] Some weird imagery in this one, just a heads up for those of you who watch the YouTube videos. Don't know who did the art direction, but I probably won't be contacting them for my music video needs.