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This is the important part:

Originally posted by elfs at This is the important part:

Josh Kaufmann's The First 20 Hours is a pretty good book, but he quotes from another book that really tells the whole story in three paragaphs. Once you know how to learn, this is what you need to know:

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 pounds 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, come grading time 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.

Now, go forth, do good work.

Angel says: This jibes nicely with ERB's advice to write a short story every week for a year. Because it is highly unlikely you will produce 52 bad shorts.