I've been thinking about this question for a while, especially recently due to an example given by James Clear in his book "Atomic Habits" regarding one's growth in a certain area. I've encountered this example before in other books, so it wasn't new to me, but I found it more interesting now that I am writing and posting articles every day.
I'm talking about a study / experiment conducted on a class of photographers. The person conducting the experiment separated the class into two groups. The first group would be graded based on all the pictures they would take in a set amount of time. The other group would be graded based on a single perfect picture. The experiment was conducted to see which group would improve faster at taking photos. Surprisingly for some, unsurprisingly for others, the first group, the one that had to take more pictures, improved way more than the first group.
The reason is quite simple - while the second group spent their time thinking about composition, colors, themes, elements involved and so on, trying to figure out how that perfect image should look like, the first group just did the one activity that would help them improve at their task - taking photos. Although they never aimed for perfection, they improved because they kept on practicing, experimenting and trying different ideas. At the end of the experiment not only did they have a high number of photos, but you could also see how they improved with each photography.
Obviously, doing something often without aiming for improvement won't help you get better, but if you actually try to get better, then the quantity of what you do will directly influence how much you'll grow, how fast, and what type of rewards you'll receive from your work.
I've seen this multiple times, especially in my own work, specifically my articles. I started posting on Hive in 2017 if I'm not wrong, and since then I've been writing and posting quite a lot of content. Right now I'm almost at 1100 articles. And although I always tried to get better at this activity, I'm pretty sure that the amount of content I've written is one of the main reasons that I improved, not my other attempts.
To be honest, quantity, alongside the desire to get better, is the reason why I not only managed to get better compared to the time I started to write, but also the reason why I've been getting rewards again and again, despite the fact that I'm not the most popular person on this platform or anywhere at all.
My articles are not amazing, although I'd say that they are not the worst either. I'm not very involved in the community, or any group here on Hive, because of my lack of time. I just write and post, hoping to get lucky. And while the chances to get enough upvotes again and again are fairly small in such a big community, those chances increased with each article I posted. The more I wrote, the more probable was that someone would see my work.
I did that on Medium for a while as well, and I saw a bit of success, but not enough. Demotivated, I chose to quit and focus on other platforms. Sometimes I try to think of what would've happened if I would've approached my work there the same way I do it here: just write as much as you can, to the best of your ability, for long enough, and see what happens.
Maybe now I'd be a full time writer. Maybe I'd be making money from my room instead of having to work in the kitchen of a restaurant. Maybe I would be rich, who knows. And all that might've happened if only I would've kept writing and posting on that platform, increasing the amount of my work every single day.
Saying that it's all a numbers game might be wrong. You can post crap again and again and chances are that you'll remain ignored by people who care even a little bit about the quality of the content that they consume. But if you make an effort, and you try to create as much as possible while also trying to get better, chances are that you will, in time, improve, and the amount of work that you put in will get more and more attention, not necessarily because of the mind-blowing quality, but because of its quantity and small improvements that will appear in time.
So, if you've ever thought about making it as a writer, or getting better at some activities, try to conduct your own little experiment. Pick one thing that you want to do, such as writing, taking photos, creating design elements, whatever, and do that as much as you can for a month or two. Try to create something different every day, with no exception. At the end, try to compare both the quality of your first work compared to the first one, and the amount of views you get compared to when you started.
Chances are that at least one of those things increases. You need to remember that in order for this to work you must focus on quality and growth, but see how far repeated practice will get you compared to long hours of study with no action involved.
