All You Need Is To Make 1,000 Pots

Why quantity always trumps quality in content creation.

The ceramics teacher divided the class of students into two groups.

Group A was given unlimited amounts of clay and instruments and was supposed to make 1,000 pots during the first quarter to get an “A.” Group B, on the other hand, was given minimal materials and told to make just one pot — but of superb quality — to qualify for an “A.”

When the grading time came, the teacher discovered that the pots of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.

This example proves a crucial point for anyone making things: writers, content creators, software developers, and musicians.

When the students from the first group focused on the output, they improved with each new pot, becoming better exponentially. In contrast, students who obsessed over perfection suffered from all sorts of creative “blocks” and had nothing to show at the end but a bunch of untested theories and unused clay.

When you’re starting and don’t know which direction to go, stop overthinking and, instead, follow the quantity.

All you need is to make 1,000 pots.

I get emails from readers asking for advice. And I must say, I feel guilty for not sharing anything new when I say, “just write.”

The first time I said this was in my 4th month of writing on Medium. I wrote a piece saying that reading articles about the “holy secret” of succeeding on Medium is useless.

There is no secret. All you need is to create — a lot.

When you write a lot, a few things happen:

• You learn how to write better.
• You maximize the probability of any given post going viral.
• You understand better what you want to write about.
• You get in touch with your inner artist and get rid of the “block.”

And if you look at all successful creators — Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, Casey Neistat, Jack Conte (Patreon CEO and also a musician) — they all had one thing in common.

They created as much as they could.

You Learn To Write By Writing

When I was 16, I dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur. After a childhood of reading books about Steve Jobs, I saw no other path for me. So I naively applied to the best college in the U.S. that taught entrepreneurship.

I say “naively” because there is no such thing as “teaching entrepreneurship.”

Most things are learned exclusively by doing. No matter how many theoretical concepts you’re familiar with, experiencing problems will make you learn from scratch.

Seven months in, I dropped out and fled back home to Russia, to start a business. That business failed three years in but taught me more than any fancy curriculum ever could (and it was much cheaper).

With content, it’s the same. You can’t think your way to becoming a writer. You have to type words, hit “publish,” make mistakes, and learn from feedback. The more words you type — the better you become. As Neil Gaiman says, “Assume you have one million shitty words inside of you. Get them all out as quickly as possible.”

Too many people theorize business and content creation. I am one of these people, which is why, ironically, I am writing this piece. But the best advice for beginning creators I heard was: “pick a schedule and stick to it.”

Consistency will get you places. Most creators stop themselves before they’ve even started because they think they’re not good enough. But modern distribution platforms like Medium or YouTube are designed for consistent output. It doesn’t matter how good you are when you start. If you show up regularly, you will gain an audience. And even if you’re as talented as Steven King, but only write once a year, you won’t be noticed.

A bonus is that by publishing consistently, you will inevitably make mistakes, get feedback — either qualitative through comments or quantitative through likes — and improve. You will become a better content creator or a better entrepreneur.

Ira Glass famously talked about the “gap” that creators experience — between where they are and where they want to be. Like entrepreneurship, writing is entirely action-based. The only way to bridge the gap is by doing a lot of work.

You Maximize Your Odds By Publishing Often

From February 1 until June 1, I wrote about 150 pieces on this platform. Just 6 of them got more than 1,000 claps. Only 3 of them went “viral” and got more than 5,000 claps. About 99% of what I write dies in obscurity.

It’s a depressing thought, but it’s true. Let me save you hours of endless worry and say that almost everything you create will be shit. I’ll be the first one to admit that 99% of my posts are bad (sometimes terrible) because nobody can produce high-quality writing 100% of the time. Who you are as a creator determines the way you handle these “dips.”

Everyone wants to be “viral,” but nobody knows how to control virality. (Please don’t listen to people who say they can — they lie.) There are too many factors that influence whether a post goes viral, so it’s best to think of it as completely random.

“But why do some people have more viral pieces than others?” you might ask.

Two reasons.

First, they create a lot. And it increases their odds. Over four months, just two pieces made me 95% of the money and provided follower growth. It doesn’t mean I could just write those two pieces, and that’s it. No. I needed the other 148 for the math to work.

Second, the more you create, the more your intuition grows, and so — more pieces go viral. You can’t predict what will go viral. But if you write 1,000 articles and pay attention to what works, you’ll inevitably start spotting patterns that will help you write better pieces.

Creating content is a numbers game. Nobody cares about your career as much as you do if you want to have viral content, experiment, and create as much as you can.

Assume that 1% of your posts will go viral. Want to have a viral piece? Write 100.

You Understand Better What You Want To Write About

I had no idea what I wanted to write about when I came to Medium back in October 2019. (It was only nine months ago, but it seems like a long time ago.) I started to get an idea of what kind of content I want to create only in the past few weeks.

Which is to say, it’s normal if you are all over the place.

Be all over the place.

There is a particular survivorship bias going on with content creation. You look at a successful creator — say, a Medium writer — and see that they have a niche. They have a particular audience. They have a topic. They are focused.

And so you think that to succeed, you have to be focused too.

Bullshit.

You’re confusing the cause and effect here. These successful creators found their “product/market fit” — sure. But to find that fit, you need to do the opposite: don’t focus, create a lot of different content, try different mediums, try different styles, and find your voice.

I’ve compared content creation to startups before, and the most significant similarity is this: you spend a lot of time, in the beginning, looking for your specific audience and the type of content you will be serving that audience with.

You understand that only after writing about a handful of topics and noticing what fits.

You Get Rid Of The ‘Block’

Creativity’s best friend is called Momentum. They are true bros.

Because once you get the ball rolling, it’ll be hard to stop.

The opposite is true as well: if you stop creating, it’ll be tough to get yourself going again. People who create whenever the “Muse” strikes them are more blocked than people who create consistently.

Your mind is like a sink pipe in this sense. If you don’t run water through it for a year, it becomes clogged with shit, hair, and nails.

The disciplined output is Mr. Clean. It will give you freedom from the block. The more you create, the more momentum you’ll have, the more you’ll create. It’s a positive feedback loop that will take you to success.

Always remember that being a blocked artist and living a life full of regret is way worse — and more painful — than doing the work.

Your job as a creator is to do the work, not judge it.

So focus on the output. Make your version of 1,000 pots. What will it be?

It can be 1,000 articles or 1,000 YouTube videos or 1,000 podcasts or even 1,000 chapters of a novel. Show up at the page, and relax into your work.

Play, tinker, and try.

And let the quality take care of itself.