Questionable Quality

Today, I have chosen quantity over quality.

The way I see it, it's either one or the other. This concept can be applied to many aspects of life. Writing - either write a lot of mediochre quality, or write less but with more thought-worthy substance. Diet - either have a lot of crappy food, so you can eat more, but it don't taste so good; or have nicer food in which case you need less to fufil your desires, because it's good enough to satisfy completely. Friends - either have a lot to call upon on whenever, or have a few that are better than all the rest. Relationships - either have the one which you can rely upon, or fill up the space with many in-betweeners.

Revision - slog away hours on end, reading through, writing out over and over again, but in terms of actual being effective, the method isn't so useful. On the other hand, putting more effort to properly learn as you go along, testing your knowledge, working out the answers, finding reasoning using first principles and try to understand what's going on, making the connections to related parts of the subject may not require the necessity for 4,897 pages of revision notes written out 268 times, but if you work to really understand rather than just blindly rote-learning facts and model responses, you'll probably have a more concrete idea of what's going on without needing to even refer to notes. Though perhaps this practice makes more sense for sciences than other subjects.

In terms of straight-forward method, following a rule of quantity over quality, while requiring a more constant input, isn't that hard to do. It's simple to roll off two or three paragraphs of not much worth knowing every day. Copying out doesn't teach a lot, something may sink in at some point, but not proportional to the amount of time spent on it. Sometimes, a blog may hit the thinking spot, but the other 82.9% of the time, it's just mindless fodder for the sake of it.

Quality is often harder to achieve. Being able to concentrate, choose the right information to include and condense appropriately to the necessary essentials is far more difficult and requires substantially more effort in terms of comprehension, but is generally far more rewarding. You end up having a better knowledge base, it's more likely to stick and make sense, and hopefully it will eventually result in an all-round better outcome.

Quality over quantity.

On the jukebox: Coldplay ~ Fix You