Why Perfectionist Writers Should Focus on Quantity

Algorithms favor prolific writers

Image by the author.

Everyone knows you should eat less junk and do more exercise. Everyone knows why. And yet, for so many people it just doesn’t click. It’s as if their brain isn’t correctly wired to see what ought to be done. They can’t accept what’s in their own best interest.

And the same is true when it comes to the quantity versus quality debate. Even if one approach is objectively better for you, you as a writer need to be receptive to it. It needs to click for you. You must have reached a point where you see the need of doing it one way over the other. And I finally realized quantity matters. A lot.

Social media algorithms favor quantity

For a long time, I’ve been stubbornly quality first. I found the arguments for quality more convincing. Whenever I read a piece praising the quality-first approach, I nodded in agreement. But if you put a piece in front of me arguing for quantity, I’d shake my head violently, as if I wanted to shake a coin out of my nose.

It wasn’t really because the arguments for quality were better. I was just more receptive to them given the cowardly perfectionist that I am. I was blocked and terror-stricken of being judged anything other than a great writer.

But I’m just now, after almost two years of writing online, starting to see the value of quantity. Like it or not, the recommender algorithms on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Medium are heavily biased towards recency. And most people are biased that way too. They all want new shiny articles all the time. They crave newness so much that one might think blog posts start to rot after a few days. Heck, algorithms treat old posts as if they had become infested with maggots.

That means quantity is important. You have to stay at the forefront of that massive crashing tsunami-like wave of content — a wave that drowns out pretty much anything that’s older than a few days.

So, assuming your stuff doesn’t stink like rat feet, the more often you post the more eyeballs will find you and your work. It’s that simple.