It’s 6:26am right now. My 6 week old is sleeping on my chest as I write this.
I got up this morning to do what I’ve been doing every morning at 5:30am to do — write.
I started a little later today because it’s Saturday, so I don’t have to get up as early to get my Kindergartner to school. However, I still have to wake up before the kids do, or this post won’t get published today.
I have an extra blog post in my drafts, just waiting to be edited. I think it’s a really good one. So when I flipped open my laptop to start creating, a thought interrupted me.
“You should focus on editing the article that’s waiting in the cue instead of writing a new one,” my brain said.
I almost bought into the lie. But I caught it red-handed, just in time.
Spending an hour editing and perfecting a blog post sounds noble. It sounds productive. Sure, I wouldn’t technically be writing this morning like I committed to doing. Still, editing is an essential part of content creation.
I bought into the lie of “quality over quantity” for a long time until I finally realized it’s just an excuse to create and publish less often.
If I chose editing over writing, I would be justifying creating nothing. And I would try to let myself get away with it with the excuse of “quality.”
We all do this. But why?
I can think of at least 2 reasons we choose to believe the “quality over quantity” lie:
We do it out of laziness.
Editing isn’t easier than writing per se, but it’s usually less overwhelming. When you’re staring at a blank page, creating seems far more daunting than editing, polishing, and perfecting a completed, albeit imperfect, work.
We do it because we’re afraid.
We like calling ourselves “perfectionists” because it sounds nobler than admitting we’re just “scared.”
But let’s be honest. We prefer to keep perfecting something we’ve already made rather than producing something new because we’re afraid what we create won’t be great.
