Tuesday, 7.46pm
Sheffield, U.K.
Quality without results is pointless. Results without quality is boring. – Johan Cruyff
It’s amazing how quickly stopping a routine can derail you.
I’ve had a few weeks away from the keyboard. Away from a digital first approach. And there are pros and cons. Here are some.
The pros of getting away from the computer
You get to slow down. Experience the feeling of pen on paper. That leads to a different kind of thinking.
You can write rubbish, pour out anything on the page knowing that it won’t make it to the next edit. You get a chance to focus on what’s good.
You have a thing you can look back on, a real manuscript which may one day have historical value.
The cons
It’s slow. You need more time to get through the process. Writing it by hand first and then typing it up means you have more to do.
It’s locked on the page. If you move on, then it’s harder to come back and find where you were. A notebook is not searchable.
You don’t produce. Production is important. It’s too easy to see that there is extra work and move onto something else instead.
The fixes
I recently bought ‘On Quality’, a collection of Pirsig’s unpublished writings. He writes in there that all methods have problems. If you just write, it’s rambling. If you use an outline, it’s dull. If you add some excitement, then it’s artificial.
The answer is to just add quality, just make it good.
If only it were just that easy.
The real thing that matters is to get something out. Quality comes from working on that again and again.
Pirsig’s book ‘Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance’ took 6 years to get out. 2 to write. Then 2 to be depressed about it. Then 2 more to write it again.
But what mattered was the writing.
I need to remind myself of that every once in a while.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 