To Do Big Things, Take on Microprojects
The power of consistently creating small bits of work
Author Seth Godin writes a blog post every day. Karen X. Cheng, the founder of the creative agency Waffle, danced every day for a year — at work, at bus stops, in line at the grocery store. Kanye West, before he won dozens of Grammys, made five beats a day for three summers.
People like to tout “quality over quantity,” a phrase that sets up quantity and quality as two separate choices — in order to have more of one, we must compromise on the other. But quantity and quality are actually intricately connected. Making and releasing a high quantity of work is a reliable path to improving its quality.
In each of the examples above, we can see how small, consistent practices — or, microprojects, if you will — became part of a larger body of work. Godin turned his best blog posts into bestselling books. Cheng produced a timelapse video of her dance mini-sessions, and it raked in 12 million views. Kanye became Kanye.
Research has shown that active learning (interacting, participating, doing) is more effective than passive learning (listening to a lecture, reading). In a paper published in Teaching of Psychology, for example, students absorbed material more thoroughly with ungraded five-minute writing assignments than in…
