The Parable of the Pottery Class

A powerful lesson on perfection and progress

Hey there!

Happy Monday! Thank you to the 30 subscribers in this newsletter so far! That’s a big jump from 12 subscribers 2 weeks ago, but it seems like it’s because of an influx of spam emails/bots signing up 😱 — more on this later.

A few days ago, I came across a powerful story I haven’t heard in quite some time: The Parable of the Pottery Class. It’s a story that’s drastically changed my relationship with failure and perfectionism, and it’s one of those frame-breaking lessons that I take with me in many different parts of life.

On Kiu for today:

• 🏺 The Parable of the Pottery Class

• ✍️ Quote of the Week

• 🗞 Newsletter Reflections

• 🤩 Interesting Stuff

🏺 The Parable of the Pottery Class

The Story

On the first day of a pottery class, the ceramics teacher announced that the class would be divided into 2 groups. He instructed the 1st group to work for 30 days to make 1 perfect pot. Meanwhile, the 2nd group was instructed to make 1 pot a day for 30 days.

On the final day of class, the students brought their pots in front of classroom for grading. The teacher went around assessing each of these pots based on quality. To the surprise of the whole class, all of the highest quality pots all came from the 2nd group — the group that was instructed to just create 1 pot a day, regardless of quality

While the “quality” group was busy theorizing about how to make the perfect pot, the “quantity” group got to work straight away — making pots, learning from their mistakes, getting feedback from teachers and classmates, and ultimately getting much better.

Why Quantity Leads to Quality

This beautiful short story paints such a concrete picture of how progress rules over perfection.

Oftentimes, when learning something new, we tend to dive deep into research — YouTube videos, articles, books, etc. — to plan out the most optimal way to learn a particular skill. We look for the highest-quality equipment, the best resources, the best everything… This isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. The problem is overdoing this. Many people simply overwhelm themselves with research, optimizing for something they simply don’t know enough to plan well for. The truth is, you won’t really know what you don’t know until you simply get started. Rather than focusing on churning out the highest quality work, it’s simply better to shift your focus on getting those reps in, embracing those mistakes, and learning from doing.

This is the approach I’m taking with the newsletter. I’m just embracing the fact that these first few newsletters will suck. I will make countless typos (I already have on the first one), have horrid grammatical errors, and do ineffective storytelling.. but with each of these posts, I’ll surely learn something from just going through the motions, from reading your feedback (thank you Aleena, Colin, Patricia, and CJ for the feedback so far!), and from making those mistakes.

What’s something you’re planning on learning but just have not gotten around starting?

I forgot where I originally heard about this story, but it’s likely from productivity YouTuber Ali Abdaal a few years back. I heard it was originally from a book called Art & Fear.

Some Reference Material

• Ali Abdaal on the Parable of the Pottery Class

• The Parable of the Pottery Class - A Short Vlog

• Hank Green on struggling to apply the parable in his journey to writing a book

✍️ Quote of the Week

“Effort is what creates effortless” - Shaan Puri, My First Million

I first heard of this quote in September 18, 2022 from Shaan Puri from my current favorite business podcast, My First Million (19:22). It’s a punchy quote that reminds us that the Kobe Bryants, Magnus Carlsens, and Eminems of the world are able to do what they do so easily because of an incredible amount of practice they’ve put in.

🗞 Newsletter Reflections

This will be a mainstay section of the newsletter for the time being. I feel it’s important I share what I learn while getting used to the ebb and flow of newsletter writing.

Bots?

2 weeks ago, we were at 12 subscribers. And today, we’re at 30. I’m pretty confident that 14 of those subscribers are bots though, as they came in constantly over the course of a few hours — all unknown emails who came from “direct” media source (a.k.a. they discovered my newsletter by typing this newsletter’s URL on their browser, which is practically impossible at this stage).

Advertising Oneself is Hard

This is a more personal thing, but I still struggle sharing my newsletter with more people at this stage. I’m trying to shake this off, since I need more points of feedback so that I can make those mistakes and “make better pots” more quickly.

I need to put those reps in, so I’ll attempt to share this newsletter with one person a day until the next newsletter.

Last Week’s Lesson

Apart from proofreading, last week’s lesson was adding more hyperlinks. The goal of this newsletter is to share knowledge, and knowledge doesn’t exist in a vacuum. You can certainly dive more deeply into every quote, article, book, YouTuber, etc. that I mention, and it’s my job to make that process easier for you.

🤩 Interesting Stuff

This section, which has an uninteresting tentative name, is a short section where I will share interesting things I come across on the internet!

• Mr. Beast interviewed by finance YouTuber Graham Stephan — Beast Burger has grossed hundreds of millions of dollars already 😱

• Facebook post sharing 13 incredibly useful online tools — image background remover, AI paraphrasing tool, AI Excel formula generator, etc.

• World famous mathematician Terence Tao on the controversial 400+ Philippine lotto winners issue — way too technical for the casual reader, but it’s interesting how widespread the PCSO story has gone

Thanks for reading the 2nd Right on Kiu newsletter! Feel free to leave some feedback! :)