I learnt about this story from Derek Sivers.
A ceramics teachers divided his class into 2 groups. He told one group that they will be graded by the weight of their pots that they created. The other group only had to produce one pot and they will be graded based on the quality of that one pot.
It turned out that the best pots were produced by the "quantity" group!
It appeared that the "quantity" group, while busy churning out their pots, learned from their mistakes and went on to create the next better ones. The "quality" group, on the other hand, spent effort on theorising about what would look good and only had mediocre work to show.
Lesson: Take action. Lots of it. Learn from mistakes. This takes a lot of hard work and time!
photo credit: Himalayan Trails via photo pin cc