How to be prolific (the secret to supersonic growth)

Something I’ve observed about ambitious people is they seem to always be working on projects.

They also tend to be prolific. They have a knack for producing a large amount of work faster than others.

Being prolific is like rocket fuel for moving from inexperienced intern to competent veteran. Ambition, in turn, seems to be a prerequisite for being prolific.

Yet being prolific isn’t complicated. Everyone recognizes the attribute when they see it, though so few people replicate it. Indeed, it does seem possible to make a habit of producing a high volume of work and reaping the benefits that follow.

I write as much as I can because I believe the best way to get better at writing is to be as prolific as possible.

The same appears true for everything from painting to programming. Moving the needle comes from producing a high volume of work, and standing out in a crowd typically requires doing more than your peers.

However, doing anything well requires initially doing it badly. Leaps in knowledge are rare, given that progress is almost always imperceptible. This process is unavoidable and humbling, but being prolific speeds things up. 

Let’s say it takes uploading 100 YouTube videos to become proficient on that platform. If you published one per week, you would need about two years to become “proficient.” If you published one video per day, you would need less than a third of the time to reach the same level, and you would quickly surpass anyone moving at the one-a-week pace. 

Shooting on a daily deadline may reduce the quality of each video, but that’s a near-term concern. I’d take volume over quality even if it means each video is 20% or 30% worse. Consistent output over a long enough period will yield improvements that compound so dramatically that the early differences won’t matter.

Why be prolific

I’ve found two concrete outcomes that make being prolific worthwhile. 

1. Your chances of outsized success go up. Changing your life may be as straightforward as getting one good idea in front of the right person. Not everything I write goes viral, but the more swings I take, the higher likelihood I give myself for a career-defining home run. 
2. You not only get better at the work, but you get better at being prolific. Consistency compounds. The more work you do, the more work you can do. Like lifting weights, what feels heavy eventually becomes light, and your threshold for “prolific” keeps getting higher.

It’s also true that the more different ideas you test out, the greater the odds you discover what you didn’t know before. Many of society’s best achievements started as tiny experiments, notes, or conversations that snowballed into something bigger. 

I should note, too, that few qualities influence confidence like being prolific. When opportunity lands in your lap, you have a mountain of proof that you are indeed up to the task. If you can point to a body of work, employers won’t ask for a resume.

The easiest way to say it: being prolific makes you luckier.

How to be prolific

Success in life comes down to learning how to make yourself do the things you want to say you have done.

Whether a book, podcast, or YouTube channel, what could entice you to create the thing you will want to have created? Being prolific, I think, is the best path forward. In practice, this means establishing a routine that allows you to produce work regularly and at a high clip. 

Setting up a schedule and daily word count, for example, can make being a prolific writer inevitable. Habit minimizes the need for willpower. The reps happen regardless of how you feel or whether you lack ideas. 

On days I do not want to write — which are many — I find great comfort in trusting the version of myself who set up the schedule in the first place. Like begrudgingly walking a marathon, I simply place one word after the other, even if the language feels uninspired. 

Even when you feel like you are doing the bare minimum, the watchword must still be “doing.” Having a bias for action is the worst-kept secret to success. 

In truth, the more work you produce, the greater the chances you put out sub-par ideas. The higher the bar for quality you set for yourself, the harder it is to hit publish, which ultimately means the less work you do. 

It’s counterintuitive — the closer your standards are to perfection, the less prolific you will be. But the more prolific you are, the closer you can actually get to perfection.  

I always liked how American chemist Linus Pauling put it: “If you want to have good ideas, you must have many ideas.”

Thank you to Belén Cusi for reading a draft of this essay.

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