Less is More, But…
The Amplified Impact Podcast
May 31st, 2023
Today, I dive into the concept of “less is more” and share my personal journey as a writer.
Inspired by a quote from Rick Rubin, I discuss the idea that to achieve excellence and do less but better, we often have to put in more effort initially.
There was a pivotal moment in my life when I realized I needed to provide for my future wife and decided to pursue writing as a career.
Remembering my father’s belief in my writing abilities…I committed to writing 3,000 words every day for a year, aiming to reach a million words and improve my skills.
Through this process, I discovered that good writing is rewriting and great writing is concise writing, as exemplified by the significant word reduction during the editing phase.
I emphasize the importance of quantity in the early stages of any creative endeavor…as it eventually leads to quality.
As we progress, we can shift our focus to doing less but better, honing our craft and delivering high-quality output.
The ultimate goal is to reach a point where we can combine both quantity and quality, achieving mastery in our chosen pursuit.
For me, doing less but better extends beyond work and encompasses prioritizing activities that align with my goals and bring fulfillment.
I encourage you to reflect on your own journeys and find the balance that ultimately works for you.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“And I think once you’ve established the ability to produce quantity with a little bit of quality, then it’s time to start focusing on quality. And this is to do less, but better.'”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
Hey, what’s up guys? Real quick.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:01]:
I’ve been working really hard to amplify my social media presence recently, and recently just started diving into Instagram, which has actually been a ton of fun. It’s a cool platform for connecting with y’all in just a more personal way. So if we aren’t already connected on Instagram, let’s change that. You can find me at the Anthony Vasino. So go connect. Let’s do it.
Anthony Vicino [00:00:19]:
Alright, let’s get to the show. Yo, what’s up all you beautiful people? Welcome back to the podcast. This is gonna be a quick hitter, but I read something the other day by Rick Rubin which really resonated with me. I wanted to share it with you guys here and share some of my thoughts on it, which was here’s the quote less is more, but you have to do more to get less. If you guys have been around here, you know that I love this idea of doing less but better. It’s actually one of the guiding principles of my year. I love having a motto for the year and less do less but better is this year’s motto for me. And so this plays right into this, the idea that less is more, but you have to do more to get less. So it is so interesting because I agree, both concepts can live in harmony, that we need to do less but better.
But to get to that place where we can do less better, we often have to do more to get less. And the first thought that came to mind was writing. My journey as an author, as a writer began when I sat down with the parents of this girl that I wanted to marry. And I asked them, hey, can I marry your daughter? And her mom looked at me and asked the question that really would set the trajectory for the next ten years of my life, or like twelve years now, as it’s been, of trying to prove myself and to achieve and prove her wrong. Because what she said to me was, well, how are you going to provide for my daughter?
And it was a question that at the time, it hit me so hard because I was a professional rock climber, which just meant that I slept in the dirt and climbed on rocks all the time. I had no money to my name, and I really didn’t have any marketable skills that I could trade and bring value to the world or make money. So that question was a hard one because on one hand, it was a real dick question for her to ask in that moment, but on the other side, it was this acknowledgment that I really hadn’t been living my life in a way, at that point that made me capable of helping anybody in the world beyond myself.
And the idea of getting married and take care of somebody else or being like somebody that they can rely on that’s a good question from her mom. And the answer to it really did change my life. So thank her for that. Because I went home and I remember having this chip on my shoulder and feeling like, I’ll show you. I’ll show you I can provide. And so I audited my skill set and I said, what am I good at? What can I make money at? And I was like, well, my dad always said that I was a pretty good writer. When I was young, he would pay me ten cents a word to write him short stories. And so I never thought writing was going to be a meaningful path for me when I was younger. I never enjoyed it. I never thought I was particularly good at it either.
But my dad just recognized something in me young, and he nurtured that. And so at this point in my life, when I was like 26, 27, and I was looking back and saying, well, what could I be good at? I took inspiration from his belief in me and I thought, well, he thinks I’m good. Let’s do something with that. I must be okay. He wouldn’t think that otherwise because he’s very frank with what I suck at. And so I went home and I was like, I’m going to be a writer. I’m going to write science fiction and fantasy novels. I’ve been reading a ton of books.
I love fantasy and sci-fi. And I was like, Well, Stephen King, he makes a ton of money. And one of the most memorable gifts that I was ever given was my dad, when I was 16 years old, gave me the book by Stephen King called On Writing. At the time, I did not know how fortuitous that would be, how important that would prove in my life. Because at the time, when I was 16, I was like, that’s a weird gift. Like, I’m not even a writer. I don’t know what this is about, but whatever. Ten years later, suddenly I’m falling back on this thing to say, this is what I’m going to do. So I started writing. I started writing 3000 words every single day.
And I did that for a couple of years. But the reason I chose 3000 was because when you’ve probably heard of, like, the 10,000 hours rule that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book outliers that it takes about 10,000 hours of focused practice to become a master at a craft well, that heuristic doesn’t transfer over well to writing. Because I could spend 10,000 hours and only write ten words. Right. So a more important heuristic in the world of writing is not just how long you’ve been writing, but like, how many words you’ve produced. And over and over and over, everybody was saying, you need to write about a million trash, garbage words before you get to the words that are worth reading. And I was like, well, a million words is a lot of words.
The average novel is 60,000 words, which means to get to a million, you’re going to need to write like, 15 novels. That’s a lot of writing. And I was like, well, the only way out is through. And so I’m going to brute force this. And I did the math, and I was like, okay, if I write 3000 words every single day for a year, that’s about a million words. By the end of the year, I’ll have written about 15 novels and worth of writing, and then maybe I’ll be ready to start writing something good. And that’s what I did. Sure enough, one year later, I had my million words out, and about six months later, I had published two novels. Because when you’re writing 3000 words a day, you’re putting out a lot of stuff. And so I fast track the skill of getting good, right? And now I can do less. I can write less and get better results than when I was younger because I’ve been doing it so much longer.
But in the beginning, the only answer was brute force. And in that whole process, what’s really interesting is when you write the first draft of a novel, it’s almost always like, 30% more words than your ultimate published draft is going to be. So, for instance, my first book, Time, heist was like, finished. I think it was like 68,000 words. But the first draft was like 110,000 words. And so good writing is rewriting and great writing is short writing. You take that idea into your first draft and you just start cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting. So it goes from being 110,000 down to 70,000, right? That’s 40,000 words. That’s massive cutting.
And this just reminds me of Rick Rubin less is more, but you have to do more to get less. And this is especially true in the world of creativity, where to get good enough to be able to do just low output, high, high quality activities, you need to put in a lot of reps to get really good at the thing. And so, on the one hand, when I say do less but better, depending on where you are in your journey, you might still be in that phase of do more, more of that thing. Because I think quantity in the beginning is more important than quality, mainly because you don’t have the ability to produce quality yet. So you need to lean into the only variable that you can control, which is just putting out more, because quantity will eventually lead to quality.
And I think once you’ve established the ability to produce quantity with a little bit of quality, then it’s time to start focusing on quality. And this is to do less, but better. Now you need to focus on just getting really high quality. And as a result, your quantity is probably going to dip a bit, because now you’re putting out higher quality work. But before you can even get to that high quality, you got to put in the quantity. Now the magical spot that you should strive to get to is where now you can start layering in quantity with quality. So now you can do more better.
And I think that’s the way to get really great at an activity. Now, when I talk about doing less but better, for me this year, what that really means, it’s less about the output of the work that I’m doing. Because honestly, I put out a lot between this podcast, doing daily episodes, doing three to four episodes a week of multifamily investing, doing two videos per month of the Anthony Vasino YouTube channel and just countless other newsletters that are going out there’s, daily social media and like a daily Instagram video.
There’s a lot of content that’s going out. So for me, it’s not about doing less of that. It’s doing less of the other things around life that don’t fulfill me or move me towards my goals. So doing less of the admin, the emails, the back of the house, stuff that I don’t get enjoyment out of, and doing more of the things that do, which is the creation process. Sitting here with you guys on this beautiful Monday afternoon in the sun, talking to you guys and sharing some of my lessons and hoping it brings you a little bit of value. So that is today’s lesson. It comes from Rick Rubin. Less is more, but you have to do more to get less. I hope that brings you a little bit of value. I like to see you guys here. As always, we’ll be back around these parts tomorrow. But until then, to hyperfocused, my friend. Hey guys.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:54]:
I love, love that you’re listening to the podcast. I truly hope it’s bringing you just a ton of value.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:59]:
But if you ever wanted to check out the video version of these podcasts, then you should head over to YouTube. They’re going to have more effects, more visual stuff like that. And that can help the message sometimes just hit a little bit different and reinforce the lesson in a better way. So you can check that out. It’s completely free. Go over to YouTube, search for Anthony Vasino, it’ll pop up. And if that’s not what you’re into, then cool. Just enjoy the show and let’s get to it.
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