Quality is a powerful north star. Most of us say we want to “do great work.”

But in the long run, volume via consistency beats quality. And with the right intention behind it, volume is what creates quality.

Craft demands volume and consistency the way a plant demands water and sunlight. Without those, the craft has no way to grow, no nutrients to draw from. It stops being a craft and becomes just something you did once — a dried-out husk you throw away.

Beware the screenwriter who’s been “working on” the same script for ten years, writing only when they feel inspired, telling the story on loop at cocktail parties. That’s not craft. That’s getting lost in the romance of an identity.

The craft creates the identity — not as a veneer, but as an integrated practice, expressed over time through sustained effort.

There’s no being a musician without playing shows, practicing, writing. You’re not an artist because you painted one painting ten years ago. The process generates the identity, not the other way around. Being something happens by doing the thing that makes you that very thing.

Pressfield got it right when he likened being an artist to being a professional: you can’t show up to your job and say you’re “not feeling inspired,” so you won’t work today. Showing up in your role is what makes you that role — not waiting for some romantic, magical identity to sweep you away.

And it’s the doing of the thing, consistently, over and over again, that actually improves the quality of what you do — up to a point.

After that point, the process needs one more ingredient: the intention to get better.

You can go to the gym every day and walk 20 minutes on the treadmill. Doing that daily will make you healthier for a while. But once you plateau, you have to change something:

• increase the time
• increase the speed
• add weight
• add reps

If you don’t, your progress stalls.

Same with your craft. Quality grows when you challenge yourself — but foundationally, you have to show up and be consistent. The gym analogy holds: moving your body every day at a manageable intensity beats going all-out once a month and wrecking yourself. Without consistency, you risk burnout, injury, or just quitting.

So:

• Create volume with consistency.
• Improve quality with directed intention.

This is the path to becoming an artist (or anything, really). The practice is what defines your identity. Not the pageantry. Not the self-declarations. Not the waiting around for inspiration.

It’s the showing up, day after day.

Let your consistency carry you. Let the quality follow.