What do I care if the quality is top of the line?

Cheetos, in their last fiscal year, shipped over nine hundred million units.

Nine hundred million bags of synthetic cheese dust that could easily be repurposed as packing material.

Even I admit, that was my favorite snack for many years.

But do you think I shoveled those chemical puffs into my face by the pound because they were high quality snacks? Absolutely not.

So why should creative projects be any different?

Now, we can make exceptions for some certain luxury goods. And maybe ethically sourced products.

But the majority of people are tolerant enough to continue buying crap. Myself included. I love crap. I don’t really care if something is the best, it just has to be good enough for my needs in the moment. I am hiring this thing to solve a problem for me. Even if it’s just a four minute song to listen to as I go running.

What do I care if the quality is top of the line? Just make me feel something. Help me drown out those pesky voices inside my head when I’m running my pitiful eleven minute mile in the park.

Because of this reality, creative people need to stop being so precious about quality. They need to let go of what they assume their audience craves.

It’s not worth the stress of overthinking how good something is. And the only way to short circuit that anxiety is to move fast.

Maybe not lightning fast, if that’s too extreme for some. But fast enough so that your brain doesn’t have time to chime in and cascade into dictations and delays.

Fast enough to keep the energy from seeping out. A

re you optimizing for speed and volume, or quality and mass appeal?