Iterate to Innovate

For the last four months or so, I’ve been noodling on something that James Clear once noted in his newsletter:

"The difference between good and great is often an extra round of revision.

The person who looks things over a second time will appear smarter or more talented, but actually is just polishing things a bit more.

Take the time to get it right. Revise it one extra time."

Clear has certainly earned the right to comment on the difference between good content and great content. Though I often dash my daily blog posts off without much consternation — deliberately, by design — I was nonetheless struck by the prospect of how much better my content might be if I gave an extra round of revision.

This idea — of innovation via iteration — found me once more while listening to a spectacularly insightful interview with YouTube sensation Mr. Beast. He describes the difference between good and great in his world thus:

“The difference between one million views and 30 million views isn’t that the 30 million-view-creator put in 30x the effort. They just had a way better idea, and then put in 2-3x the effort. Once you understand that, you realize that the idea is so freaking important. Most YouTubers could pull triple the views with half the work if they had better ideas. It’s that extreme.”

The part that got me is the notion of putting additional effort (ie another cycle of iteration) into the particularly good idea, rather than simply coming up with another idea. All too often, when we think of innovation — and even of the quantity required to truly break through — we think in terms of discrete, “different” ideas. But iterations are every bit as much viable alternatives! And if you believe James Clear and Mr Beast, two smashing successes in their respective domains, perhaps the iterated ideas may actually be even more valuable.

Which of course got me thinking about improving the quality of my own content, and how I might make the 30x jump with 2x the work. So yesterday, instead of starting from scratch, as I normally do, I chose a year-plus old post that happened to be on my mind, and attempted a 2x effort iteration. Curious whether it yielded a 30x result… time will tell.

At the very least, it was an enjoyable change of pace. But I’m curious: what do you think? Is the revision an improvement?

Comments, please…

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