Imagine you had to go to the hospital for heart surgery. You’re on the trolley waiting to be wheeled into the theater. The surgeon comes to chat with you for a few minutes. He apologizes in advance because he thinks his surgery today isn’t going to be very good quality. It’s a busy hospital and he’s been working every day. Would you find that acceptable?

No need to answer, because I know you’ll say no, it’s not acceptable.

So, what about other situations? The waitress brings you the meal you ordered. Sorry, it’s a bit below par today, she says. The chef’s been working every day. He can’t produce quality meals if he has to cook every day.

Or maybe the restaurant is closed. Maybe there’s a sign outside saying it’s now only open on Mondays and Thursdays due to the chef being unable to cook quality meals every day.

I’m sure you get the picture.

Whenever someone posts a story that suggests you need to write every day to be successful on this platform, why do some “writers” claim it’s not possible to produce quality stories every day.

I wrote “writers” above because maybe they’re not real writers, whatever they are.

Surely, if we’re writers we should be able to write. Every day. Not just when we feel like it.

I worked in IT for around 20 years. I needed to produce quality work every day. I produced that same quality even if I was woken up at 3 am to fix an urgent problem. No excuses. I just did the work. If you have a job it’s expected that you should maintain the quality even if you’re working 8 hours a day.

Do you read any quality newspapers? Do you notice that the writers produce quality content every day? If war breaks out, they are there reporting it. They don’t leave a blank space in the newspaper because the writer just wasn’t feeling it that day.

What these “writers” are also missing is that practice makes perfect.

If you write every day, the quality of your work should improve quickly. If you write once a week it’s going to take you much longer.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success, he mentions that the key to becoming skilled at anything is a matter of practicing purposefully for 10,000 hours.

You’ll get those 10,000 hours in sooner if you write every day. Isn’t that what you want.

That’s how you master the skill or writing. You write. For 10,000 hours.

Do you remember the story of the young boy that was walking around New York City looking for Carnegie Hall? He stopped a man on the street and asked…

“Hey, Mister, how do I get to Carnegie Hall?”

The man replied…

“Practice, practice, practice.”

He would have got the same answer if he’s asked how to improve his writing.

Sure, every story might not be high-quality to begin with, but they way to get batter is to practice. Getting less practice isn’t going to result in quality work.

Here’s a final piece of evidence.

Do you hear the story of the pottery teacher that split his class into two groups? The first group had to produce a pot every day for a month. The second group had to produce one pot over 30 days.

Can you guess what the results were? All the highest-quality pots were made by the students that made one pot a day. Spending 30 days perfecting one pot didn’t lead to high-quality pots.

It’s practice that made perfect.

So let’s get over the BS that you can’t produce quality stories if you write every day. Plenty of authors do exactly what you claim can’t be done.