Childrens Literature Lesson: Quality vs Quantity with Bullfrogs
Welcome to another Shades of a Dream literary adventure with me, Eleanor, from Give A Brick. If you were with us last week you’ll remember that my daughter and I have been reading Roald Dahl’s Danny, Champion of the World. Since we read faster than I can write, Danny has now been usurped by The BFG but you’ll have to wait until June 11th [Editors note: date has changed due to reposting and hacking, sorry about that!] to meet him 
Today, Danny’s dad has a nature lesson for us. Having briefly checked the accuracy of his lesson, it filled me with delight to find it so spot on. Shouldn’t have come as a surprise really but it always pays to check However, this brief passage also seems to be something of a commentary on life itself. We join the discussion when Danny and his dad have heard the sound of a male bullfrog calling to his wife and Danny asks his dad what happens when his wife hears him:
“She goes hopping over to him. She is very happy to have been invited. But I’ll tell you something very funny about the old bullfrog. He often becomes so pleased with the sound of his own voice that his wife has to nudge him several times before he’ll stop his burping and turn around to hug her.”
That made me laugh. “Don’t laugh too loud,” he said, twinkling at me with his eyes. “We men are not so very different from the bullfrog.”
Given that this social commentary comes from a male author, I don’t feel the need to apologise for this seemingly damning indictment against the gentlemen of our society. Personally, I suspect that we ladies can be just as guilty of loving the sound of our own voices too much too!
But what this passage had me ponder was the battle between quantity and quality. The bullfrog said a lot. He used the power of his voice to ward off any potential threats and to ensure that his lady knew that she was needed. In nature, what would happen if the bullfrog learned to whisper?! I suspect he wouldn’t last too long
As much as it pains me to admit it, in our lives, there is sometimes a need for volume and quantity over quality. As rubbish and frustrating as they are, there must still be some (hidden, very, very deep!) value in the random spam emails that people send. If not, they’d have dried up years ago. I’m not advocating you start sending your link unsolicited to a million harvested email addresses every day. That’s just not cool. The point is, for somebody, somewhere, this action must have value (accepting of course a very fluid use of the word ‘value’).
But what about the alternative? I’ve made no secret of the fact that over at Give A Brick, we’d like to ask everyone (and I really do mean everyone!) to Give A Brick (£1) and then ask their friends to do the same. The silly spammers might suggest that the best way to reach ‘everyone’ would be to blast links to GAB to all and sundry. Personally I prefer to go down the quiet, quality route. It’s a lot more fun too I have it on good authority from a fairly well known marketing type chap, (you might know him actually. Have you heard of Gary Vaynerchuk?) that there is one super, duper, best ever marketing strategy. He calls it caring. Sounds good to me
But what do you think? Is there ever a place for quantity over quality and can the proverbial quiet tortoise win out over time? Let’s talk about it 
The3dStudio.com
Quantity has an effect, I do suppose. The question is how sustainablee it is for us as individuals. You can get ahead by producing quantity over quality but not all people can be happy doing it, making it unsustainable.
With pop music you often find that the chorus or the “hook” is repeated many more times than in less mainstream music. The trick is that by the time you’ve heard the song through once you the chorus has you “hooked” because you know and remember the words. The song structure is familiar and predictable. These are the songs that sell millions of records.
In a very general sense, these pop stars are not what we would consider artists, masters of their craft. It is usually the smaller quantity, higher quality music makers that we esteem as “artists”.
Quantity has a virtue, yes, and is sometimes more effective than quality, but I suppose that depends on your goal and how you want to experience it. Quality, like slow and steady, can win the race if you’re committed all the way through to the end.
I’m with you Carlos (great analogy with pop by the way), quality seems the way to go most of the time. Once you get good at it though you can start to produce a higher quantity of quality work; at that point I’m not sure whether its better to keep to the same amount or ramp it up.
Something to ponder.
TylinaVespart´s last [type] ..Children’s Literature Lesson: Greed