One time I saw someone ask James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, “What’s the point of writing a book when there are already so many books out there? Isn’t the market oversaturated?”
Clear agreed that this was true if your book wasn’t any good. But, if your book is good, it won’t matter. As he concluded, “There’s always room for quality.”
Anytime someone asks me whether they should start a blog, write a book, or launch a business, I’m reminded of Clear’s idea. After all, he’s right. No one complains about having more quality in the world.
The existence of Denzel Washington doesn’t make watching Daniel Day-Lewis less enjoyable. Listening to Taylor Swift doesn’t make listening to Beyonce worse. Warren Buffett’s wisdom doesn’t detract from Jack Bogle’s. Greatness never crowds out greatness.
But this isn’t how most people view the world. They see the world as zero-sum. They see it as full of competition. In some circumstances, this is true. If two artists hold a concert on the same night, fans of both can only choose one of them. But how often is this the case? Rarely. When you create something great, it almost never detracts from what others create.
For example, as a financial writer you might argue that Morgan Housel, Christine Benz, and Ramit Sethi are some of my competition. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. As I’ve argued before, these writers all increase interest in the financial space and help me gain more readers, not lose them. My career has undeniably benefitted from my fellow writers.
Do you want to know who my real competition is? Netflix. TikTok. Instagram. My competition is anything pulling people away from reading financial content (or reading in general). But I can’t change that in any significant way. I can’t change the global trends in reading and video consumption.
What I can change is the quality of the work I produce. The same is true for you. No matter what you do to support yourself, you have direct control over the quality of your work. You have control over its speed, its accuracy, and its perception. Is it timely? Is it error-free? Do people enjoy it?
You can answer these questions whether you’re a cashier or a CEO. What’s important isn’t what you do as much as how you do it. Because how you show up in your work bleeds into every other part of your life. I know it’s cliche, but the saying is true—how you do one thing is how you do everything.
So, how do you change the way you work to increase quality? Let’s find out.
How To Increase “Quality”
When it comes to increasing the quality of your work, there are two ideas I’d recommend focusing on:
- Seasonality: Go through periods of high intensity, followed by recovery
- Editing: Remove distractions to focus on the most important things
My friend Jonathan Goodman is launching a book today called Unhinged Habits that tackles both of these topics wonderfully. On seasonality, Goodman argues that we should embrace cycles of intensity and recovery rather than trying to maintain constant balance.
I witnessed the benefits of this approach when writing The Wealth Ladder over an extremely busy six-month period in 2024. During that time, I was working every night and weekend trying to fit years of research into my new framework.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this was when I leveled up the most as a writer. Though I had been blogging weekly for years, it was when I was immersed in writing books that I saw the greatest growth in my skills. Goodman explains why:
Long-term consistency and stacking habits is a great way to make sure you do stuff like floss your teeth more often. But without intensity (visits to the dentist), you’ll never earn a pearly white smile. Intensity is for gaining. Consistency is for maintaining.
I also love this approach because it allows me to relax more when I’m not working. Previously I’d have some guilt during periods of extended leisure. But since embracing seasonality, I can now enjoy my unproductive time much more because I know it’s essential for my mental recovery.
Yet, going all-in on seasonality first requires one thing—editing. As Goodman notes, “Great editing … prides itself on subtraction, not addition. On discipline via omission.” He argues that we should remove anything that is distracting us from our ultimate goals. Not necessarily forever, but for now.
I’ve used this to great effect. Going into 2026 I’ve said “No” to more things than ever before. I did this not only to prioritize what’s most important in my career, but outside of it too. With my first child on the way, editing out distractions allows me to shift my priorities to those things that truly matter.
Such prioritization is necessary to help clarify what you actually care about. And when you work on what you care about, the quality of your work naturally increases. The academic literature supports this as well. In a 2014 study, researchers conducted a 40-year meta-analysis of motivation styles and performance and concluded:
…intrinsic motivation predicted more unique variance in quality of performance, whereas incentives were a better predictor of quantity of performance.
In other words, how much you personally enjoyed something (intrinsic motivation) was a higher predictor of quality than how much you were paid to do it (incentives). Money didn’t produce higher quality, caring did. As I discussed earlier this year, the evidence is overwhelming for focusing on intrinsic motivation.
And it applies everywhere in your life too. Show a genuine interest in something and watch the quality of it improve. It could be your work, your health, your relationships, and more. If you combine this intrinsic motivation with intentional seasonality and editing, better quality is the natural byproduct.
And in a world of increasing AI slop, true quality is what we need. After all, there’s always room for more of it.
Thank you for reading!
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This is post 487. Any code I have related to this post can be found here with the same numbering: https://github.com/nmaggiulli/of-dollars-and-data
