Today we’re talking about composition and strategy and an attempt to unite quality and quantity.

When I think about how to make a good pasta sauce, or cook anything really, it is fundamentally a matter of composition. the amount of seasoning I add should be in proportion, in some meaningful way, to the amount of food in the dish. otherwise it becomes over- or under-seasoned, resulting in poor taste; a bad experience.

my approach to shooting a basketball is the exact same. when the ball leaves my hand, I make note of how the sensation of pressure changes across my finger’s tips through the shooting motion. by studying this, I know what a good shot feels like, what a bad shot feels like, and something tangible that I can adjust in order to reach the desired outcome.

when I do landscape projects, my approach again is the exact same. I have a visualization in my head of what the space should look like. how do I actualize that visualization? maybe it’s pulling out those bushes over there, or maybe trimming back that tree over here, or some combo of both plus other features.

throughout these activities, and all the other ones I do in my life, the process is the same. whether I’m painting or shooting or gaming or lifting or shitposting or listening to a playlist or writing a blog or washing dishes or making coffee or planning dates or drinking beer or taking a walk, I take a moment to think “ok, what does the final version of this look like? what are the key elements of This Thing?” and then I set out creating and structuring those things in a way that leads to the actualization of my idea.

so, that’s the quality part. you identify key features of a things and use those the bones for it’s creation. what about the quantity part? great question.

this process is surprisingly similar to factoring out primary numbers from composite numbers. in the same way I think of the number 9 being fundamentally represented by a set of 3s, I think of a painting being represented by a set of brushstrokes. even the words are similar: ‘composition’ and ‘composite’. the insights are like, right there.

I guess if there’s a takeaway here is that you can apply this same process to your goals. “I want to accomplish XYZ, but I don’t know how.” ok, well, just factor out the key pieces and do those things. In the same way that the number ‘24’ could be made of 6s and 4s or 8s and 3s or 12s and 2s, the way you accomplish your goal can also be made of a variety of different things. there’s a million ways to get it, choose one.