Coaching practices for How More Drafts Produce Better Work

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How More Drafts Produce Better Work, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I land on the first idea that seems okay and immediately want to run with it and stop there
• I keep planning this thing in my head where it all seems to work perfectly, but the second I try to actually make it I realize I had no idea what I really wanted
• Every time I try to brainstorm, the critic and the dreamer are talking over each other
• I rewrite the same opening sentence ten times and an hour disappears with nothing to show
• I freeze before I’ve made a single mark because I’m already measuring it against the polished thing in my head and it falls short

Practices that may help

1. Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
   Yes — the consistent research finding is that people who produce the most ideas also tend to produce the best ones. Quality is partly a function of quantity: you cannot reliably pick your best work in advance, so generating more output raises the ceiling. The mechanism is well supported in creativity studies, though the exact magnitude depends heavily on domain and task.
2. Set a volume quota before judging
   Commit to a minimum number of drafts or ideas before allowing yourself to evaluate any.
   Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
3. Prototype to think, not to finish
   Build or sketch something rough specifically to learn what you actually want.
   Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
4. Separate divergence from convergence sessions
   Keep idea generation and idea selection in separate sittings — never mix the modes.
   Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
5. Timed drafting sprints
   Write for a fixed, short window — speed forces your inner editor offline.
   Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
6. First-draft permission: produce something deliberately bad on purpose
   Commit to writing, sketching, or making the worst version you can imagine — terrible on purpose removes the evaluative stake.
   The Beginner’s Mind in Creative Practice
7. Steal, steal, then remix
   Collect the best examples you can find, then combine and mutate them into something new.
   Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
8. Kill your darlings deliberately
   Identify the idea you’re most attached to, then set it aside first.
   Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work
9. Brainwrite instead of group brainstorm
   Have people generate ideas silently and individually first, then pool and build.
   Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas
10. Deliberately generate bad ideas first
    Start with the worst ideas you can think of — bad ideas are faster to generate and reveal hidden assumptions.
    Quantity Over Quality: How More Drafts Produce Better Work

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