Why should we value excellence more than the number of things we have? How can concentrating too much on the number of things we have lead businesses away from their main goals?
Choosing excellence over abundance means we care more about how good something is than just how much of it we own. While having a lot of something might make us happy immediately, we will feel truly satisfied over time if we pay attention to its excellence.
Here are reasons why quality over quantity important in four different aspects of our lives.
Why Quality Matters
To show why focusing on quality is more advantageous than quantity in various scenarios, we will explore broad and specific sectors where people and companies should prioritize high standards. These include the food sector, personal contentment, business frameworks, and online video-sharing.
Food
The emphasis on producing large amounts rather than high-quality food has significantly reduced the nutritional content of whole foods available in the market. This phenomenon, known as food inflation, means that people need to consume more food today to obtain the same nutrients that a smaller quantity provided in the past.
Research from the book “In Defense of Food” and USDA studies show that essential nutrients like vitamin C, iron, riboflavin, and calcium have decreased in fruits and vegetables since the mid-20th century. For example, you must now eat three apples to get the same iron content found in one apple from 1940.
The food industry often breeds plants and animals to produce more, like wheat, which yields more grain or cows, which give more milk. However, this focus on increasing production often leads to decreased nutritional value. Modern wheat and milk, for instance, have less iron and nutrients than they did in the past.
Additionally, the industry has been producing foods that are calorie-dense but low in cost, a practice encouraged by government policies aimed at providing affordable food. This has resulted in a paradox where people are overeating yet still lacking proper nutrition, leading to health issues such as obesity and diseases related to nutrient deficiencies.
Avoid mainstream grocery stores and fast-food outlets to prioritize quality over quantity in your diet. Instead, opt for food from local farmers’ markets, join CSA groups, or grow your produce to ensure access to nutritious, unprocessed food.
- There will be no high-fructose corn syrup, synthetic additives, food-like substances, or frozen or microwave-specific meals.
- Expect to find food that is fresh and sourced locally, picked at the peak of taste and nutritional content.
Happiness
Happiness and Quality Over Quantity: Everyone measures happiness differently, and we do not know how others measure it. This means we might describe the same level of happiness in different ways.
For example, imagine you and a friend eating the same doughnut. You think it is amazing and say, “Awesome!” but your friend just thinks it is “okay.” This could be because your friend has had better doughnuts before, which made them happier, so this one does not seem as good. You might have had worse doughnuts, so this one seems great to you.
Choosing What Makes Us Truly Happy: Jonathan Haidt explains that we can increase our happiness by focusing on quality over quantity (inconspicuous consumption) rather than quantity (conspicuous consumption). Buying flashy things like sports cars or jewellery (conspicuous consumption) is often to show off wealth and status. This can lead to a never-ending cycle of trying to outdo others, which does not make us truly happy.
Instead, spending money on things that genuinely make us happy, like experiences or vacations (inconspicuous consumption), is better. This is because we value these things for ourselves, not to compare them with others. Studies show that people prefer to earn less money if it means they have more than their coworkers, showing that we often care more about relative happiness than absolute happiness.
Business
Businesses prioritising expanding and making more money over the excellence of their offerings are likely to fail. This is due to the need for a stronger foundation, which makes work processes more complicated and slower.
The book Company of One by Paul Jarvis explains that growth leads to unavoidable challenges for a company. Conventional businesses must invest more funds and hire additional staff as they expand. This necessitates a stronger foundation, leading to investments in new systems that make work processes more complex and less efficient.
Take the case of the video game firm Zynga, which invested $100 million to construct its data centres after its free games became popular. This investment became a financial burden as they tried to stay current with video game advancements, resulting in layoffs and the shutdown of the data centres.
As a business owner, if your company is always growing, you will spend more time overseeing the complex foundation than focusing on the main work of developing or crafting a product or service. This main work is the original reason for starting your business, unrelated to financial gain. Therefore, handling growth can distract you from your initial goal, compromising quality for expansion.
Conclusion
Imagine starting a business that helps people feel better by choosing books that match their emotional needs. At first, you pick out the books yourself, which is your main job and the reason you started the business: to make a difference in people’s lives through reading.
However, you need to hire more people to help when your business grows. Now, you are busy managing them and the company, and you do not get to choose books or talk to customers as much. As more people want your service, you make a computer program that picks the books, which means there is no personal touch anymore.
In the end, you are doing everything but the important job of picking books, and you are more worried about making money than helping people.
