What does it mean that first drafts are for content final drafts are for quality?

Separate creation from editing — trying to do both simultaneously slows both.

Example: You need to write a project proposal for your team. Instead of laboring over the first paragraph for thirty minutes trying to make it perfect, you set a twenty-minute timer and write the entire proposal as a rough draft — ugly sentences, placeholder headings, incomplete thoughts, everything. The full structure emerges in twenty minutes. The next day, you spend forty minutes editing: tightening the argument, fixing the language, cutting redundancy. Total time: one hour for a polished proposal. Your colleague, who edits as she writes, spends three hours on the same length document and still feels uncertain about the opening.

Try this: Choose a piece of output you need to produce this week — a memo, an email, a report section, a blog post, anything that requires more than a paragraph. Produce it in two strictly separated passes. Pass one: set a timer for the length of writing you would normally spend, cut it in half, and write the entire draft without stopping to edit. No rereading, no fixing typos, no restructuring sentences. If you get stuck, write "STUCK — MOVE ON" and keep going. When the timer ends, stop. Walk away for at least thirty minutes (overnight is better). Pass two: return and edit the draft. Fix the language, restructure where needed, cut anything that does not serve the point, and polish for your audience. After both passes are complete, note three things: (1) how much faster the creation pass felt compared to your normal process, (2) how much easier the editing pass was with raw material in front of you versus a blank page, and (3) whether the final quality is comparable to or better than your usual single-pass output.