Chris Lakin

Consume less and create more

Consumption: reading, watching, observing.
Creation: writing, speaking, doing.

We need time in both modes, Consumption and Creation, but many of us, including myself at the time of originally writing this essay, tend to spend too much time consuming, and too little time creating.

For almost all of human history, we were information starved. But now in a blink, we’re drowning. Social media, news, TV, other Consumption platforms serve to benefit from your distraction. The longer you wait, the more addictive these platforms become.

But unfortunately, the more you consume, the less you create. And because of the forces above, it’s easier than ever before for Consuming to preclude Creating.

“But I use Consumption to relax!”

When I first wrote this essay, I would have agreed with you. I used Consumption like this everyday: whenever I didn’t feel like I had the energy to create, I watched science videos on youtube.

But now that I’ve been writing this website for a few months, I’ve found that I vastly enjoy writing over watching. The recent times I’ve tried to watch more than an hour of youtube, or engaged in any Consumption that’s not deliberate research, I’ve found myself feeling sick.

After two months of writing for this website daily, Creation had become my preferred way to relax, and I’m not sure I’ll ever go back. Today, whenever I have a spare moment, I get excited to write and revise, to create.

Personal experience

At the beginning of 2020 Summer I had just finished a multi-month creative project. I had greatly enjoyed that I was doing something, but once it was over, my time reallocated to old defaults: I read more, and I watched more.

But I missed Creating! I worked full time for three months making something—now, reading and watching felt empty.

For context, as I write this, I’ve spent the vast majority of my life in school, consuming: listening to teachers and reading textbooks. School assignments are almost entirely Consumption in my experience.

And that’s why I started this website. I only started in 2020 Summer.

When I had the idea for this essay, I made it a personal rule to write everyday before I do any other activity, and especially before any form of Consumption. Curiously, I’ve noticed that habitual Creation has made me feel more in control of life.

Moreover, I took delight in the fact that I was making something everyday.

By now I’ve spent at least 200 hours writing between 2020 July and now as I revise this, 2021 February. Currently there are more than 40 essays posted on this website. This is my pastime.

Drawing © Ariana Dyer.

Don’t expect choices of happiness to be automatic

Even if you enjoy Creation a lot, you may still find yourself spending much time Consuming. While I enjoy writing incredibly, weeks have gone by where I’ve forgetten this feeling, and, by default, I’ll spend my spare time entirely Consuming.

I’ve found that I can’t trust myself to automatically do an activity, even an important activity, just because I enjoy doing it.

While this became easier with time, it took the rather unreasonable span of three months to become automatic.

• We may have to force ourselves to do not-yet-habitual activities, even if we enjoy them greatly.

  • “accept this, and then try to correct for it.”
  • Our ability to negotiate complexity is a resource to be rationed.

• Creating is highly productive

  Creating is highly productive

  Wouldn’t you rather have your spare time go into creating something?

  Creation is far more important. It lasts. It’s real.

  Consumption by itself is meaningless.

  OK, you’ve read 200 books and articles, but what have you done with that?

  While I don’t believe Consumption is intrinsically deplorable (except, perhaps, by time opportunity cost), I do believe that the balance between Consumption and Creation has become crooked for many people.

  Learning is for later application. Consumption is for eventual Creation.

  And while of course you can’t tell in advance what Consumption will be the most useful for later Creation, there certainly are marginal returns at play for spending time on Consumption.

  Consider whether your Consumption is optimized for your goals. Is your Consumption, often focused on answers to questions you might never have? I’ve found myself guilty of this.

  Do you check the news more than once a month?

  Acknowledge that there will always be more to consume.

  Content is produced faster than you can consume. There is no catching up.

  Now, how much time do you spend consuming and creating?

  If you’re like me at the time of originally writing this, you’ll observe that your time allocation between Consuming and Creating is less than ideal.

  How will you protect yourself against excessive Consumption?

  ---

After all, Newton only developed the foundations of calculus and physics while Cambridge was closed due the plague. He was forced to stop consuming, and took the time to create something new.

Related:

• Too much Consumption makes me feel diffused.
• my “multi-month creative project”

• Possible methods to make spending more time Creating easier.

  1. How can you make Creation as instantaneous, easy, and effortless to start?
  • Consumption activities are simply easier to start. It’s far easier to sit down and begin reading or watching than it is to sit down and start writing. But we can change that.
  • (In general, I think an unreasonable amount of our behavior is swayed by small differences like this.)
  • How can you make it take less than 15 seconds to start creating? How can you make your workspace ‘always open’?
  • I’d bet you’d find yourself sitting down an unreasonably large percentage more often if you did this (20%? more often 30%?).
  2. Conversely, how can you make all forms of Consumption just a little bit more delayed and difficult to begin?
  • Could you put the TV remote batteries across the house every time you stop watching?…
  • How can you make Creation slightly relatively easier to start than Consumption? Then starting Creation will become your default rather Consumption.
  3. When you stop working on a Creation project, try not to stop at a point where your thoughts are wrapped up.
     • For example, stop writing in the middle of a sentence.
     • This makes it much easier to resume later. Starting is no longer the infinitely open ended question “Of all possibilities, what should I write now?”— but instead the easier question “How do I complete the last sentence I was writing?”
  4. Set personal rules
  • The rule “Creation before Consumption each day” has worked quite well for me. I can’t read, watch, or listen until I’ve at least spent 15 minutes in Creation.
    • This rule is why I’m writing this essay right now.
  • Through self-discipline comes freedom.
  5. Create if-then conditions for what you will do when unexpected things happen.
     • Ex:
     • “If I find an extra hour on a weekday morning, then I will spend that time writing.”
     • “If I get interrupted, then I will resume at X time.”
     • “Even on days that I’m really busy, I will at least work on Y for 5 minutes.”
     • Write these if-then conditions down and reevaluate them every few weeks. Set a reminder.
     • You can even set if-not-then conditions for when you won’t do things.
     • “At night before I go to sleep, if I have extra time then I will not watch TV; instead, I will [do or think about something small related to Creation].”
  6. Tips for digital Creation activities.
  • Rearrange your computer and browser bookmarks so that Consumption is harder to reach or more clicks away. Make sure that Consumption can never give you any notifications that may cause you to dive in.
  • Install a website-blocking extension on a schedule. I haven’t tried this, but for friends that struggle with distraction they’ve found this to be unreasonably effective.
  • Clean up your phone
  • Rearrange your phone’s home screen to make Creation much more accessible than Consumption.
  • Or, delete distracting apps. Every time you want to use them, download them again. By increasing the barrier to Consumption by just a minute you’ll likely eliminate a lot of impulsive Consumption.
  • Set your browser’s new tab-homepage to open to an Creation-related website of your choice. (I use this open source Chrome/Brave extension to subliminally remind myself of writing on my own website.)
  7. Be more selective about your sources of Consumption.
  • It’s hard to eliminate Consumption entirely, and it’s probably not desirable for most people. But we can still be more selective.
  • The answer to a long book list, past a point, isn’t to read more, but to be more selective about what you read. You can probably at most double the time you spend reading, but you can be 10x more selective in choosing what you read.
  • By the pareto principle, you can probably cut down the Consumption you engage in by 80%, and still get 80% of the value. (Especially applies to sources of trivial news.)
  8. A reader’s suggestion: Read Atomic Habits. (I haven’t read it yet.) On Amazon. Because this is an Amazon affiliate link I’m required to say, “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”

   

  What has worked for you?

  Let me know and I’ll add it here. I’m also interested in research relevant to this topic, so let me know if anything comes to your mind.

Posted 2020 August 22 [originally under the title “Output”], last updated 2021 April 29.

How to keep in touch with me.