Consume, Create, Maintain - How we spend our days
If you were to categorize the ways you spend your time on any given day you would find that everything falls into one of three categories: consume, create, maintain The Human Meatsuit ™️. If we exclude the last category as table stakes for existence and analyze what falls into the first two buckets we can gain a meaningful view into how we spend our days, and over time, our lives.
I’ll give you a personal example of how a typical workday looks for me.
At 7 am I wake up to my alarm and immediately skim slack to see what the Europeans at my company have gotten up to. After some human meatsuit maintenance, I log on to my computer and try to digest and respond to as many open slack threads and emails as I can before my first meeting. Then starts my block of calls. These infrequently include any type of creation (even in a loose sense) and generally amount to status checks, information transfer (consumption) and work assignment. By the time these wrap up it's around 10 or 11 am. Then I go for a walk, sit back down to get through emails and more slacks and before I know it it's noon and it's time to eat lunch.
Most days it feels like there’s too much to consume for me to dedicate any time towards creating and that is the feeling I get outside of work as well.
Like most of us I am constantly receiving recommendations for shows to watch and movies to see. I’ll also frequently stumble on books that I desperately want to have read and throughout the day I save countless articles to my Readwise page to read when I have the time.
All of these sources and so many more add to this waterfall of content that seems hellbent on drowning me lest I expend all my effort guzzling away trying to keep my head above water.
This feeling of needing to consume to keep up locks us in a constant state of feeling behind that if left unchecked, can last forever. I can go weeks trying to stem the tide of inbound content only to step back and realize that meaningful time has passed without giving myself space to create anything original.
Part of the problem is that consuming feels like work. It feels like we are spending our time wisely when we read books, articles, or watch a show that has gotten rave reviews.
If I go weeks in “consume-only” mode I find myself feeling anxious and as if I am wasting life. Many of you know what I mean.
That feeling contrasts with how I feel when I create something new. Whether I am crafting a blog post, preparing a new dish for dinner, or writing a letter to a friend the feeling I get when I’m doing is far more satisfying and positive than any I achieve through passive consumption. That goes for just about anything I create, no matter my level of expertise or category of activity.
While I intuitively understand that I feel better when I’m creating I still frequently find myself mired in a consumption swamp. It’s one thing to recognize a problem it’s quite another to make a change.
How to get off of the consumption hamster wheel
Oliver Burkeman writes a lovely blog titled "The Imperfectionist" and in it he spends a good deal of time talking about how to handle the modern world and its limitless capacity for creating anxiety. In a post titled "Treat your to-read pile like a river, not a bucket" he espouses the idea that the pile of material we would like to consume should not be viewed as a bucket to be emptied but rather as a never-ending river to be plucked from. We should experience no stress about those undoubtedly educational and entertaining artifacts that we'll never get around to consuming and instead embrace the fact that we’ll never get to it all.
I've been trying to internalize this perspective to unlock more time and mental energy to spend on creation and while I’m far from perfect, it has helped considerably.
If you can accept that you aren't going to watch every great show, see every great movie, scrutinize every “URGENT” slack thread, or read every great book you can free valuable time to actually do something. To create what previously did not exist. To practice a skill you wish to one day possess.
Here lies a path to a more satisfying life. If we can dedicate more time to making and doing things as opposed to consuming what others have made we'll find ourselves looking back at our time spent on earth with a gentle smile. “Look at all that stuff I made,” we’ll say.
I'm certain that there are countless books I will never read, which could positively alter my perspective. However, if I spend all my time searching for them, I'll miss out on the opportunity to discover myself through the mechanism of creation. This goes for all of us no matter your medium of creation or form of content.
I'll never write In Search of Lost Time but if I don't spend any time trying, I'll never put out whatever it is that is the Eric Brunts version of that masterpiece. For me to create anything, no matter the quality, I have to accept that I’m going to let something go unconsumed.
There are no risks to a life dedicated to consumption. Being the person who has watched every great movie might be enjoyable, but when that person is on their deathbed they are going to wonder what they are leaving behind and ask why they never tried to do something on their own.
Spend more time doing less time consuming and I bet you, no matter how experienced or novice you are, that you will be a happier, more fulfilled person.
That's my working hypothesis anyway, I'll let you know how it goes.
What makes creating more fulfilling than consuming? Is it my ego?