We live in a world of consumption—or more accurately, over-consumption. Everything competes for our time, money, and attention. The sheer volume of content is staggering, and it only seems to grow.
I’m someone who considers himself a “maker.” For work, I’ve built a number of things that have generated value for customers and companies alike. Yet, I still feel like, generally, I’ve been swept into the consumption mindset of taking more than I give.
Like many of us, I find myself scrolling through feeds, mindlessly browsing social media (my weaknesses are Reddit and HackerNews), playing games, binge-watching TV shows, churning through music and podcasts, and keeping up with the latest on Netflix. Being a sports fan only adds to my consumption habits. Of course, there’s also reading and the products we use daily.
Reflecting on an average day, the ratio of time spent consuming to producing has felt off for a while for me. Considering my limited time on Earth and realizing that everything I consume is created by other human beings or teams of people, I feel compelled to change this balance.
So, one goal I have is to produce more than I consume (measured by time; it’d be really hard to do it more broadly). By choosing how I spend my time and what I use it for, I can determine where on the spectrum of production and consumption I fall. Personally, I don’t want to feed the capitalistic machine of consumption. Instead, I aim to be more conscious of sustainability.
Many of my friends are far more environmentally conscious than me. While they focus on sustainable living, I think about all the other things we produce and consume. Ultimately, I want to change my behavior.
This isn’t a criticism of others enjoying life’s offerings, by the way—we don’t need more judgment floating around. It’s wonderful that people have various ways to spend their time, and everyone produces in their own way. This is simply my personal perspective.
It wouldn’t work if all everyone did was produce. And we certainly don’t need more low-quality products cluttering our world. If everyone just produces for the sake of producing, we miss the point entirely.
We don’t merely need more stuff for the sake of having it. There’s already too much stuff. What we genuinely need is good stuff, and I’m fearful of adding to the junk. But that’s also just part of how I’m wired. Being a perfectionist by nature, I tend to resist doing anything unless I can excel at it… and therefore I’m pretty biased against putting more crap out there. This is something I constantly grapple with.
One way I’m trying to live up to this, and fight my tendencies, is through this blog, where I’m semi-forcing myself to write every day (I also enjoy it). Another approach is by sharing my half-finished personal projects (like Tradeoffs.io and my personal-blog-syncidator project), pushing myself to get them out there, in addition to the building I do for the companies I work for.
When my time comes, I’d like to look back and say that I gave more than I took. That I contributed value, beauty, and joy to the world, rather than being a mere consumer. So, I’ll continue seeking ways in my daily life and how I allocate my time to create more than I consume.