Consume carefully, create intentionally

Akin to a Journey song or an episode of Glee, the message of this weeks article is "Don't stop creatin'".

I apologise if this weeks description has given you an ear worm. It had to be done. 🤘

This article was originally titled “create more than you consume” — an expression which has been used many times before. It’s the idea that your creative output should far outweigh your input and the consumption of media.

Whilst writing this post I’ve realised it’s not quite what I believe. My issue with it is that there is some much needed nuance missing from the phrase. All this idea really does is risk making people feel guilty for consuming too much whilst giving no actionable advice on how to create more.

Consumption is easy, but it isn’t bad

If you’re into any kind of creative work, consumption is very important. All creative work is derivative, right back to the simplest expressions of the human form. This is why consuming content covering the full range of your particular interests is so important. Targeted consumption is key. For me, having apps like TikTok is bad, because I will definitely end up doom-scrolling far too long and then feel bad. However, if I were trying to become a top TikTok creator it would be a terrible solution to delete TikTok as I’d be stealing from myself the chance to “steal” from other TikTok creators.  

Consuming mindlessly or without thought as to what you’re consuming is where the issue lies. Like me doom-scrolling TikTok, this can happen so easily because consuming modern content is designed to be both frictionless and addictive.

Creation is great, but it’s hard (if you let it be)

I really want to write this newsletter and I do love writing it! And yet every week I still have to force myself to sit down and actually write the damn thing. It always takes longer than I intend, often over two sessions (one brain-dumping, one tidying), and multiple coffees.

It requires very intentional effort.

As a result of this project I’ve had wonderful, deep conversations with friends on all kinds of topics which we may otherwise have never spoken about, and which I’m very grateful for (the friends and the conversations). I feel happier and less anxious because I am taking action on the projects I love to work on and I am flexing my creative muscles. The anxieties I had (“it won’t be good enough or better than other content I consume”) are reduced just by going through the act of regularly creating it and hitting publish.

And yet, even knowing all of this, every week I need to make the intentional commitment anew.

Back to the original expression (“create more than you consume”), I believe that what it’s really trying to say is that consumption is easy, creation is hard. Converted into something actionable we can find a better mantra: that we should consume carefully and create intentionally.

Private or public, I believe that every single person would benefit from having at least one creative hobby and making sure they have a significant chunk of time in their life to actually do it. Be it writing, painting, making music, taking photos, playing D&D with friends, writing a book, or building apps. We may all benefit from being a little more aware of what we’re consuming and why, as well as ensuring we cultivate moments in our lives to actually do the things that bring us joy.

The aim should be to maintain a healthy input/output flow without tipping the scale too heavily in either direction.

How to consume carefully and create intentionally (reduce distraction and increase intention)

This is the part of the article where I try to give some actionable advice. I’ve split this section in two, firstly to tackle consumption and then creation. Since I’m mostly writing this for myself, a lot of the consumption tips are focused on combatting the over-consumption of things like social media, because for me that is the easiest trap. When it comes to things like books… well, let’s face it, I don’t think you’ll have the problem that you’re consuming too many books. (Is that possible?)

3 tips for consuming carefully

1. Add friction to short-circuit compulsive habits

I have recently been using the One-Sec app. All it does is ask you if you really want to open whatever app you just tapped on, and then you can proceed, or cancel. At first it made me want to defenestrate my phone, but I can’t deny it works wonders to interrupt some compulsive habits (like scrolling Reddit on the toilet).

It is amazing how effective this tiny bit of friction is at cancelling out a compulsive action. I often find myself hitting “cancel” and opening up the kindle app and reading a few pages of a book. In general I think it’s a good reminder to ask yourself if there are any activities in your life that you’re only doing because they’re so frictionless.

2. Separate your social channels

On YouTube, you can easily create new profiles without making an entirely new account. This new profile will have all of its own settings, watch history, and therefore, content algorithm. Whilst you can do this for any kind of content, this is especially awesome if you are learning a language and want to consume content in your target language without getting distracted by clickbait in your native language.

Setup a new profile, switch the language to the one you’re learning, and then seed the algorithm with some content in that language. Congrats, you now have an immersive, distraction-free, video content environment in your target language. Shoutout to Refold for this idea — checkout this video for a step-by-step guide on how to do this.

Elsewhere on the internet, I’m also trying this with Instagram. I have a separate photography account where I only share and consume photography content, and another account for Roads Untaken where I only consume “creativity / productivity / enterpreneur” content. It helps me to make a choice about why I’m opening the app and what I want to do there.

3. Set time-limits for screen-time

This may be the obvious one, but I’m not including it for the reason you may expect. Whilst trying to find data on this topic I stumbled into this study, where a particular finding stood out to me:

While participants’ actual screen time decreased during the intervention week, their self-reported screen time did not differ over time.

It is very easy to spend longer than you think on things like social media apps because they are designed to keep you there. If you want to gain back a little creative-you-time, even if you don’t feel like you have a problem with too much screen-time, set limits. Seriously, try it out for a few weeks and then see how you feel.

4 steps to create intentionally

1. “Create a commitment to teach” 

This is in quotes because I’ve stolen it from Steven Bartlett’s new book “The Diary of a CEO: The 33 Laws of Business and Life”. If you care about getting really good (and consistent) at your activity of choice, then make a commitment to teach it to someone else. You can do this in many ways; write a book, mentor someone, give talks, share articles online. When you teach something you really have to know your stuff, and making a commitment to someone else keeps you showing up regularly. It’s much harder to quit when you have accountability.

If you’re teaching in a hands-on bidirectional way, like through mentoring, you’ll also learn a lot from whoever you’re teaching. For that reason, mentoring and coaching has always been a highlight of my career.

2. Create privately

This is now the second time I’m preaching about the benefits of journalling and we’re only three weeks into this newsletter. I’m mentioning it here again because it’s a perfect example of a private creative habit (yes, it’s creative). Create because it’s good for you and your brain, not for anyone else. Sitting and writing your thoughts into a journal for 5 minutes every week is a creative act and you do not have to (and probably should not) share it with anyone.

This can apply to anything. I love playing the piano, but only for myself. I very rarely enjoy playing for anyone else. I’m still always glad whenever I make the time to sit down and play for half an hour. The point is that you’ll benefit from introducing more creative output into your life regardless of whether anyone is listening.

Creating openly can also add a lot of friction and fear (“what will other people think?!”), so making your creative habit private can completely remove this hurdle.

3. Live by the calendar, die by the calendar

If you know me then you know I live by my calendar. A good friend of mine figured out the best and easiest way to setup a weekly social with me was to put a recurring event in my calendar, and we’ve barely missed a session since.

Similarly, I’ve started blocking time in my calendar to write. I’m sure this doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for me. It helps me because calendars are visual and I love seeing a visual representation of where I’m spending my time. More importantly though, planning things in advance makes it much easier to say no to the random things which pop-up and threaten to take away time from what I want to do, like creative work. I’ve already committed the time and made a decision as to what’s important to me, so I can say no to anything new with peace of mind.

This also works really well if you struggle with feeling frustrated for not doing all the things you want to do in your life. If I tell myself “damn, I really want to start a side project” but my calendar is full and there’s nothing which feels less important then I can decide that it just isn’t a priority right now.

If you want to get really nerdy about it, Ali Abdaal’s video on the Trident Calendar system is great. In the video he breaks down the steps from asking “what do I wish I would spend my time on” to actually finding the right slots in your calendar and then sticking to it.

4. Know what works for you (time & place)

This one goes hand in hand with the calendar part. Figure out at what time and in what place you feel most productive and full of creative energy and then stick to it.

For me it’s first thing in the morning. I used to feel guilty that I struggle to do creative work like writing after my workday, but I just can’t. As much as I try, my brain is mushed into a pulp. Death by Zoom meetings. The only other thing I’ve found that works for me is “immediately after a workout”. Something about repetitive exercise helps me think and spins up the creative engines. I often come out the other side ready to do something creative.

Go forth and create

That’s a wrap for this week. I’d love to know what your techniques are for keeping creativity in your life, and how you make time to work on what matters to you, so please hit reply and share with me!

Next week marks the one month point of this newsletter and my quest for building side-projects away from my 9-5, so I’ll be giving a fully transparent report on how that’s going and what’s planned for the near future.

Until then, go forth and create!

See you next week.

-Mike.

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✍️ Quote of the week

People often think that something "far off" will make them happy. That moving to a new place or getting a different job or meeting someone new will change how they feel. But happiness will always be withheld if you believe it is somewhere else. The secret is to find happiness in the people and places that are close to you. See the beauty in the things that are nearby.

― James Clear

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🏆 My favourite content around the web this week

• 🎧 Listen: Katherine Ryan’s Untold Story on the High Performance podcast. I’ve always enjoyed Katherine’s comedy but never knew her story. This is the first time I’ve heard the phrase “pedestal feminism”.

• 📺 Watch: I’m not usually one for car content, but just the first four minutes alone of Marques’ video on the Rimac Nevera (the new “fastest car ever made”) is a fantastic showcase of how to make an incredibly engaging YouTube video. The shots, the editing, everything.

• 📚 Read: Maintenance is hard. A beautiful article about the different kinds of maintenance in our lives, how hard it is to keep all the plates perfectly spinning, and that how “all good things come from longevity of effort”.

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