Why You Should Consume More Than You Create

If you hang around creative spaces, you’ve probably seen it. Create more than you consume.

Which is great if you can spend all day creating without exhaustion. Or needing downtime.

The types that say this are guys who live for the hustle. They are single, and value the hustle and the status of scaling that hustle, so it’s six figures, no seven. Better yet, you aren’t trying hard enough better reach nine zeros next year.

I can’t spend all my time creating. The house needs cleaned. Children need tending. And fuck it, I need to rest. I need to think and get new ideas from the world.

My writing process is weird. I’ve tried planning. Planning does not work for me. My fiction is by the seat of my pants. I’ve read the books on planning for people who can’t plan.

It didn’t work for me.

I write as I am inspired. Including this article, which I’ve been percolating for a few weeks, actually. A podcast I listened to this morning while tidying the living room made it come together.

Or maybe just it was time to write.

I have forced myself into daily inspiration. A few completed blog challenges of writing every day for a month. It was a fun way to stretch. Requires a lot of downtime and consumption.

The key is not to stop consuming and not stop resting. What I do is elevated what I consume.

Mark Manson suggested somewhere to consume long form content when possible. Read a book on the subject. Watch a documentary. So I try to do that when I need a deep dive on a subject.

But unless I do some shallow work, I don’t know what I want to dive into. So I read medium articles and listen to podcasts.

My two favorite podcasts are Healthy Gamer GG and Back From The Borderline. Dr. K from Healthy Gamer almost became a monk before he pivoted to psychiatry. His knowledge is an interesting intersection of medicine, psychology and Indian traditional knowledge.

Back From The Borderline started as a traditional “this is how I healed from borderline personality” by the host Mollie Adler to deeper themes of myth, Eastern religious beliefs, and psychology.

Mollie has a second podcast Night, Night Bitch where she reads texts that intersect those themes. In the introduction she says “we live in a culture that is rapidly losing its grasp on myth and meaning.”

We are so busy consuming more that we don’t think. There are more tv channels than a society can consume. More streaming services than one household can afford. Users upload YouTube content at an estimated rate of 500 hours per minute and 7.5 million blog posts are published per day.

Humans are not just prolific in terms of creating new life. The content we create is beyond what anyone can consume. And yet we seem hungry for more.

We need more conversation and connection. Not more content or consumption.

But that’s another article, a different conversation.

Elevate what you consume.

It’s okay to watch a few cop shows. My tv seems dominated by police procedurals. Though medical dramas prevail the commercials in between. Drama, drama, and the bad guys getting punished while the good guys save the day.

I can tell you if they have the right bad guy or if they are down the wrong track based on the time left in the show. Yet, I can’t look away from learning the answer to the mystery presented.

Humans love story.

But where is the meaning in these dramas? Where is the relevance to my life? How can this help me grow as a person? To live a life that is fulfilling?

What themes are there? Generally, only a few. Good guys, bad guys. A little romance on the side. Sexual tension in the background that the viewers pretend isn’t titillating their genitals.

Elevate your consumption. At least sometimes. Find a podcast, YouTube or documentary that elevates your knowledge or the meaning. Take a deep dive into a topic in a way that makes you think and create conversation. That make you want to create something meaningful.

We have enough surface. Yet, that’s what we love to consume. I am guilty of reading the same basic bitch productivity advice, the same how to write every day and make a billion dollars on medium in 5 simple steps. Every day. I have 130 of the same article saved in my read later list.

They show up in abundance in my feed and I get suckered in every time.

That’s okay. Eventually, it leads to a deep dive. A book, like the Courage to Be Disliked. Or my newest interest, the intersection of mythology and sex. I will read a book, Sex In The World Of Myth by David Leeming. See if there is something I want to share. Or if it inspires another round of fiction, like my Persephone series. I’ve also been interested in a Beauty and the Beast retelling with BDSM elements.

After some more podcasts and a clean house. Grocery shopping and gaming. It’s Saturday. Game night. Have a gummy and see what happens.

What’s your elevated content? Share, so I can add to my growing list.