Great article. The last few years I've started making arthouse games which I create for myself, but release for others to enjoy. I don't seek out profit or create for consumers. Many people have sent me messages about how my games have moved them emotionally and how they didn't know games like this could be made. It's been really fulfilling. Part of this creative process was to shift my mind to less of a mindless consumption mode.
I'm not against consumption. It takes inspiration to make great things. Consuming like an artist is what led me to the projects I make and the motivation to complete them. Going to museums, art exhibitions, independent cinema theatres, documentaries, long form essays and videos on fascinating subjects. I still consume, but I make sure to consume high quality content. Your life is informed by what you view. But make sure to get a dose of some low brow content too. Not everything needs to be serious. But the serious stuff definitely affects my creative life for the better way more.
I appreciate what you're saying here, but I think calling going to museums and reading essays "consuming" is disingenuous. Taking in information (and being in control of what we take in) is very important, but there is very little salvageable information in commercially oriented content venues.
Spending time with curated exhibits and texts written for the purpose of reflection is not 'consuming' in the context of criticizing modern consumerism and monetized media.
That's true and I do agree. Hard to compare a curated piece of non-commercial media with the opposite. They offer such different experiences. "Content" made for social feeds and engagement stats is what comes to mind for me when I think specifically of commercial oriented media. Going to curated exhibitions for me even feels more like creating. I can feel new connections and creative insights being formed.
I think there's some circularity at play here. Not in a bad way, more in a strange loop kind of way. 'Consuming' information (and I'm going broad here, not in the against-consumerism definition) is also 'creating' mind models. And once you can put something out that people can consume, we are requiring people to do the same thing. There may not be a 'creation' as much as different directions in which consciousness can go about experiencing information.
It still is consumption, but I think we can both agree that not all consumption quality is equal. Consuming adorable cat videos* are a pallete cleanser, but doesn't advance you much. Meanwhile, some muesuems can really come out and give a person a wider world view or illuminating perspective of events taken for granted, which may change a person's approach to life.
*Nothing against cat videos, you can also have high quality pet content as well (e.g. learning how to take care of a cat or figuring out their wants/needs. Maybe even getting one of those word mats for a semblance of speech).
I really love the aesthetic of your games. Would you mind sharing what tools you use to create them? I've been interested in spending more time on game development as a hobby recently.
Mostly Unity3D. I've amassed a huge list of assets, shaders, plugins, vfx, and tools that have aided in my workflow. It's hard to think of all the tools I use within Unity at the top of my head. I might make a blog post one day about my workflow but for now this is a pretty good starter list to get you started:
By the way you may want to consider Godot as a starting engine. Not only because it's open source (so no shady business practices), but it also is focused on being specifically a game engine. Unity tries to be an everything engine and has lots of broken, bloated, and unfinished features. The simplicity of Godot adds a lot of much needed constraints to development. You're not constantly wrestling with the engine. I'm deep into Unity now but if I were to start all over I'd go with Godot.
every prolific creator i've seen in practice has been a far more indulgent consumer than the average person. that, and in the chicken and egg of inspiration and production, i've found that production is usually wrung out of a surplus of inspiration.
it genuinely surprises me how popular and intuitive this "create more than you consume" meme is
Proper creators don't need to be reminded to create. I think this meme is targeting everyone else - anything that gets them to create more is OK, whether the meme is 100% accurate or not.
The article says Spending hours watching cooking shows won’t make you a better cook—cooking will. I disagree - there has to be some kind of give and take. You don't want to isolate yourself and try to reinvent the wheel in terms of cooking. On the other hand, you can consume cooking media, or food, for entertainment or for entertainment and to learn/get new ideas.
To put it another way, I'm not going to just figure out PowerShell if you give me an ISE and a few weeks. Give me an ISE a few weeks, stack exchange, Microsoft documentation, etc. and I will.
>The article says Spending hours watching cooking shows won’t make you a better cook—cooking will. I disagree - there has to be some kind of give and take.
There's definitely a balance, and as you identify I think the point is to target the extreme that will spend hundreds of hours on cooking videos and no time actually coooking for themselves. At that point it's consumption for consumptions sake than as a means to progress oneself.
But sure, you need to consume to learn as well. No one should go into a terminal and expect to just know all the hundreds of built-in commands (let alone package managers to grab millions more). A manual traditionally doesn't help identify what commands are needed to start gaining proficiency either. That's what courses/tutorials excel in, to make you better at reading those man pages later on after practice with some fundamentals.
I think that statement is spot on. To draw a parallel, I see people spend hours and hours watching programming videos, and at the end they can't do a thing on their own.
You should spend more time doing the thing than you spend watching videos about the thing. Or at least do the thing regularly. Doesn't mean videos can't help, but I'm pretty sure they feel like they help a lot more than they actually do.
I think the "I've seen" is the key part of your comment. This article is about creating for yourself, not even for consumption by others. It makes sense that you've seen people who create that are also big consumers, because you've seen people who create for consumers. Other creative people may not be so obvious.
> This article is about creating for yourself, not even for consumption by others.
Probably about 75% of everything I create, I create for myself. Nobody else is ever likely to see any of it. The act of creating is its own reward (being able to have and use the thing is a reward as well, of course), and I've found that sharing my creations comes with an inherent cost in terms of time: answering questions, support, or even just people wanting to talk about the thing.
Also, the level of polish I need to put into a thing in order to feel OK about sharing it will easily double the amount of time it will take to create it.
It gets expensive. As a result, I only share those things that I deem important to share.
Well, if you spend 8 hours creating something meaningful… like working on your startup, building a deck for your backyard, creating some art, or preparing a nice meal… it is quite intuitive that you will feel much more content and self-satisfied than if you had spent 8 hours flicking through Instagram and TikTok, binge watching TV, and ordering food for delivery.
So I guess it depends on what you mean by “create” and “consume,” and how you measure them.
>every prolific creator i've seen in practice has been a far more indulgent consumer than the average person
You'd be surprised. It's a common cliche in musician interviews for example that they don't listen to other music for large stretches of time.
Authors do read more than the average person, but the average person wouldn't read to save their life (the average american reads like 1 book per year according to stats I've seen)
I write quite a lot (finishing my 9th book by now), but I read orders of magnitude more. Perhaps 100 times as much, roughly, when considering my younger years, when I didn't write at all and only read voraciously.
Great article, and this resonates a lot with how I've felt lately. I'm trying to include at least one "creative" task each day in my to-dos, because I notice I feel much much better if I have a multidisciplinary day--some programming, some writing, some DIY projects, some new cooking. If I run out of steam for one thing, oftentimes I still have energy to put into other types of tasks, and even feel rejuvenated afterwards. These things can be small (like learning a new skating drill or a small home improvement project), but the act of creating something physical regularly feels really good to me day after day.
I think consumption is equally important to creation because the latter cannot exist without the former.
Furthermore, too much focus on creation is even dangerous because it could lead to this "productivity hell" where you only evaluate your time in terms of productivity.
> Furthermore, too much focus on creation is even dangerous because it could lead to this "productivity hell" where you only evaluate your time in terms of productivity.
You don't need to be productive in order to create. I spend at least a joyful hour a day improvising on the piano. I produce nothing in the sense of being "productive". I don't record nor play for others, but nonetheless, I create.
> I think consumption is equally important to creation because the latter cannot exist without the former.
It actually can. Experimental art can be very fulfilling, even if you throw it away before showing it to anyone. The essay makes the point that creating things has many benefits that have nothing to do with consumption.
This is such a dangerously wise sounding, but selfzdestructive idea. It reminds me of an old torrent site which had the policy to upload more than you download, which lead to a stanstill, as that obviously isn't possible to achieve, and users getting angry at the best uploaders, as they "stole" upload from them...
Just imagine what it would look like if everyone on HN posted more than they read.
Funnily enough, the old reddit formality works in reverse and makes some sense. For every post of self promotion, you should make 10 or so posts/comments on non-self promoted content. Consume significantly more than you create (and share), but you still probably end up creating more than average.
I think like most short, quippy adages, the spirit makes sense but not the literal interpretation. It's more trying to say that creation is something to strive for rather than the literal "1:1 consumption/creation", treating it like calories. I'm sure we can make models to make the quote make sense, but we probably shouldn't overanalyze what is mostly motivational ideas.
There is no way to make it work. It isn't mathematically possible to achieve. Somebody's cheating, or there is some other way, like people getting kicked and invited continuously.
In private tracking communities, it's commonly known that those with unusually high sharing ratios likely use seedboxes, which is often seen as unfair.
No, I mean it isn't possible for all users to get their upload above their download. Either somebody is literally cheating (and never gets caught) or you just repeatedly invite and kick new users (who take the negative upload away as they get kicked).
I think this is an often incompatible ideal. I think it should rather say "Create more than you consume" or "Do not consume without creating something in return" using any useful definition of creativity.
The amount of consumption by people that most of us would consider creative is often staggering. I will give one example. Take Adam Savage of Myth Busters. Have you seen his studio? He probably has million-dollar worth of stuff in his studio. All that stuff also counts as consumption...
As someone who fancies himself highly creative, I will also point out that creativity doesn't happen in a vacuum.
To give an example, my wife and I are part-time performing magicians. Recently we took a trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando Florida. The themeing of those theme parks... by which I mean the environmental story-telling, the concept of dark rides and walk-through attractions, the live special effects and illusions that go into a lot of their attractions was extremely inspiring to me ... and got me thinking about how to apply some of those ideas to magic shows. Had I not been a "consumer" at those parks, I would have been closed off to that inspiration.
A common piece of advice given to young magicians is "find something other than magic." The point is that we don't need more copy-cats doing the same tricks. We need people with new and fresh ideas. While, philosophically, I'm not a subscriber to the idea that there is no such thing as "true originality", I will admit that it's rare. It shouldn't be controversial to say that most of the time creativity means taking existing ideas and combining them in novel ways. If you try to artificially restrict the amount of time that you are exposed to things that exist in life, you are artificially limiting the amount that you are opening yourself to new ideas and concepts that others have come up with.
I know from experience that you can consume "too much" and not produce enough. For me, specifically, I recognize when this starts to happen by my emotional state. I typically get restless and recognize that I've been spending too much time watching tv, or that it's been a while since I've made something or worked on a new routine or show idea. How much is the "right balance" is going to be highly individualistic.
And of course some people might "only" consume and not really create at all. As long as we're not talking about the rare cases of people living parasitically off of the productive output of others then I'm hard pressed to say that it's necessarily a bad thing. Not everyone has that creative drive and that's OK.
> I will also point out that creativity doesn't happen in a vacuum.
"Remix culture".
Less-creative people only consume, or are content with making a minor twist to something they encounter.
More creative people take inspiration from 1001 existing things, actively seek out particular ones, and transform bits & pieces into something new.
Gifted artists do that, but don't shy away from transforming the tools & technology used, as well. Sometimes creating truly unique works, or breaking open entire new fields (like a game designer starting an entirely new genre of games). This also happens in science.
Of course we should cherish such gifted artists. But I'm convinced everyone's got a creative streak - it's more like a skill that can be grown & enhanced.
Similarly, see the often massive personal libraries of authors, or the record collections of musicians. The best musicians I know also consume a staggering amount of music.
The units the article is concerned with is time spent, not output.
Spend more time creating than you do consuming.
The only one of your options examples that doesn’t then make more sense is the software developer, and as a software developer myself, I’m very content with not putting my creativity against those other examples.
Being against easy consumption is less a direct 1:1 comparison of creation time to passive time and more trying not to fall into a rut of watching "progress porn" of other creatives.
Good creators are always assessing and perpetually 20% dissatisfied with their output so experiencing how others have honed their craft and made great stuff should serve to make you more dissatisfied with your own progress on your own projects. But if you are 100% dissatisfied and 0% productive then you've lost balance and are in a writer's block.
I think you're looking at "consumption" that is directly related to something productive. When one reads code, it goes towards writing (and all other examples you showed); that is essentially productive
However, what if I spend more time on Instagram and Twitter (consuming that won't lead to creating) over writing code. What if I spend more hours watching cat videos on Youtube over actually learning or making something?
Consumption in this context are what I'd call "empty calorie" consumption
> What if I spend more hours watching cat videos on Youtube over actually learning or making something?
That doesn't sound that bad in itself. In my experience falling into this trap many, many times over my life, it's something that's rather easy to recognize as harmful—just difficult to climb out of if it's an established habit.
So—consumption of unproductive content per se strikes me as less of a problem than a) addictive consumption and b) the illusion that consumption can replace a sense of self.
This. As long as platforms optimise for engagement e.g. to get more add revenue, it seems unfair to blame folks who enjoy cat videos for watching too many of them and not doing something more creative/productive. I wish there was a better/easier option to be able to watch just enough cat videos that one needs, in between "time disappears in a black hole of habit forming retention features" and "never touch that platform again".
Definitely enjoy the overall point of the article. But something interesting that's happened in my life is that I've started creating more because I've started consuming more (as some other folks are pointing out in this thread). Maybe it's because I've changed my form of consumption. I've spent 10 or so extra minutes per day reading each night that I had applied to social media consumption. One of those books inspired a thought that became another habit I started, and now I built a whole iOS app I'm launching soon just because of that bit of inspiration I consumed. What's the whole point of this, I dunno, maybe it's not even "consume better". But more like constantly diversify your consumption. "consume different => create more" Don't get into ruts. Keep your consumption fresh. Social media your jam, at least read some different people etc.
I've thought about this before. I consume quite a lot of things (series, music, video games, ...) and in addition I'm almost addicted to learning new things, in the sense that it gives me an intense dopamine rush to understand some complex matter, and that I always feel (irrationally) incredibly inadequate for not knowing a lot of things (even just in the field of programming, let alone general world affairs, etc.). At the same time, I've had all these ideas (e.g. about writing) since my teenage years that I've rarely ever put into practice.
I still try to express some creativity when I code, but the avenues there are somewhat limited.
For many artists and scientists, consumption is directly linked to creation.
Musicians spend their free time consuming the latest music, scientists read the latest journals, writers like Stephen King read novels while waiting at grocery line.
The key is that consumption id done by many in direct benefit for future production.
The best way to study is to write the main ideas in your own words without peeking at the material. To grasp the material you have to spend a lot of time solving problems, which is you producing a logical sequence of justified steps related to what you consumed (theory).
Feynman method is also a creative process where you produce a simplified explanation of what you want to learn relating it with common knowledge.
We need space to understand things. Al this remembers me of the concept of FOCUS-DIFFUSE found in the book "A Mind for Numbers".
It is an excellent analogy of a human being's value as a common fraction. The numerator is what a person gives to society and the denominator is what he takes.
If it only urged the reader to "regularly create something" it would be spot-on. I don't think any comparison to consumption is necessary at all. It seems like the target audience is someone who doesn't make a practice of creating for their own sake, in which case, yes they will feel/think/create better by practicing creation.
I would agree if this was about creation for the sake of currency. My take from the article is that this is about creation for the same purpose as why we consume
I'm not against consumption. It takes inspiration to make great things. Consuming like an artist is what led me to the projects I make and the motivation to complete them. Going to museums, art exhibitions, independent cinema theatres, documentaries, long form essays and videos on fascinating subjects. I still consume, but I make sure to consume high quality content. Your life is informed by what you view. But make sure to get a dose of some low brow content too. Not everything needs to be serious. But the serious stuff definitely affects my creative life for the better way more.