Produce More, Consume Less

Lately, I've found myself consuming a lot, and barely producing at all. I've read, but not written. I've listened to music, but barely played myself. I've watched chess analyses instead of playing chess.

I guess I have programmed; that's something.

This thought struck me when I had to write something at work. Just a few pages of coherent text outlining some ideas I had. Sitting down with an empty page, trying to squeeze out sentences while constructing an argument for an idea which I couldn't quite articulate, was really hard! I know that writing is hard, but I mostly felt out of shape. Even writing this post is hard!

Yet, after I'd made some progress on it, it felt good. I was happy with having produced a tangible, albeit small, thing. This is a feeling I generally do not get when consuming things. Not when listening to a great album, when watching a classic movie, or when reading any piece of text. Now that I have written it down it feels obvious that this is true for me, but it's taken me a long time to come to this realization. I'd like to produce more.

I wrote this. Thanks for reading.

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