# Always Be Creating

If you want to shift from being a consumer to a producer, create something every day. If you're a writer, Stephen King suggests writing at least a page a day, even if you throw most of them away. The idea is that even if you don't have a ton of time or energy for something big today, you can still do a little bit to keep your creative mind engaged and mentally 'fit.' In other words, small things every day and bigger things when you can and have the time.

That principle can apply to other sorts of creative pursuits. One sketch every day if you're an artist. Play a song every day on your instrument (or sing it) if you're a musician.

If I'm working on a software project on the side, my extrapolation of the every day principle is to get some atomic feature of function to pass all my unit tests each day. With a small side project, that's​ usually doable in under an hour. Of course, you might need some more time up front to get your project to that well oiled state and write unit tests. There are other small thing per day sort of metrics that apply to software: even if you don't add an atomic feature, you might handle an outstanding pull request (or decide how to handle it), or pick a bug that you're focused on for the next week.

The persistence implied here is actually much harder​ that the actual creative process, but once you're rolling it's easier to maintain.

# Share-Worthy Milestones

Set achievement goals with the question: how far along do I have to get before there is some way I can share this project that will be interesting to other people? With a story or stage play, the first person you'd share with is an informal editor or friend, then a reading (play) or writing group (story), and eventually a professional editor or agent. Keep track of those milestones, and don't talk up what you're doing until you reach one of them. With a song, it might be: ready to perform at a bar that hosts local musicians, ready to record/master a version, and finally ready to sell alone or in an album online.

Software is trickier. There's ready-for-people-to-mess-with-it and also ready to maintain as a package (or packages) with regular releases. But there's also ready to host as a service and/or ready to monetize. It all depends on where you want to go with the project.

# Escaping a Passive/Consumer Mindset

I have several rules of thumb for keeping myself out of the consumer mindset. They are all either about managing time or managing things/stuff.

1. 80% of the things I own should be tools for making or doing something. That's four out of every five discrete things. And I'm constantly eyeing the last 20% for stuff to dispose of or donate. Anything that just sits on a shelf is in line for the guillotine. I do count books as tools for learning, but I try to only buy them rarely and any title I don't consider valuable enough to loan out regularly or reference in the future goes in a box labeled 'Sell at Half-Price Books.'

2. News reading is for downtime. I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal digitally and I do read it every day, but the key is that the reading happens when there is downtime: waiting for a meeting, a big project is compiling, unit testing or analysis is running on a big data set, et cetera. If news reading is happening during my free time (usually here or on reddit) I set a timer on my phone for a half hour. If I haven't been interested enough in a topic to draft and post my own comment after that time, I stop and do something else. Another great thing is listening to podcasts while doing chores or driving.

3. Television should average out to an hour every 3 or 4 days. That's 1 or 2 shows a week that I keep up with, at most. It was The Expanse until recently. It will probably be Game of Thrones again​ soon. And maybe one other show on the side. I also find myself less drawn to video games than I was as a kid, teenager, or student. I still try to remind myself to only game when there's some RPG I'm excited about---most recently The Witcher 3---and that feeling is more and more rare also. Some people cut out television and video games entirely, which I suppose may be necessary if you have trouble practicing self restraint.

4. Set aside time for creative and competitive play. Some of the larger things I still own are board games, and I use them. Head-to-head competition in a social setting requires a different kind of creativity and lets my brain switch​ gears from solitary creative pursuits. When I was growing up my dad always hated board games and I didn't get it until I realized that he gets his share of head-to-head competition every day as a trial lawyer and doesn't want more of it at home. That itch isn't scratched for me by writing software (though I hear programming competitions can be intense and rewarding) and I suspect committing some time to competitive, in-person games with sociable people (often friends) prevents me from burning out on work and lonely creation. If you don't have friends (who are so inclined also), look for a regularly scheduled meet up at a local game store.

5. Keep a balanced budget and use cash for petty transactions. It shocks me how many in my generation (mid-twenties) don't balance their accounts or track spending. I withdraw cash before going out, either for errands or for pleasure, and keep a check register which includes those withdrawals and which I validate against my account balance and activity online weekly. There's something about cash leaving my hand that makes it hard to use it buying stupid crap. Which, in turn, helps me keep to my first rule about owning mostly useful tools.

I use these rules of thumb because they work for me, but I don't assume they'd work unmodified for anyone. I hope they're at least helpful as a starting point for people who slip into passive consumption all too easily.