How to Start Consuming Less and Creating More?
Tags: gtd
Published: 2019-11-15 12:01:03

---
title: How to Start Consuming Less and Creating More?
published: true
date: 2019-11-15 00:00:00 UTC
tags: GTD
canonical_url: https://yiming.dev/clipping/2019/11/15/how-to-start-consuming-less-and-creating-more
---

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            <blockquote>
<ul>
<li><b>The most reliable way to get better results is to just produce more crap.</b></li>
<li>Most knowledge worth having comes from practice.
<ul>
<li>It comes from doing.</li>
<li>It comes from creating.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>The real tragedy of modern technology is that it’s turned us into <b>consumers</b>.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>
-- from <a href="https://tjcx.me/posts/consumption-distraction/">Consume less, create more</a>
</p>

<p>
Inspired by this article, I decided to consume less crap, and to create more crap of my own.
</p>

<p>
How to do that?
It's as simple as any improvements:
</p>
<ol>
<li>
<b>Measure</b> your baseline</li>
<li>
<b>Identify</b> the bottleneck</li>
<li>
<b>Improve</b> the bottleneck</li>
<li>
<b>Review</b> the progress</li>
<li><b>Repeat</b></li>
</ol>

<p>
Below is my current status and how I plan to improve it:
</p>

<ul>
<li>
<p>
Consuming
</p>

<p>
I consume a lot.
Every month, I
watch ~3 movies, ~10 episodes of tv shows, ~30 YouTube videos,
read ~3 books, ~150 blog posts, and ~3000 of tweets.
</p>

<ul>
<li>Movies are an important part of my entertainment life. I can't leave them once and for all. But I can be more selective in what I watch. And set a deadline for what I want to watch. <a href="https://yiming.dev/blog/2019/05/22/my-gtd-workflow-2019-ver/">If I don't watch it before the deadline, then I won't.</a>
</li>
<li>TV is also a huge time consumer. So I don't watch the traditional TVs (that you can't decide what you watch) anymore. I choose what I want to watch and allocate time for them.</li>
<li>Good books are a joy to read. And it can worth hundreds of blog posts due to its density of knowledge. But if I can't apply the knowledge I learned from the book, then reading it would be a waste of time.</li>
<li>Blog posts and tweets are my way to follow the newest trends. But it's totally okay to not read them. <a href="https://yiming.dev/clipping/2019/10/04/clippings-of-2019-sep/">We don’t miss what we don’t see.</a> My current strategy is to read for accomplishing a goal. <a href="https://yiming.dev/clipping/2019/10/18/google-is-the-modern-syntopicon/">Google is always my best friend</a> when I need to find some blog posts to learn about a topic.</li>
</ul>
</li>

<li>
<p>
Creating
</p>

<p>
On the other hand, I create a lot less.
Every month, I
open ~3 pull requests on GitHub,
write ~5 blog posts,
post ~25 tweets.
</p>

<p>
Given a high consume-create ratio like this, I sometimes feel that I don't get enough chances to apply what I've learned.
</p>

<p>
So, I'm trying to do my best to create more craps and make sure they are read or used by someone else.
</p>
<ol>
<li>Contribute more to open source projects like <a href="https://github.com/hexpm/hexpm">hexpm/hexpm</a>.</li>
<li>Post 2 blog posts every week (= 8 posts every month).</li>
<li>Use Twitter as a micro-blogging platform.
It will be a backstop for my blog post ideas.
If I can't convert an idea to a blog post in time, I would post it to Twitter.</li>
</ol>
</li>
</ul>

<p>
If you like the craps I've created so far, please do follow me on Twitter, or shot me an email to discuss any topics. :)
</p>

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