In the past year I have turned my attention to many inputs on what is happening in the world today: blogs, television, newspapers, magazines, and podcasts. How can you blame me? There was a gripping election, an economic crisis, innovation in technology, and a lot of guilty pleasures reading celebrity gossip. This has taken a lot of my time and as a result I am consuming more content than ever. This is great, but where did all my creation go? Where did all of your creation go?
When I say creation, I mean content creation. These are the light-weight Twitter updates to mini-documentaries uploaded to YouTube. These are photos uploaded to Flickr to songs written and shared on MySpace. Some activities are easy, and can be done in two minutes. Others will take a day to a couple of days. And if you are extremely inspired you can spend weeks to months creating something.
I think it is important to have a healthy mix of consumption and creation. Consumption makes you more aware of your surroundings and helps you see the world from a different perspective. Creation enables you to define your surroundings and share your interpretation of the world through your own lens.
In the next two to three months I am going to adjust the amount of things I consume. Filter out the inputs that have become noise, and focus on the ones that I value. I am going to increase my creation to consumption ratio each week. Look out for photos I have taken, small articles, and if I am ambitious a video coming soon.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 8:41 am and is filed under Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Bravo, Ryan. I remember when we first talked about Creation and Consumption – after you attended SXSW, I believe.
The idea of a self-nurturing cycle of Consumption and Creation really struck a chord with me, and I’ve been preaching it to my younger cousins since we spoke.
One idea I’m working on implementing with my 5-year-old cousin Prachi is to have her read children’s books to the iSight camera on the family iMac.
She’s such a vibrant individual and an enthusiastic reader that I wouldn’t be surprised if other young children enjoyed watching her read them stories on YouTube. And, of course, she enjoys it because she gets attention for having done something productive.
Create and Consume…
It is vital for the growth of children and adults alike to create as well as consume. This is especially true for our youngsters, who may not remember a time when the world wasn’t accessible from a desk chair. We have to show them – remind them -…
Wow! Thank you!
I always wanted to write in my blog something like that. Can I take part of your post to my blog?
Of course, I will add backlink?
Sincerely, Your Reader
Sure. Please feel free to do that!