Create More Than You Consume

It’s very easy to consume. We’ve created a culture that glamorizes it. Television and internet access alone are unending conveyer belts, delivering as much distraction and escapism as you can possibly guzzle. But we also have magazines, books, movie theaters, playhouses, casinos, ball parks, shopping malls, arcades, amusement parks . . . the list doesn’t end.

But if you were to tell someone that your goal in life was to watch every second of every network television show that’s ever aired, people would laugh at you. What a worthless goal, they’d say. There’s a big disconnect here: people recognize that mindless consumption is a waste, but then they do it themselves. They may not watch hours of television each day, but they aimlessly click around the web for workdays at a time, or devour romance novels, or play video games all night, or do whatever it is they’ve deluded themselves into thinking isn’t really a complete waste of time. It’s easy enough to do (“It’s not a waste, this is how I connect with all my friends!”)

To keep this tendency at bay, let’s use a simply mantra, asked each day (include it in your time tracking):

Did I create more than I consumed today?