Choosing Creativity Over Consumption

Problems with Consumption

I’m confident you are intimately aware of how pointless a majority of the content you come across is. You’re aware of the countless hours you’ve wasted scrolling social media. You’re likely also aware that a driving factor is procrastination, to distract yourself from difficult emotions to digest.

As with procrastination, other emotions such as failure and guilt are what drive us to seek comfort through consumption. This consumption out of remedying discomfort is just as apparent with social media as it is with food and other pleasures.

The main problem is that we are suppressing these otherwise helpful emotions. The feeling of guilt, for instance, could’ve otherwise led to positive change and learning from your mistakes. The driver behind procrastination is the anxiety knowing you’re not doing all that you could be, or being satisfied with what you’ve done. After a hard day’s work, even if you’re retiring for the night, I guarantee you won’t feel as pulled in by modern day distractions.

These distractions via. consumption lead to us suppressing these key emotions, which I’m sure you understand can lead to positive growth, albeit uncomfortable in the present. Furthermore, consumption suppresses ourselves. It dilutes our identity, by supplementing what it is you’re being fed by the social media algorithm.

Without your own identity, you’ll lose meaning and a personal attachment to what you’re doing in your daily life. Whether it’s what you study becoming generalized in your mind, or your pursuits, or your craft: by abstracting these away to generalizations of the populations that engage in them, rather than yourself, you take away the personal meaning you could have attributed to it. Without meaning, you can’t wake up in the morning with that drive of knowing you’re chasing something that is yours. You instead attribute what you’re doing to some generalization of, say, your career. This is dangerous since the more you detract from yourself, the more you think of yourself as ‘just another _’ *(*being any noun you generalize yourself to), the less fulfilling you’ll find what you’re doing.

That personal meaning gives you purpose, as it’s then your creation. The more you synthesize and take bits and pieces from here, from there, the more you become akin to an LLM chatbot. So, preserve your creative sanity by distancing yourself from external opinions and takes, and looking inward at what you truly think, what you truly want to do.

Why unplug?

Find beauty in being bored. Find the wonder in your mind. Realize that you can bring about incredibly fascinating ideas on your own, just as you would while dreaming. Incorporate that realization into your daily life, by stepping back from consuming, and unplugging from the internet. I think the main reason why we don’t unplug as much as we should is from this lack of awareness that life can be beautiful with only our own minds.

But, isn’t there so much knowledge out there to discover, that can be immensely impactful on my learning, outlook, perspective, and more? Yes. But, that is precisely why you should choose more carefully what you consume. That book you know will help you, whether it be non-fictional, which can give you more direct learning, or if it’s fictional, and will broaden your perspective on life and inspire you in ways that can touch deeper than non-fiction. Those books, similar to more clear ideas you know that looking into, whether it be online or not, are ultimately what’ll help you, not suffocating your mind with random algorithm-fed ideas. You want to allow your mind space to breathe, so that you can create and gain your own personal clarity on life.

Ultimately, this personal clarity and application to your own life is what matters most. What sense is there in being aware of all sorts of diverse, shallow knowledge through the internet, like random videos of German game shows? Sure, it’s funny. But, there comes a point where you’ll be fed up with an off-balance between those, and what you yourself make.

The real learning and experiencing happens through doing, not thinking, not researching, and definitely not random algorithm-led rabbit holes. Find it in yourself to believe that you already have what you need to get going, learn, and live the life you want. Dispel the illusion that there’s some key insight out there that you need in order to set you free. Set yourself free. Stop being a slave to over-consumption.

Do you think you’d be consuming so much if your mind were more at-ease with your personal situation? If you were living the life you wanted, do you truly think you’d still be sitting there, valuing your own time and attention so cheap? No. That’s because it’d elevate the value of these currencies, so to speak. But, why do you need to wait to realize the value of your time and attention?

Practical Tips

When you are consuming, I’d urge you to be cognizant of how it can relate to your own creation, your own purpose. For example, by being intentional about which videos you watch, as they could directly relate to how you can apply it, whether in the present, or in the distant future doesn’t matter. What matters is that you can ease your mind with the feeling that this is indeed contributing to your purpose. What I’ve found to be helpful is bookmarking relevant content, and being aware of exactly how it can fit into my goals, whether career, personal learning of philosophy, and otherwise. Then, actually applying that into some ‘collage of learning’, some implementation of that learning, or by teaching it to others. You are then making good use of the content, instead of it using you (for engagement).

Another practical tip would be to disable, or avoid the temptation of succumbing to the algorithm. You can do this through disabling short-form content (like Instagram reels), disabling video recommendations (like on YouTube), and purely relying on your own search, as it brings about thought and intentionality behind your exploration, similar to how you would’ve thought about which book to look for in a library.