One of the defining binaries of my life - and the life of most every other western 21st century human - is the separation between production and consumption. Consumption has become near constant with an impact on our attention that 1970s ad execs could only dream of. This is what makes the binary so striking.
We are consuming content all the time. There is always a screen in front of us, a TV, a tablet, an omnipresent phone. When there’s not a screen because we’re doing something else, there’s headphones blasting in our ears. This is not a lament of the fools I see around me. This is an introspective look at my foolishness. I am worse. I am an information junkie. I took social media off my phone not because I’m better, but because I’m worse. I read more books than most. I read more articles and news. I listen to more podcasts. More interviews. More Youtube hot takes. More more more.
Production is so much harder. It’s a relatively passive act to sit and listen to someone else’s model of the world. It’s active and frightening to work at writing down your perspective and what you see. I have found only one trick that works for being able to regularly and reasonably produce output and understand my own thoughts.
Every day: do the production part first.
If I wake up and check my phone for the latest newsletters or world events I’m doomed. If I check X I have no hope. Work emails focus my brain elsewhere. If I let myself crack a book, the day is gone.
Order of operations is key. It’s not that I have no discipline - although the jury is still out! - it’s that the discipline is shaped incorrectly. Once I’m in consumption mode, the momentum is powerful and the discipline to be able to switch modes is flattened easily. And so I need to start in production mode. Spend a few hours in that prickly lair and let whatever comes out, out. I usually have just enough discipline to keep the phone and the books somewhere else and live with a bunch of sloppy sentences. And because I’ve won this small battle, the rest of the day and it’s problems come with far more fulfillment.
For me, writing happens in the early morning before the rest of the day starts. I would like to get to a point where I can do some late at night when the world stops, but that achievement is yet to be unlocked.