Creativity and consumption are polar opposites.

Here’s 3 steps to get more of the former.

You are either doing one or the other.

I genuinely love creative people. I envy their ability to create. I also love to create, but even writing that now sounds disingenuous. I wouldn’t call what I do creative. I just type my thoughts. Its that combination of love for the creative and doubting my own creativity, which drive my consumption of other peoples work. Or maybe its just my brain’s dopamine addiction. Either way you crack it, I consume way more than I create, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.

Every time I watch a video, I notice time disappear. I don’t think YouTubers are going to become a thing of the past. YouTube and Vimeo are great resources for getting to know a brand's story or learning to do something new. But they are no doubt mostly time wasters for me. Quick, easy, relaxing, time wasters. Ugh.

Step 1: Delete the YouTube app from your phone. Delete the bookmark from your browser.

I would put Instagram into this same category. I don’t open Instagram to spur my photographic creativity. Instagram is for “dead brain” consumption. Jon Westenberg once referred Instagram as the place for “life porn”. I couldn’t agree more. Instagram is where you go to consume dreams of fly fishing, or yachts, or whatever you are into.

Step 2: Delete the Instagram app from your phone, or at least move it into a folder on your third screen.

Your brain knows consumption will get it what it wants faster than creativity. You have to change your environment to make consuming harder than creating. You have to put barriers into place, which will make creating the thing you do first. You have to make boundaries. You have to make rules.

Step 3: Require a creative action prior to allowing yourself to consume.

Don’t allow yourself to open YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, or cnn.com until you have written 500 words, journaled for 5 minutes, written 10 new ideas, listed 3 things you are grateful for, or any other version of putting words to paper. If you are into sketching, then sketch first. If you are into painting, then paint first. It doesn’t have to be published work. It doesn’t even have to make sense. Just create something. You will be surprised at how much creating will change your consumption. Creativity is like a slow lumbering train. Once you get it going, its really hard to stop.

Here’s to creation,

Timothy

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