Consumption vs creation, and making camp in a corner of the web
I've been in a consumption slump for way too long.
I've never been one to be easily addicted. Sometimes I develop short-term addictions to things, but am able to drop something with relative ease once I realize it's bad for me or just get bored with it.
My current problem is wasting too much time consuming things of varying value—articles about work-tangential topics, TV shows and movies, random Reddit threads, Tiktok videos which I save in folders rarely to be looked at again. Perhaps most embarrassingly of all, I recently realized I check LinkedIn more often than any other social media. With all of these consumption vectors, I think I'm now at the point of both "realizing it's bad for me" and "just getting bored with it". Plus I know I have creative energy and can make cool things, and I want to unleash it.
My thoughts on how to tackle this...
- Move apps out of view. Earlier this year I had great success in reducing my usage of Facebook and Twitter (I try not to acknowledge the gross rebrand) by simply moving them off my phone's first page and turning off any notifications that don't mention me directly. This worked so well! I intend to do the same with LinkedIn and Instagram. The one app it didn't work for was Tiktok. There's something about the dopamine that Tiktok provides that makes me willing to hunt it down no matter where it is in my phone 🥲 Other strategies will be required.
- Restrict screen time or app usage. I think there are apps that can e.g. stop me from opening certain apps during certain hours, or limit how long I can use an app per day. I need to investigate these and install something.
- Document creative goals. Maybe this blog or something similar can be the platform. I've also intermittently kept bullet journals and have used those to set and log goal progress, but have not been very disciplined about it. Maybe tying the goal documentation to a creative experimentation outlet like this will be more successful?
- Create a routine. I'd like to try writing a post X times per week, or maybe even daily, to get into a routine and build a new habit. Maybe I could do this right after work or before bed.
- Connect with humans. As I mentioned before, I've had some kind of fear related to the idea of blogging, and I haven't been active on social media in awhile. It's a weird sort of virtual social anxiety. I want to get over this and participate in some online community. I'm starting by commenting on blogs and some of these yesterweb/indie web type sites and forums, and making this blog public. Maybe this feeling of community connection will inspire me to create more.
One headwind (sorry, corpo-speak but it's a useful one) to these attempts is that I've already seen it's super tempting to get sucked into consumption with all the interesting blogs and webpages on the indie web. I definitely had this addiction in the old internet days (no, seriously—you could find me hard-copy printing out pages from some of my favorite blogs/digital gardens and storing them in 3-ring binders... I'm looking at you, big fun glossary. So I need to be conscious of balancing exploration and inspiration with creation.