“What does it look like to move from mindless consumption to mindful creation?” – Tiago Forte, Building A Second Brain
I’ve always had an insatiable appetite for information. I love learning new things and hearing new perspectives that will alter how I view the world. As is the case for many, I spend much of my time consuming content, both for enjoyment and intellectual satisfaction.
However, I have come to recognize that this passive consumption, even of things that hold extraordinary value, leaves a lot on the table. Sometimes value is left behind because I forget or I am already moving on to the next thing before I’ve truly taken in what I’ve learned. The biggest waste, though, comes from my tendency to stop engaging with the information after I’ve consumed it, rather than using it to create something new.
Creating can be a powerful mechanism for truly understanding what you’ve learned and applying it. It forces us to synthesize our learnings, take a stand, and figure out how to express it in a way that is comprehensible. Additionally, by putting our ideas out there, we open ourselves up to new discoveries that can only come from discussing them with others.
Despite being well aware of these benefits, I, like many others, find myself shying away from creation in favor of the much easier act of consumption.
When you are consuming information or content, most of the work has been done for you. Even if the topic is difficult to understand, the work involved in collecting information, synthesizing it, determining its meaning, and expressing it has already been done. You can work to understand the content, but you are spared the effort of grappling with it.
Additionally, creating something is scary. Criticism is hard to face. When we share what we’ve made with others, we open ourselves up to it in a way that can be truly terrifying for a social animal. However, avoiding sharing our creations does not save us from this fate; we will always be able to find faults in our work and have to deal with our self-criticism.
Despite this, there is value in pushing through those obstacles and creating anyway. Being forced to distill and express our thoughts on a matter takes us away from surface-level understanding and forces us to deeply consider the topic. It is only through the friction of creation that real learning can occur.
To get the full benefits, we must share what we have made with others. This is intimidating at the best of times. It requires you to believe you have something to add to the conversation even though countless people are more informed on the subject. You run the risk of publicly making an error and showing how much you have left to learn.
Moving from mindless consumption to mindful creation will require us to accept that there is always value in what we have created. The biggest value may only be to me, who gets the benefits of a deeper understanding. Broadly, though, there is still value in small additions to a larger conversation – even if the value is just to show what is incorrect. The things we create will likely not make huge waves; we must accept that it is worth creating anyway.
Even when we’ve decided to create, we face another hurdle: we’ll never feel ready. It is tempting to stay in the safety of consumption and tell ourselves that we just need moreto be prepared to create. In reality, we will never feel ready and there will always be more we could have learned beforehand. If we want to ever move to the ‘creation’ part, we have to jump in anyway.
I am choosing to integrate more creation into my learning. My goal isn’t to create anything of extreme value, or even anything moderately good. The pressure to do so would be paralyzing. Instead, the goal is to just create. Even if it’s bad, even if I’m wrong, and even – especially – if I don’t feel ready.