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Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#111

Post by scriptstar »

It's a combination of several things like 'fear of failure', 'fear of success' and procrastination.

1. Just build something very very tiny thing and sell it for less than 5 quid something like $1.99.

2. Repeat until you see some success and get motivation.

3. While doing this just be in the same tribe who's making things like you. Talk to them and share your experiences with them. Grow with them, together.

4. The momentum automatically move you to the next level.

5. Finally find a mentor who's been in this journey before and embrace his/her advise.

Let me know where can I buy your first tiny product and I will buy no matter what it is.

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#113

Post by timwaagh »

you can always choose to do this. cancel your internet subscription would be the first thing to do. then you will be more productive in your free time. guaranteed.

now that is a radical step but it has worked for me. what is key is creating the right environment to be productive. not everybody can be with 10,000 distractions just one mouseclick away.

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#114

Post by shubhamjain »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #75
marvin wrote: post #27

I'm going to say something that might be wildly unpopular among ambitious people: If you have a full-time job, you are by far not a passive consumer. You presumably contribute >40 hours every week of creatively demanding, high-quality labor to society. For most people, the premise of this question is wrong. Procrastination, when you don't obviously have a lot of available time and effort, is a symptom that most of yo…

The guy wants advice on "how", not some words to make him feel better about not doing stuff, so let's give him that. > for most people this is an exercise that will in the long run lead to burnout. Your mind is already subconsciously telling you this. I want to point out that this is one of the reasons why people never start things. Let me share my experience as someone who has started, AND burned out, multiple times…

The crux of the problem is overlooking how work can be "positive" too. 9-5 can be pure drudgery that drains every ounce of your energy, but if you can find work that is fulfilling, putting additional hours won't exhaust you; in fact, I think it'll recompense your lost spirit at job. I would go far as to say that, expending your time in watching TV, video games, social media is more wearing than people realise. I have seen myself exhausted on days where I managed to do nothing at work; and highly motivated, when I achieved something significant.

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#115

Post by PaulRobinson »

There are some great answers here, truly. I am only going to add to it from my own perspective.

I have had a side business with a partner since 2006. In that business we might have turned over £50k in all that time. We aimed for it to be a replacement for our day jobs. The problem is the exact problem you have.

About two months ago I suddenly lost the ability to use my legs thanks to an abscess compressing my spine which was removed and have undergone rehabilitation. I'm still on crutches, and hope to be able to make a full recovery within a couple of months. However I spent 2 months thinking about this a lot.

What's interesting is that I could have spent 2 months working on side projects - I was off work, an inpatient in a hospital with WiFi and my laptop. Instead, I decided to take stock.

I then realised the key was the rehabilitation itself was giving me the answers, and I concluded:

- Whilst having big goals is awesome, you need to focus on the here and now and doing the work you can do right now

- Small and often is better than big commitments

- Celebrate small victories. Got 5% more done than you did last week? Well done you - keep that up, and in a year you'll be doing 12 times what you did last week.

- Keep a log of what you have done once you've done it, with dates. Once a month go back and reflect, and congratulate yourself for the progress you have made. Seriously, this helped me so much - it's a bit like not wanting to break the chain.

- Give yourself time to rest. Your body really, really needs it.

- Things will rarely work out quite as well as you hope, or as badly as you fear. Just do the work, and see where it takes you.

- Motivational videos got me out of slumps a few times. These both helped me at different points:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbkZrOU1Zag (technically a Nike advert, but I have the audio of this on my phone and listen to it a few times a month)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flKP4Te8L94

All of this got me through rehab, and I'm starting to see it drip into other parts of my life including work and side projects.

Don't be so hard on yourself, but remember the best laid plans are worth nothing: go get a pomodoro timer and do 25 minutes on that project right now. Then do another tomorrow. And then perhaps another straight after. Have a days rest between if you want.

If you find yourself doing two of those pomodoros every other day, you're going to look back after a few weeks and realise you've actually got quite a lot done.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#116

Post by Xcelerate »

marvin wrote: post #27

I'm going to say something that might be wildly unpopular among ambitious people: If you have a full-time job, you are by far not a passive consumer. You presumably contribute >40 hours every week of creatively demanding, high-quality labor to society. For most people, the premise of this question is wrong. Procrastination, when you don't obviously have a lot of available time and effort, is a symptom that most of yo…

> I know some people who have energy levels that allow them to sustainably burn the candle at both ends, but they are a small minority. I am quite envious of this group; they appear to have a big leg up in accomplishing great things, but there appears to be a component of either genetics or upbringing that leaves only a small portion of people with this capability.

Why isn't there more research on this? A huge number of people would like to be this way—consistently delivering Musk-ian type efforts week after week. But how do you do it? The "feel good" self-help articles about waking up early and other nonsense are clearly wrong, otherwise everyone would be super productive by now (I think these articles mistake correlation for causation). But I'm not convinced it is entirely genetic—I know people who have gone from extremely lazy to extremely hard working. What caused the change? Can it be replicated? I'd love to be able to push myself for 16 hours a day, every day, and while I keep finding little techniques that help me achieve more productivity over time, I wonder if there exists some technique that provides a huge boost in productivity. I just don't know what it is.

If I had to guess, I would think that increasing hours of productivity is a skill like any other, and it requires ramping up slowly over time. If you've never run before and go out and run 20 miles one day, you'll burn out and injury yourself. But if you add a few miles every week, eventually 100 mile weeks become normal and you don't really become tired from them (speaking as a former runner). I wouldn't be surprised if productivity works the same way.

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#117

Post by cubano »

If you find something you truly love to do, it will never really seem like "forcing" anything and your high commitment level will just happen.

My take is that you really haven't found this love in your life yet. You are trying to pigeonhole other peoples passions (like youtube vids and OS projects) into yours. That will never work long term.

For me, it was music; I loved it so much that you couldn't stop me from playing, and pretty much all available time outside work was spend practicing and playing in my band at the time.

It was the ideal social lubricant as well, as being a gifted "nerd" 35 years ago was a totally different thing then it is now. Literally, at work and school I interacted with the math kids that were often picked on and made fun of.

Playing and practicing live music not only soothed my soul, but gave me self-esteem and a ton of social status. And it hardly ever seemed like "real" work

I think that is the key for a sustainable hobby commitment.

[edits]

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#119

Post by TheArcane »

Xcelerate wrote: post #110
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will counter with one (older person's, I guess) observation of a bunch of my friends who are now in their early to mid fourties and late thirties. The one's who focus on making a career and accomplishments, be they for social value or greater equality for all or the justice in society being more balanced, etc. etc...... anyway, they end up at my age, when naturally, the larger group starts to drift apart a bit, loo…

> But when their friends start dying, they'll see them all start saying the same sorts of things, and none of them are, "I wish I'd spent more time working." I hear this a lot. But I'm not sure if this is always true. I chose an education path that required a much greater amount of work than other paths I could have taken. I would spend weekends working on homework and projects when others were out having fun. But as…

Just curious, what kind of a career do you have?

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#120

Post by delegate »

Fricken wrote: post #109

If want to deliver value to society, just stop. It's a bloated overweight out of control monster. It's already way too much, don't feed it. Don't contribute to it, it's not the sort of thing we want to encourage. We don't live in times of scarcity anymore, we live in times of too much of everything. If you feel otherwise, it's because you're a dumb ape who only understands not enough, because that's all your evolutio…

I have to admit that I'm leaning more and more towards a similar view.

There's a (rapidly growing) Ocean of content out there and any one's contribution looks more and more like an insignificant drop in that Ocean.

Consumers care less and less about what the content is, as long as it excites their input sensors in satisfactory ways.

Content is functionally "attention grabbing" and there are many industries involved and competing in this space, so when you say "I want to produce content", you're actually saying, "I want people to pay attention to me, so that what I say becomes a canvas on which others place an ad and pay me for this" (that's if you want to make money, otherwise it's just 'pay attention to me'.

Because of technology, content does not die by being forgotten, but is stored in this ocean and continues grabbing attention long after it has been produced, so the ocean of content grows, while while human's capacity to consume it is constant.

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