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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?

#201

Post by Mz »

I will suggest that you are not able to do more because you just don't have it to give. Your job and other responsibilities are taking all you've got already.

That said, it isn't hopeless. You can do some of the following things to squeeze more out of life:

1. Improve your diet and overall fitness level so you have more energy.

2. Improve your sleep habits so you have more energy.

3. Streamline your life (such as reducing how much material stuff you own) so that you can free up time and energy that is currently accounted for.

Additionally, you can do creative/productive stuff in your free time if you will stop applying job-like metrics to it. If you want to blog more, start some ridiculous blog that is easy to post to and then just post crap. Keep it short and don't give yourself a schedule. This idea that you need to updated a youtube channel weekly is crazy talk. You can update it once in a blue moon and if people like what you do, it will get some traffic (maybe not tons) and it will add value to the world.

I am medically handicapped. I have multiple blogs. NONE of them has a schedule.

My most successful one gets a few hundred page views a day and is sometimes updated as little as once a month. In fact, it was officially abandoned at one time for about six months with a "BYE!" post informing visitors it was abandoned and I resumed it when I realized it was getting traffic via organic search because people had need of the info. It is a niche thing and will never be big, but I do it whenever the fuck I do it and people benefit from it and say nice things about it and it even occasionally makes a smidgeon of money.

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

#202

Post by ZenoArrow »

taway_1212 wrote: post #188
ndc33 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

im not sure the drifter-bro-waster life of idle leisure is that satisfying. Your telling me people at the top of their careers, yan le cun (deep learning etc) are not having constructive, exiting, shared, social fun? you think hans zimmer has an isolated boring life? stress in any case has more to do with context and attitude than it has to do with the profession you practice.

James Joyce considered himself to be "a rather useless man with alcoholic tendencies". Being at the top of one's craft does not equal happiness.

Being at the bottom of one's craft doesn't equal happiness either. Accomplishments in a field are not a replacement for a healthy outlook, but they have their merits.

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

#203

Post by EternalData »

I've recently taken a step in this direction by being really deliberate about my media choices and designing around them. For example, as a consumer, I realized I was obsessive about looking over r/Politics and forever updating news sources of sometimes dubious quality, which distracted from all productivity for me at times. I've decided to order print editions of the New Yorker, and focus on long-form pieces from ProPublica as a rule to scratch that itch.

I feel like part of the solution to reducing consumption at the very least is to realize what the initiating triggers and needs of your consumption are, and trying to find a way to sate them in a way that allows you to chunk a time to engage with high-quality solutions to your consumption needs -- and then that frees up more time to be a creator.

As for the active producer part -- the only insight I've really gathered is that you want to commit yourself to something big and imposes costs on yourself (i.e time already dedicated to that project) to make yourself follow through (i.e use the sunk cost fallacy to your advantage).

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

#204

Post by jng »

Here's some shared experiences that may be applicable to your case. I am a 43 year old that struggled with procrastination all my life. Even then, I did achieve some impressive things, in various ways, over the years. Wrote a book to learn x86 assembly and got it published quite successfully when I was 21. Led the technical team of a AAA team. Built and sold a software product online for 11 years, 6 figures sales. But then I failed many times in achieved my creative goals. I think I just wasn't looking at things from the right angle.

With creative stuff: writing, music, etc... I had to find another way. Technical projects tend to be big. Don't be wrong, something like "publishing a youtube video every week" is a huge amount of work and very scary, involving time, energy, creativity, and the very logical fear of nobody giving a shoot about it.

What worked for me creatively was to bring projects down to the smallest expression. I wanted to write short fiction stories, I decided to write "tweetstories" in 140 characters. I wanted to do storytelling, did a lot of stand-up comedy, 5min sets. For music, short piano pieces. Make it such that the amount of work is not the problem. And then you will find what the real issue is.

For me, I had to accept producing bad stuff. We sometimes don't produce stuff because we're scared to produce bad stuff. And there's no way around it. You can't choose to be a good artist, but you can choose to be a bad artist. And that's the only way. Watch Ira Glass's video on creativity, he describes it perfectly.

Good luck. This is very reasonable stuff to struggle with.

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

#205

Post by ambicapter »

andrewem wrote: post #194
algesten wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite certain it is positive stress. It's hard to describe, but I can quite easily get "into the flow". This is where I focus on a single project, time cease to exist and I just become one with the code. I can focus on coding for hours and hours without break. In fact, lunch and toilet breaks are irritating distractions. I can go to sleep at night uneasy about something I'm not exactly sure about and suddenly the sol…

I'm no doctor, but your description plus your use of the word "condition" makes me wonder if what you experience is hypomania. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypomania

I don't think you need to label this as a condition. I can remember when I used to get into those states. Sadly, it was an artifact of my youth.

I probably would be able to get back into that state if I somehow managed to get all my responsibilities squared away for large periods of time-or alternately, convince myself thoroughly enough to ignore them.

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

#207

Post by the_common_man »

kmicklas wrote: post #152
jorblumesea wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really appreciate this comment, mostly because I feel an immense amount of pressure to use my remaining time to do something "amazing" or keep up with the insane rate of frontend changes. I feel the core issue is that as developers/engineers, we spend a lot of time doing things that companies want, which can be at odds with skill growth, professional development or other things that are actually really important to…

> I think the solution to this is the 20% time rule, but Google only really does this. Google doesn't really do this either anymore.

Why was it discontinued? Seems like a win-win to Google and Employees. I thought gmail came out of this 20% time...

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

#208

Post by loup-vaillant »

Xcelerate wrote: post #116
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…

> consistently delivering Musk-ian type efforts

I bet Elon Musk has a number of advantages, such as: not doing laundry, not preparing meals, not washing the dishes, not going to the grocery store, avoid driving to work (either have a chauffeur or a very short commute)… Basically, not doing any work but "work".

He's rich enough that he can pay somebody else to do everything he can't be bothered with. That frees him to take care of his companies and have other creative ideas.

On the other hand, think of the work of the average housewife. She would do most of the house chores and taking care of the children, and would plan all of it. All that on top of a 40 hour work week, plus commute. Let's see: 8 hours at work times 5 days, 2 hours of house work per work day, then 8 more during the week-end. Add, say, 30 minutes of driving to work (and 30 minutes back), and we get 63 hours of work per week. And that's a conservative estimate.

Just try asking her to do personal projects on top of that.

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

#209

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #191
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't. Because it's impossible to describe how hard it was for me in words, you would have to experience it yourself. When I say "burnout", I don't just mean mental burnout. I've even been in situations where I went completely broke, lived homeless, and much more sensitive details I can't talk about on a public forum. Of course it doesn't have to be all life threatening to qualify as a "burnout". I've been throug…

Thank you for your reply. I have been close to burnout before, so I have some idea what it's like, I was just curious what it was like for you. I can't quite figure out something you said earlier... "But eventually you recover and can't wait to start a new thing." ...when compared to... "I still haven't fully recovered from this and don't think I ever will" Do you find some value in lessons you've learned from burnou…

I don't really want to recover actually.

What I meant was I got to know more about how the world works, and the world is a messy place the more you know about it. So basically what i meant was the world let me down a little. It is impossible to "unknow" what you already know, so that's what i meant when i can't recover, which is a good thing (although some people may decide to take it negatively)

So in my case there have been no downside and only upsides. I regret 0% of the decisions I made and the "burnouts" have been just part of the experience. Just like how when you date someone and you go through all the fights and perils, and it feels like hell when you're living it, but in a couple of years it's all good memory (not talking about weird cases like an abusive partner)

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