Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Producer vs. Consumer

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 69 posts

Re: Producer vs. Consumer

#31

Post by zeynalov »

batista wrote: post #24
zeynalov wrote: post #22

This is a paradox. People create/produce because they want: 1. to be powerful. Being powerful makes them able to consume more, hence being more happy. People do everything to be more comfortable. 2. to solve peoples problems, make the world better place = to feed their internal ego, prove the world that he/she can be helpful. This is a subliminal instinct of humanbeing having the main goal is being powerful among oth…

Lots of producers dont consume much. And surely not 100x more than the average consumer. You think Linus goes on reading blogs and watching movies all day? Steve Jobs was quite a miimalist in how he lived. He even debated for months what furniture to buy -- and he lived for a while in an unfurnished apartment. A huge lot of musicians when asked in interviews say the don't listen to much music besides what they work o…

Sorry but I think you have no idea about Steve's personal life. Or you didn't understand what is being a consumer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Gates fan, I love Apple, I have 9 apple computers at home.

Before 90s he was a cool geek, famous millionaire guy, consuming too much clothes. He had always trendy fashion look. He bought one of most expensive cars when he was in his 20s. A Porsche then Mercedes. In his dashing days at Apple and NeXT, he weared the most expensive Brioni suits. He had a Plane. A super expensive plane. Do you know why? He said: "What I really need is a plane where I can take my family to Hawaii on vacation, go to the East Coast." He loved to stay in expensive resort hotels. Consumed too much there. Sorry but for me staying in a resort hotel doing nothing but looking to the sea 20 days is one of last things what would I do before I die.

Re: Producer vs. Consumer

#33

Post by wahnfrieden »

zeynalov wrote: post #22

This is a paradox. People create/produce because they want: 1. to be powerful. Being powerful makes them able to consume more, hence being more happy. People do everything to be more comfortable. 2. to solve peoples problems, make the world better place = to feed their internal ego, prove the world that he/she can be helpful. This is a subliminal instinct of humanbeing having the main goal is being powerful among oth…

More money enables you to consume more. But some see the benefits of production and do it on principle. Not everyone is a corrupt Roman senator out of Fellini's Satyricon when they have the financial support. Though many are, granted, the cynical view is not necessarily the correct one.

Re: Producer vs. Consumer

#34

Post by baddox »

techiferous wrote: post #26
baddox wrote: post #20

I'm curious: why exactly is being a "consumer" such a bad thing? I'm not necessarily saying I disagree, but I'm having trouble coming up with an explanation, and it seems like everyone is simply assuming that consumption is a bad thing.

Nice question; I'll take a stab at an answer. Since consumers need producers and producers need consumers, you really can't argue that either one is inherently bad. However, I would argue that our intent should be biased toward producing, since producing helps us grow. Consuming in this context has connotations of passivity, and while rest is important, too much rest will make us weak. Also, when you are consuming yo…

Good points. I think a lot of it depends on the definition of "consumption." Most people use it pejoratively to mean "mindless consumption," but personally I don't think I engage in that much "mindless consumption." Sure, I surf reddit and hn, but most of my time online is spent either having conversations like this one, laughing at funny stuff (surely entertainment and comedy can't be all bad), or actively educating myself (e.g. reading programming articles, current events). Actually, I think even "mindlessness" can have benefits: everyone knows the value of relaxation or even meditation.

Re: Producer vs. Consumer

#35

Post by mekazu »

I wonder how many people like myself read this and thought "hey, good point, I already knew it but this reaffirms that I am wasting valuable time that I should be using to seize the day" and then went looking for something else on hacker news to fill the void. Disclaimer: I am on my lunch break.

Re: Producer vs. Consumer

#36

Post by prawn »

baddox wrote: post #20

I'm curious: why exactly is being a "consumer" such a bad thing? I'm not necessarily saying I disagree, but I'm having trouble coming up with an explanation, and it seems like everyone is simply assuming that consumption is a bad thing.

I think the problem is consuming through addiction, gamification, procrastination, etc. If I spend a day or evening in the garden creating something, designing a new side project or similar, I never find myself regretting that expense of time later. But after any night of trawling crappy news sites, or flicking channels, I head to bed defeated and annoyed at myself for not being able to overcome those things.

Re: Producer vs. Consumer

#37

Post by joneath »

While I agree with the premise that being a mindless consumer is probably not a good thing, I strongly believe that consuming is just as important as producing. Exposing one's self to as many different ideas as possible is incredibly important to being able to produce high quality work. If we go with the definition that a person is the aggregate of their experiences, then most of these experiences are things we consume from the external world and other people. Why not try and maximize these experiences?

I personally try and give myself at least an hour a day for just consuming whatever content I'm in the mood for. More times than not, I find use for this information sometime in my life. I think the hardest part is curating this content so it will be the most useful, which I think this post is getting at. Maybe the author doesn't find a benefit to reading their Twitter/Facebook stream which is fine, but this is not a producer vs. consumer problem, it's a signal to noise problem.

Re: Producer vs. Consumer

#38

Post by Agathos »

jmpeax wrote: post #3

I wonder, as a research scientist, how one reconciles the fact that your mostly a consumer of academic literature.

Reading academic literature takes a certain amount of effort. In a sense you are producing an analysis of that journal article (perhaps for other people's consumption if you're presenting at a journal club; for your own otherwise).

Re: Producer vs. Consumer

#39

Post by rquantz »

raju wrote: post #15

I just finished reading "The Power of Less: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential...in Business and in Life" [ http://www.amazon.com/Power-Less-Limiting-Yourself-Essential... ] and this advice is spot on. In that book, Leo recommends your days 3 MITs (Most Important Tasks). These tasks are derived from your Goals, and Projects lists (He recommends that you start with only ONE goal for year, for e.g Learn…

The problem with this kind of advice is that it is based on conscious goals and requires staying focused on one goal for an entire year. In my experience (and I believe research tends to support this) humans have a hard time giving conscious goals priority over unconscious needs.

As far as I can tell, the best way to work toward being the person you want to be is to trick yourself into making a habit of it before it becomes too onerous to the lizard brain. It's only things that you do without thinking that will be able to override the desire to sit on the couch and consume calories.

Not that I think reducing distraction and cutting out that which is not necessary is bad, but when putting it into practice involves making all these lists day after day it starts to sound like New Year's resolutions -- ready to be abandoned by February.

Re: Producer vs. Consumer

#40

Post by georgieporgie »

Jach wrote: post #30

This motivation trick used to work for me, it doesn't any more for some reason. I expressed it as "Action precedes motivation", since it's a recognition that once you have started working it's easy to keep going. I know some people who intentionally leave their source tree in a broken state before leaving for the day so that they have something simple to work on the next morning to start the action-ball rolling. (Or…

I know some people who intentionally leave their source tree in a broken state...

This sounds like a slightly forced version of Hemingway's method:

"The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start."

(i.e. stop for the day when you know exactly what your next step is, not when you're 'finished' and definitely not when you're stuck)

Post reply on HN