Consumption vs Creation

One of my goals for 2012 has been to ‘move the needle’ a bit between my own consumption of internet content, and creation of it. I have been ‘sucked into’ an excessive consumerism of internet content over the last few years. In order to try and increase the amount of content creation that I do. This goal is not very SMART… in fact I can’t even remember what most of the letter stand for…. I know that goals are ‘supposed’ to be SMART…. Why?… because someone said so….. maybe there is a study that says that ‘SMART’ goals are achieved more than non-SMART goals…. maybe I should Google this…. find some references, quotes, links for this article…. And so seems to end most of my efforts at content creation. It doesn’t seem to matter if it is some code, or a blog post, or even a twitter update, the path has become all too predictable.

In 2011 I challenged myself to pick the next project I thought of – and see it through to implementation. Ths resulted in Skorebug. There is a lot still missing – but it is in fact a live functioning web app – so I should be proud of that much. During this I was constantly tempted to drop it in favour of the ‘next good idea’ I had, or not to progress it because I was reviewing the ‘best web framework’ to use or so on. However after finishing up this project many months ago, I have not yet taken up a new one… and ‘creation vs consumption’ index has slid drastically again. Is one project a year as much as I can muster?

So for 2012 I am trying something different. I am disconnecting the internet for an hour a day. I toyed with this idea for many months but could never bring myself to do it. I felt like some sort of addict terrified of the prosepct of being without my beloved internet for an hour of ‘work time’ a day. (This doesn’t include ‘leisure time’…. turning off the internet for an hour while I watch TV doesn’t count 😉 So come 2012 I have switched on Stayfocussed’s ‘Nuclear’ option to disconnect my Chrome browser for an hour a day every day. Yes – my computer still works… skype still works… heck – even Firefox and IE still work. (Since I predominantly use Gmail for e-mail – email is also turned off.)

So far (about one week in) the implications of this have been disturbingly awkward. The mental fidgeting that happens 5 minutes after the internet disconnects…  what to do?? mmmm…. Coffee maybe?? That takes another 5 minutes…. how am I going to fill the next 50? 

At the very least it has resulted in this blog post. It has also resulted in some more time talking with people and more time spent with pen and paper, or my text editor or my mind mapping software. It definitely feels like the ‘creation vs consumption index’ has improved a bit. But perhaps the most significant realisation was that ‘the world hasn’t ended’. I was worried that I would find ‘really urgent’ things that would force me to start a browser, or respond to an email or something within that hour and that I would end up hijacking myself as quickly as I began. But one week on – and that hasn’t happened. And despite my concerns of withdrawal I find myself welcoming the hour of disconnection. I haven’t yet ‘created’ that much… a couple of blog posts and paper scribbles… but I feel the beginnings of some control over my excessive consumerism returning. So if you are thinking of ‘disconnecting’ for a fixed period each day – go ahead, take the plunge… who knows what we might end up creating!