from Hacker News

Consume less, produce more

by hecticjeff on 9/24/20, 7:53 PM with 13 comments

  • by 1auralynn on 9/24/20, 11:31 PM

    I don't think the antidote to consumption is necessarily production. Not everyone has to be making things all the time. And I think we're moving past the "everyone producing and selling their creations on Etsy" model, culturally. I think it's OK to do nothing and produce nothing, and just spend time thinking, talking, sleeping, whatever.

  • by wronglebowski on 9/24/20, 11:13 PM

    This is a nice simple concept, one I agree with. How do I actually make the shift away from excess consumption?

    I blow my proverbial load on technical thinking at work. I spend time exercising and meditating to try and maximize my "production" time but there's just not much left for after hours. This leads to an abundance of consumption on mental breaks during the day and after hours.

    I'd love to be the perpetual creativity machine. Constantly churning out art and technical production but I don't see how it's actually feasible without suffering from extreme burn out.

  • by briefcomment on 9/25/20, 4:30 PM

    I think that's just an opinion. I was recently of the same opinion until I started wondering if, for some people, output is a result of inputs. More specifically, output that you are proud of (as opposed to, for example, a drawing that I could hash out right now that I would consider insignificant soon thereafter) requires a critical mass of some types of inputs.

  • by BorisTheBrave on 9/25/20, 1:07 PM

    > If you’re not producing enough output to match your inputs then it can get clogged up in your brain. You end up with too many strands of thought. Too many lines of enquiry.

    My life hack here is just to write things down in a notebook. It's a great way to get them out of your head without the effort of actually acting on them.

  • by Havoc on 9/25/20, 9:32 AM

    I don’t think less stimulation is correct without some qualifier.

    eg Reading a good book is a good type of stimulation. That seems qualitatively different than twitter

    Overall a good point though

  • by known on 9/26/20, 5:04 AM

    Consume less, Sell more