Where's the line between *consuming* reality and *creating* reality?
In other words, how it feels at the end of the day when you close your work screen to look at your phone screen while you turn on the TV to consume more content on your third screen.
Hi! First off, welcome to a bunch of new readers who found me through my lovely friend Nate. If you’re new here or just get too many newsletters to keep them straight, here’s a brief refresher on who I am and what I write about. Now let’s go :)
Only decades ago, the average person had one source of information, if any — the local newspaper. It’d take an hour, tops, out of their day. 1 hour out of 16 waking hours, or 6%. The rest of the day was spent making, creating value, conversing with others — 94%. Desires were simple — work for food and housing and a way to get around, find love, raise kids, build something great, fight for justice for your peers, see the world. Today, the average American spends 8 hours a day consuming digital media. 50% of our waking hours. What happens to the world when people spend half their time watching other people? When their thoughts of themselves and of the world and their desires are now shaped by taking in other’s experiences 50% of the time, up from living their own lives for 94% of their time? I think that’s an enormous question that anyone building a software product should ask themselves.
This excerpt from
‘s newsletter/a customer of hers has been sticking in my craw— in a good way. (This quote was attributed anonymously, but if you are the source, I would love to credit you or talk to you.)I don’t think we’ve evolved past the “6%” input— honestly, we probably haven’t evolved past a 2% input— by which I mean that I don’t think we’re meant to spend most of our time witnessing & absorbing media about other peoples reality rather than living our own.
To me, this is sort of the great question of our time, of the millennium, really. I think about it mostly in the context of work, which has evolved so rapidly since the dot com boom.
Some work I am meant to do alongside other people. Meeting, talking, sharing ideas, gathering inspiration, being of service to customers, adding value to a client’s business.
Some work I am meant to alone in a quiet place. Creating, writing, deep thinking, strategic work, goalsetting, journaling, reflecting, organizing.
Some things I am meant to know. What’s happening in my community, what’s affecting my customers, what problems my friends are trying to solve, how I can better serve my neighbors, what I can do to help my family or my elders, what my community can do for its sister town, how to warmly welcome someone to a school or neighborhood.
Some things I am not meant to know. How many children died today, Donald Trump’s morning routine, when the aliens are coming, how my business’s competitors win all their customers and exactly how much money they make, what brand of tampons my least favorite influencer is buying.
Instead, our post millennium and post Covid societies are sort of set up to be all or nothing.
You either work from home and don’t leave the house, leaving no time for in-the-world collaboration that builds social skills, connection to a community or purpose, a reason to live, prevents xenophobia, etc. OR,
You are forced to go into an office every day with no time for the reflective, strategic, deep thinking work that can make you a better team player, leader, and less reactive, more thoughtful operator.
If you’re one of the lucky ones with something like a hybrid work set-up, you may find yourself facing other challenges— my friend just started a new job where employees come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is nice because there’s a catered lunch, but not so nice, because there are nowhere close to enough phone booths or meeting spaces for people to actually do their work, making office days unproductive and stressful.
Regardless of which boat you’re in, one thing is almost definitely true, whether you aren’t leaving the house enough or are leaving it too much: your screen time alone is exposing you to way, way, way more information and data than you could possibly ever do anything valuable with in a lifetime.
Learning is great, being exposed to new points of view is awesome, globalization is important. I have two parents who came from different corners of the planet, much less different socioeconomic backgrounds or religions, so you won’t find me suggesting we all stick to our bubbles and forget about learning new things and interracial marriage. Not the point!
What I’m getting at is, how the hell is any modern person supposed to find the balance?
The people that I know who are the best at it seem to:
Work a job that involves absolutely no screens and involves using their body. This seems to be less and less people these days for the obvious reason: it’s hard to rely on your body for work and it’s risky, especially as you get older. I am thinking of my boyfriend’s visits home to the small town in Portugal he’s from, and how when he shakes hands with the gentlemen who come to say hi or pay respect to his family, they are all missing at least one finger from factory work. It’s totally fair that we generally are wanting to keep our fingers.
Work that is oriented around working while you’re at work, and not working when you’re not at work. The only great example I can think of is being a teacher, which is a poor example since we undervalue our teachers so much as a society and they do have to grade homework. But you get the point— our work culture generally revolves around bringing our work “home” with us, if it isn’t already happening in our bedrooms and at our dining tables.
Live a life that revolves fully around localized IRL experiences. These are the people who Covid hit the hardest— restaurant owners, shopkeeps, community organizers. That is the obvious risk inherent.
Be professional creators who live a life of creating more output than the input they consume. As a general rule of thumb, artists have to spend more time making art than they do looking at art to actually make anything good or make anything often. So many brilliant writers and artists I know control their intake so they can produce something actually original— or at all. They know how to flex this muscle better than the rest of us.
I struggle with finding the balance between consuming reality and creating my own reality, and from what I know of this community and how much we seem to have in common, I’m guessing you do too.
When I think of the life I want to live, I…
would mostly consume written media, not on a screen.
would work in a physical space, running my own shop or kitchen, talking to my customers face to face and providing value and being of service to a community and neighborhood.
would retreat to a quiet area to write to you, as I do now. Perhaps I’d even write books or a print magazine.
would not have a smart phone but would somehow manage to have access to a map, audiobooks, podcasts and some music whenever I needed it. Is this just carrying around an iPod touch?
would not have access to apps like TikTok and Instagram and would do all shopping or essential purchasing on a desktop computer and not a phone.
would continue to not really read the news.
would continue to take in-person classes in my community: pottery, Portuguese, yoga, dance.
would live adjacent to some actual nature, i.e. an ocean.
I think I should count myself lucky that a bunch of those are already true and that I know what my dream job is (even if I sort of already had a shot at it and fucked it up).
I guess what I wish is that we lived in a society that had a lot of those shared values, the analog kind: community, investing locally, small business, less screens & devices. I think a lot of us feel that way, but we also buy shit on Amazon on our phones, work on our computer for twelve hours before whipping out our iPhones while we watch TV on a 3rd screen, and then neglect the investment in actually showing up for our neighbors, doing the ugly bits of journaling & retrospection, and, for lack of a better term, putting our money where our mouth is.
I lived this first hand when I ran a sustainable ecommerce business: what people say they value and how they spend their money in actuality could not be more misaligned in 2024. Gen Z is actually proving to be an even worse set of offenders at this than millennials are/were. (I wrote about all of this already.)
In other words, talk is cheap. Who actually is ready to live their life that way and face the consequences? The consequences feel mostly like capitalist constructs: if you did revert to an “intentional” or “analog” life, you would make less money living that way, spend more money living that way, and generally have to feel more discomfort. Is it worth it when the cost of living is already so high and most of us are struggling as is? I think it is, but then again, I did order a mousepad on Amazon last week, spent all day in front of a computer today and plan to spend all night on the couch in front of a streaming screen. I’m as full of shit as the rest of us.
One of the last cards stacked against us in the deck of creating more than consuming is that we are also becoming aware of the new narratives written by crypto, AI, and software in general: those who choose to stay on horses will be quickly outpaced by those in the driver’s seat of the car. Modernize or get left behind. Go faster or get left in the dust. Slow movements stay slow. Lean in and get a job in AI! Don’t dwell in some nostalgia-fueled, navel-gazing, permanent state of… gazing lovingly at the past.
I don’t know the answer. I know how I’d like to be and I also know how hard life feels as is, without holding myself responsible to living a “better” lifestyle. Thank you for going on this circuitous journey with me. If you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them. To me, this is the start of a conversation!
If this resonated, you might consider taking a look at…
- ‘s piece on ambition— or the lack of it.
Brilliant artist and writer
is so very much living all the things I wish I were brave enough to do. Her piece on surrender— aka taking the things off your plate that are maybe not your calling/zone of genius— helped heal my “we all have to do it all and have it all” complex. The rest of her writing is also great.My letter last week was all about self promotion and the personal brand, and why sometimes staying off the internet and not having a personal brand is perhaps the best personal brand of all.
That’s all for now. Thank you to my new readers— and my old readers. 🤍🧲
I consider this state of affairs all of the time, I am guilty of this too but I just spent a week on boat pretty free of screens and it was so serene. Being connected with people has always been what makes me tick but it is such a challenge, especially in the colder months to distract yourself consuming media and screen times. Thanks as always in sharing your feelings, insights, philosophy and views with us and for creating even though I am consuming. -Andy F.
Consuming reality vs creating your own reality. A critical distinction. I have work to do. Offline >>>