
Producer vs. Consumer - stevenkovar
http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/pbjk1/what_are_the_small_lifestyle_changes_youve_made/c3o3ejr
======
swanson
I find that this pattern works really well for me, even if it's not at the
start of my day. When I get home from work, I try to "produce" something, like
writing a blog post, exercising, or spending an hour coding a side-project. As
a result, I don't have the mental guilt about watching a movie, reading HN, or
playing xbox later in the evening.

I find if I do things in the reverse order (come home from work, plop down and
start checking Twitter/reddit) then it quickly becomes dinner time and my
brain has "shut down" for the day. It's easy to lull myself into thinking
"Well Matt, today is almost over so no sense in starting something, just work
on $FOO tomorrow".

Another trick that I've found that is highly effective for me is to "link" a
producing behavior to a consuming one. I'm a bit of a TV addict so I made a
deal with myself - I can watch as much TV as I want, as long as I'm doing it
on the treadmill. Maybe you really enjoy listening to podcasts or sports talk
radio, allow yourself to consume but only while you are doing chores or
running errands. Some would argue that this is not a good way to build habits
(in the sense that you are doing a behavior for the wrong motivations - in my
case I am exercising in order to watch TV not to become healthier) but its
been working for me so far.

~~~
techiferous
Hebb's Law: "Neurons that fire together wire together." This means you are
probably setting yourself up for the following side effect: if you ever find
yourself in a situation where you are sitting watching TV (at a friend's
house, in a waiting room) you'll have the urge to get up and move.

------
raju
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...](http://www.amazon.com/Power-Less-
Limiting-Yourself-Essential/dp/1401309704/)] 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 Spanish, and break it down
into 6-month goals, 1-month goals, and weekly goals). Furthermore, we all have
projects on our plates, but he recommends that we

    
    
      1. Pick only 3 projects (of which one should be tied to your ONE goal)
      2. Finish ALL 3 projects before putting 3 more on the plate.
    

These projects (ideally those things that require more than 1 To-do item,
otherwise they would be just a To-do item :D), along with your goals should
drive your To-do list (We all have other items on a day to day basis, and
these do show up on your things to do, but more about that in a minute).

With all that in place, you should, on a day-to-day basis establish the 3
things you that will take you one step closer to your GOAL, or completion of a
project - These MITs (decided on the night before, or first thing in the
morning) are the first things you do everyday. That way, you know you have
knocked out important items without having the day, or your manager, or your
email throw you off.

He even recommends checking your email at 10 am (if possible, or later than
the absolute first thing in the morning, because if you are like most people,
your email usually has a few To-dos in it).

I have just incorporated his advice and am attempting to apply the same and I
have to say that I feel so much less cluttered and far more focused. Knowing
that I am doing what I need to do and then relegating myself to the not-so-
important tasks later on the day seems to free up so much of the internal
chatter in my head.

[Disclaimer - The link above is an a non-affiliate link, and I have no
connection with the author other than having just read his book]

~~~
rquantz
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.

~~~
nazar
On the other hand, in the "Talent is Overrated" by Geoff Colvin it says, that
any task thats gotten automated (on subconscious level) is not getting you
better or even bringing you one step down.

Simply putting, if you are coding without stretching yourself, if you don't
put much thought in it and do it almost subconsciously you are not learning
anything.

He suggest to avoid acquiring habits for the things you want get better at. He
supports his words with real life examples. I could relate it to myself, and
found his techniques useful in my life. Overall it is a nice read.

~~~
rquantz
I haven't read Colvin, and I don't know what he bases that assertion on -- it
may be well supported, but on its face it sounds absurd. You can't get better
at anything as long as you still have to think about the things on which it is
based.

For example, when playing a stringed instrument, if every note you play gets
bogged down in what you have to do to make that note happen (place the finger
down quickly, with a pop, then relax it instantly, move the bow arm in the
opposite direction, allowing the fingers to cushion the crunch that would
otherwise occur -- and that's a ridiculously simplified version) you would be
literally unable to play.

Likewise, if you're constantly having to be super conscious of syntax, or
thinking hard about how to split a string, you'll have a hard time writing
code that does anything.

In fact, I think a lot of getting better at any complex task is the process of
making the lower-level parts of the task subconscious, and being able to think
at increasing levels of abstraction. The only way this can bog you down is if
you refuse to revisit lower-level skills if their implementation is causing
you problems.

From the standpoint of productivity, since that's what we're talking about
here, if you have to list a bunch of long terms goals, and split them into
tasks and whatnot in order to get yourself to start working, you've already
lost. There's no way this will win out, in the long run, over the things that
you do and want without thinking. Working has to be something that you _just
do_. Once you've started then you can be conscious of what you're doing.

~~~
nazar
Thank you for sharing your opinion. I do agree with you, and maybe what I was
trying to say and what you are saying are different things.

I couldn't find the exact citation from the book, but I will try to write down
what I remember.

Colvin explains that with an example of Tiger Woods. He says that Tiger never
subconsciously hit the ball. When he starts the movement of the arm to hit the
ball and someone from the background screams, he can stop his arm halfway, and
then after he is no longer distracted, he hits again.

Normally, when a mediocre player starts moving his arm in order to hit the
ball, he no longer able to stop halfway through the action of arm swinging.
And usually he would miss, because of concentration loss. He addresses that
kind of behavior due to automation of some actions. He says that after some
action has gotten automated, person performing it has almost no control over
it. He also gives example of the professional car drivers and average drivers.
Average driver will not be able to control the dangerous situation on the road
due to the fact that his actions are almost automated. While professional
drivers are able to see the situation much earlier, and steer and break more
efficiently, because they are in better control of situation due to less
automation of driving action (Less habit more conscious control).

I hope I could convey his words clearly, because I am not a native English
speaker

Edit: Regarding programming, I noticed, the more code I write subconsciously,
the more stupid bugs I get. Sometimes I write mysql_real_escape_string()
instead of mysql_fetch_array() and then wonder whats gone wrong. I even look
at the line with this bug for several minutes, until I stop, look away for a
bit, and try to switch from autopilot to manual mode. After I fire up my real
brain, I spot the bug in seconds, and have a stupid smile for a half second or
so :)

~~~
onemoreact
I am reminded of a basketball player to was practicing before an away game. He
missed the first few shot's, paused made an adjustment and then made the next
several shots. A reporter asked what he changed and he said "I noticed the
basket was 2 inches to low." It's not that he is constantly aware of all the
individual stages of every shot, it's just that he can make conscious
adjustments to those subconscious processes.

The secret is not being aware of all the minor details, it's the ability to
pay attention at the correct level of abstraction when there is a problem. I
once had a horrible bug that after several rounds of testing seemed vary odd,
until I got the ram swapped out on the test box and everything worked just
fine. I don't assume RAM is faulty every day, but it's something to consider
when no other option seems reasonable.

------
zeynalov
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 other
species. Being powerful - see point 1.

3\. to make money. Having more money makes people able to consume more,
without any problems.

Aren't there any producer without a goal gaining power to consume more? I
don't know, maybe. Don't we always say that if we want people use our products
first we should ask ourselves would I use it? If yes, this means you are a
producer, because you made a problem-solving product. But this also means you
are a consumer, because you would like to use it. Mark uses facebook. Is he a
producer or consumer?

Do you know any producer that don't consume 100 times more than avarage
consumers?!

~~~
batista
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 on.

Etc...

~~~
zeynalov
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.

~~~
dan00
_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._

What are you aiming for here? Has Steve been happier in this part of his life?
Why has he changed his life style? To get unhappier?

~~~
specialk16
He is saying that the statement...

>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.

...is factually incorrect.

------
ISeemToBeAVerb
I agree with this 110%. Starting the day out with productive work was a key
element for me moving from a chronic procrastinator to a productive
individual.

I took it one step further though. I knew how weak I was from years of
habitual web surfing, so I forced a productive routine on myself by using the
open-source app "SelfControl" to actually restrict me from accessing sites I
knew were a time sink.

I also knew that I was unlikely to actually start the app at the beginning of
the day, so I scripted it in my calendar to start the app an hour before I get
up, that way I have no choice but to work. At the end of my workday, the app
quits and I can then surf to my heart's desire.

So far, I've found this to be an ideal solution.

------
baddox
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.

~~~
techiferous
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 you can be mindless. When you are producing, you
stretch your mind. Not only do you have to think about how to meet your goal,
you have to think about what you are producing in context of value and other
people. It's mind-expanding.

Also, it is natural for us to want to grow, so if we spend most of our time in
passive consumption it will negatively affect our mood and sense of well-being
in the world.

~~~
baddox
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.

~~~
hammock
Doesn't matter whether it's mindless or not. Consumption is consumption.
Educating yourself by reading programming articles could be considered an
_investment_ , which is the distinction you want to make here, but if it's not
an investment towards future _production_ , then it's still just consumption
and not much different from playing Farmville.

~~~
baddox
I still don't agree. I don't think knowledge for the sake of knowledge is such
a bad thing. I feel happier when I learn things, even if the things are
unlikely to help me be productive in any measurable capacity. I will go on
Wikipedia binges on bizarre topics like fighter aircraft or quantum mechanics,
and it makes me happy even though I certainly don't retain any real expertise
of the subjects. I guess that makes it "entertainment" more than anything, but
I think that's fine.

~~~
lurker17
No one said consumption is "bad". All that's said is that consumption is
dependent on "production", and "production" gets its value from "consumption"
(even the producer ends up being the only consumer).

That wonderful book you read? It wasn't created by someone reading; it was
created by someone writing. If everyone read Wikipedia and no one wrote
Wikipedia, there wouldn't be anything to read.

------
Jach
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 using the OP's language, make
the first producing action easy to achieve.) Unfortunately it's not a
guaranteed trick, it was nice while it lasted.

~~~
drostie
Well I'd like to hear more about how it has failed for you, then! I mean, this
sounds like an interesting proposition to approach in its own right.

I find there's a certain paradox in the fact that we're probably all here on
Hacker News and Reddit during our workdays, so we're mostly slacking. The
question of why we slack and how to slack less (or whether we _should_ slack
less) is deep, relevant, immediate, and not covered really by this advice.

The first problem with distraction I think we could call the Train Problem --
unrelated to the trolley problem in ethics. This is the problem that you need
a higher-order reflective process to 'switch tracks', so that your brain is
like a runaway train on the track of distraction even though you literally
have every opportunity to un-distract yourself. Flipping a switch and jumping
on a track to the right destination just requires a little bit of _oomph_ to
do it, and the only reason why Wikipedia and webcomics and news sites are so
distracting is because we forget to have this moment of "oomph" to pursue
something better.

I've started to think of it this way: that the basic unit of will is Resolve.
And resolve is as simple as choosing a future that you have somehow committed
to moving forward. It's the moment that you say "I am getting married to her"
but before you have set the date, or decided where, or proposed, or anything
of that sort. You switch mental contexts to take something new for granted. In
the philosophical sense, I suppose, we would say that you _choose to believe_
something new. But I prefer to think of it as a database-driven programmer:
we're talking about your brain querying itself, independent of the world it
models. A resolve occurs when you make your brain return new, different
results.

There's a subtler aspect which philosopher John Searle calls "the continuous
causal gap" -- the sense in which you can resolve to think of yourself as a
French-learner, but there is another resolve needed to take your first lesson,
and then more resolve is needed to continue the lessons, and then you have to
resolve to visit France and immerse yourself, and so on. It's a continuous gap
of times when you need to "shift tracks" when you could have chosen not to
shift them. The initial resolve only functions to guide the future ones -- "I
am the sort of person who is learning French" just makes it easier to say,
"what should I do today? Go to my French lesson." So there are mini-resolves
every day which we've got to also consider.

But while this gives a useful view of the problem, it doesn't answer it. What
went wrong, in your experience, with the trick of "starting off pointed in the
right direction"? What did you need in order to "break free" of distractions
-- what sort of system is conducive to reminding us to have these higher-order
reflective processes where we can say, "yeah, I should really switch tracks,
right now, at this instant"?

(I'll give you an example of something which makes it much harder: tabbed
browsing. Closing a tab to signify the end of one distraction brings up
immediately another distraction which I said I "would get to." Another thing
which makes distractions on Hacker News more tempting is the knowledge that
they will _expire_ , so that if I do not read it now, I might never read it.)

------
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.

------
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.

~~~
alecperkins
The majority of experiences may be consumption, but I would argue the more
significant experiences are driven by production. I would also argue curation
is in many ways more a facet of production than of consumption.

Also, I don't think it's so much about producer versus consumer (despite the
title), but instead starting the day with easy productivity, to get into a
mindset of getting things done. Consuming content is important, and can be
very beneficial when curated well, but it's much easier to start consuming
things than to start producing.

------
enjalot
My heart says create, my body says consume

~~~
lurker17
Hmm, my body's strongest urges are definitely pro creation.

------
aorshan
Happens to me all the time. Whenever I sit down and bs, with the intention of
doing work later, work later never happens.

------
keeptrying
So if you consume a lot of web content in a day u sometimes get into a funk
which is seriously hard to break out of. Ie you dont really want to sleep
even.. Just keep consumng... Its very weird ...Has anyone else had this
problem?

Does anyone know why this happens and ggod ways to stop it from happening.

~~~
angkec
Get outside and away from computer for a few days. Then come back and go
straight to work.

------
ashokn225
I think whether it's addiction of media, drugs, or even Facebook, most people
are aware of what they're doing. This notion that we're unaware of our
addictions, that "denial is the first mistake" is all bullshit. People are
particularly rational (in their own respective idea of what rational is) when
it comes to addictions. It's just a cost benefit analysis. The cost is time
and the opportunity cost of what we could be doing versus the benefit of being
connected, consuming information (even social), or the high. How each of us
weighs those options is a deeply subjective thing, but to say that we're not
aware or that "we have a choice" to be producers, with that pedantic tone, is
just wrong.

------
Stefanvp
I personally find that even just 5 minute exercise in the morning before I
take a shower gets me in the right mood.

Before I eat my breakfast or take a shower, I'll do a couple of pressups until
I can't any more (usually about 40) and then some sit-ups(30 crunches and 30
normal ones). I'll then do so really light stretching (no idea what the names
are: fetus position to stretching my back as I try to look at the ceiling
etc...)

I'm currently living in Russia right now and trying to learn the language so
my whole breakfast/exercise/shower I've got some Russian audio book playing in
the background as well.

------
prawn
Probably pushing the comparison a bit, but The Matrix is here. Only, we are
not a source of direct energy but glazed eyeballs glued to television; to
sticky content sites, checking news sources and aggregators to see if there's
anything new in the last five minutes; succumbing to the urge to find the
latest thing for Twitter or HN or Reddit to gain artificial scores; sitting
through CoD intermission for the next round rather than quitting; getting
worked up as the mainstream papers inflate another trivial issue to incite
response.

------
badalyan
Either you run the day or the day runs you.

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

~~~
user02138
Try to peruse academic literature in light of your own research and interests.

Related is Richard Feynman's method, quoting
<https://findings.com/joejanowski/document/18782>:

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius.
You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your
mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you
hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve
problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit,
and people will say: "How did he do it? He must be a genius!"

------
akazackfriedman
This is still a great read. But I have to admit I was more excited when I
thought from the title that a super interesting article on threading had made
its way to Reddit.

------
stevenj
Kanye West on Creativity: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1163988>

------
espeed
So simple, but so spot on.

------
FredBrach
A good read also: <http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html>

~~~
lazugod
The Youtube video linked in the footnotes of this essay appears to have been
censored.

~~~
uiri
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbXgsMxOPtI> A quick google revealed this
which seems to be the video in question (or relevant to "saying no to science"
by invoking God, at least.)

------
kolkey
Like all good advice this one is repeated again and again.

I think I heard it for the first time 10 years ago from Brian Tracy :
<http://amzn.to/zv02VR>

Although I am sure that others mentioned it before him.

* Gratuitous affiliate link included.

