Creating vs. Consuming: Striking the Right Balance for Personal Development

For personal development, it is important to know the difference between creating activities and consuming activities. The terms already explain the meaning of both. Creating activities require us to create something, whereas consuming activities require us to consume something. Most people don’t have a good balance between these activities. Today we will find out together if we have the right balance and how to create the right balance if we do not have it already.

In this blog we will discuss the following things:

1. Understanding Consuming Activities
2. Understanding Creating Activities
3. Navigating between Consumption and Creation
4. Why is the balance between these important?
5. Key Takeaways

Understanding Consuming Activities

Most people who do not balance consuming and creating activities consume too much. They don’t create. It is not that consuming is bad or good, but too much of something is never good. Consuming activities are activities where we consume something. Think of food, information, and emotions. So, consuming activities include watching TV and eating, for example. We are being served someone else’s work. We watch a TV show someone else made, we eat food someone else made, and we read a book someone else wrote. We get it now.

Consuming activities normally give us some rest and relaxation. The activities require less engagement. Consuming activities are often activities that take less time. Or at least, most of the time, we can decide whenever we want to stop. So, finding the right activities and dedicating the right amount of time to them can be useful to unwind and relax.

Understanding Creating Activities

Creating activities require lots of engagement of our brain. These activities really train our brains in problem solving, memory, critical thinking, and many other cognitive skills. Think of creating activities as solving the question at the end of a page. Whereas the consuming activity is the theory about this question we read earlier. Now we create an answer to the question, and that is often the best way to learn something new. By creating.

However, solving a question normally requires a lot more time. Especially if the theory about it is new. We take a lot more time to solve the problem than we take to read the theory about it. Creating activities can be painting, drawing, cooking, or even working out. It is a creative activity, even though you do not really create anything but see it as creating a better person.

Navigating between Consumption and Creation

Finding the right balance is completely personal. Someone does not like creating activities because they require too much for them. Others will get bored when they only consume activities. It really depends on what we like. Almost everyone is both consuming and creating. Consumption and creation can be seen on some kind of spectrum, where consumption is the left side of the spectrum and creation is the right side of the spectrum. Find the right place on this spectrum by doing the things we genuinely like.

However, as mentioned before, creating activities improves our cognitive skills better than consumption activities. For personal development, it can be useful to start doing more creative activities. Try something out, try drawing, try applying the things we read in our books, and try to cook every day for a certain amount of time. Creating activities often stimulates our personal development.

Most activities are not on the far right or far left of the consumption-creating spectrum. Reading is one of these. We consume the information in the book, but it creates certain knowledge about the topic. Sandbox videogames are also another great example. For those who do not know, sandbox videogames are games where there are no rules, no goals, and almost no limitations. The goal of the game is to determine our own goals and what we are going to do ourselves. These games let us create whatever we want; these games require some form of creativity. Games in general can already be seen as more in the middle of the spectrum (Read More About It: The Psychology of Gaming and its Cognitive Effects (maxwagenaar.net))

Why is the balance between these important?

Finding the right balance between consuming and creating has lots of benefits. The right balance gives us the opportunity to improve cognitive skills like problem solving, memory, and creativity. It also increases the productivity of whatever we do; whenever we require the focus and engagement for creating activities, we can bring it to the table because we relax during the consuming activities. Switching between these two types of activities prevents burnouts. We can take a pause and switch to something completely different. All these benefits will have a positive impact on our personal development journey.

Key Takeaways

Find the right balance between consuming and creating activities; this will help us develop on a personal level. It will give us enough opportunities to improve cognitive skills, and it will give us the focus and energy we need. This is because we also found a consuming activity that let us relax and unwind.

I’m curious how you deal with finding the right balance between these two. What are your daily creative activities? What do you do to unwind and relax?

Let me know!

Links

If you want to read more about this topic (or related topics), you can use the following links:

10 Daily Habit for Self-Improvement (maxwagenaar.net)

The Power of Reading and reading stamina tips (maxwagenaar.net)

Basawapatna et al. 2014 - SIGCSE.pdf (edc.org)

Creating vs Consuming — how to think about your time in a crowded world | by Finn Lawrence | Medium

The Psychology of Gaming and its Cognitive Effects (maxwagenaar.net))

Consuming vs. Creating: Are You a Feeler or an Action-Taker? (kellyozcoaching.com)