Thinking / Jaisalmer, India, Dec 2007
Most likely, you create AND consume. But what it your balance between the two? Do you produce something for the world, or do you consume others? Are you taking in information or producing information? Are you creating your own thoughts, opinions, strategies, ideas, plans, experiences, or are you consuming those created by others? Is there even a question over which is more valuable?
I’ve been ruminating over this relationship between the two for awhile, but recently saw it mentioned in a PSFK note from SXSW:
Henry (Jenkins, Co-Director of CMS at MIT) talked about how he always tells his children to monitor the amount of information they take in versus the amount they put out. … We’re a culture of information overload and if we don’t turn around and put out information then we can quickly lose our ability to process information.
Usually creating requires a bit of consumption: aggregating, listening, analyzing, structuring, finding and linking connections, processing information, researching past learnings, understanding new ideas, thinking, tinkering, reconfiguring and playing. Every day we consume information and experiences: conversations with others, broadcasts from media (TV, magazines, the Internet, books, billboards, videos, etc.). Listening to the world is an important part of being able to create.
But it’s easy to consume too much. In fact, some might say we are hard-wired to overdose on information.
At the end of the day, how do you use this information? Do you add something to the conversation? Do you produce something that causes the world, your company, your friends, to listen? Are you helping others create, or merely passing information along, adding to the swimming, wavering, undulating mass (or mess, depending on your outlook) of information out there?
It’s a virtuous cycle: by adding to the conversation, by listening to the world and contributing our own original thought and experiences, we help others create, we raise the bar.
Put simply: you can either create or consume value: which one do you do more?
