As I prepare for NaNoWriMo 2022, I’m reflecting a lot on the dichotomy of creating vs consuming content. We’ve all heard those terms tossed around, but I didn’t seriously consider what they mean for me and the life of my mind until after last year’s NaNo.
On a normal week, I consume a huge amount of content for work. I’m a consultant; a large part of my job is researching cybersecurity industry trends or learning all about a particular client’s IT systems. I’m lucky that my job also requires a fair amount of content creation, which is my favorite part. I consume news articles about recent vulnerabilities and attacks and understand updates to security regulations and frameworks so that I may create actionable, informative summaries ready for executive consumption. I learn everything there is to know about a particular network or security ecosystem to present the gaps and provide recommendations.
That’s only the 40+ hours a week that I’m consuming and creating content for my job. According to my phone, I also spend another two hours a day consuming content from places including Instagram, TikTok, the New York Times, newsletters delivered to my email, and Google. I read a book a week, I watch TV shows (lately I’ve been enjoying Our Flag Means Death, No Offence, and The Rings of Power), I try to quickly swipe past the advertisements associated with all of this media.
For most activities in life where I spend a minimum of two hours a day doing it, I’d call that activity a hobby, discuss it with my friends, compare triumphs and pitfalls and progress. But consuming isn’t a hobby. Borrowing from my dear friend Rhiannon’s definition, a hobby is something you can improve at over time and practice.
Consuming content during work and free time is part of daily life for me, but when I’m preparing for heavy content creation, the free-time consumption has to go. This decision wasn’t always conscious. I didn’t set out to reduce time on social media in November 2021, but it had to happen for me to have the time to write. Looking back I’m positive that this practice was a massive enabler for my productivity in last year’s NaNo and I’m striving to be more conscious about it this year.
Reviewing my journal entries, I dramatically reduced content consumption like reading books, scrolling social media, reading the news, and watching TV in November 2021. Scaling back on social events and social media is tough on my extrovert personality, but one month a year devoted to self reflection and content creation is worth it. Since November 28th, 2022 is the 1-year anniversary of the first time I wrote 50K words in one month, I’m excited about the chance to challenge myself again.
How about you, do you monitor the content you consume and create? If you consume or create content for work, how do you separate that activity from free time content creation? Let me know your ideas! The best mix of content creation/consumption differs for every person and artist.
(Full disclosure, for example, these musings are probably courtesy of the astrology post I saw on insta last week informing me to prepare for a weekend of intense un-Capricorn-like nostalgia, which immediately sent me running to my journals for things to feel nostalgic about. Content consumption can lead to creation too.)
On that note, I’ll return to preparing my story outline for November. I’m wishing you a creative last week of October. Good luck to everyone preparing for NaNo, and thank you for reading!
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