Production over Consumption Month: June 2014

I’ve been thinking about how much time I spend consuming media (e.g. video games, surfing the net, binge-watching television) versus actually making things. For the month of June, I’m going to try to “produce something new” every day to see if I can become more mindful of my ratio of producing versus consuming. The rule is pretty simple: track the time I spend producing out of the total waking time of the day, and see how I feel about it. You can read the original post that introduces the idea, and then browse this page to see what I’ve been producing. I’m defining “produce” simply as time spent creating something that didn’t exist before.

The Stuff That Happened

Producing versus Consuming Tracking FormDAY 1: DRAFT 01 of a tracking form for “production versus consumption”


Producing versus Consuming Tracking Form, Take 2DAY 2: DRAFT 02 of the tracking form.


Draft 03DAY 3: DRAFT 03 of the tracking form


HamburgersDAY 4: Making a better burger


DAY 5-15: A Whirlwind of Change — A report on a lot of changes, during which I was not tracking “production versus consumption” daily due to increased social activity.

DAY 16: Modeling my Energy Modes — Musing on motivation, after not having a very productive Monday. This may have been what I needed, though, to adjust my attitude for increased productivity.

Day 17-18DAY 17-18: Pie charts! Looking at categories of tasks, and evaluating how I feel about them.


Day 19DAY 19: Feeling “sort of” productive, but also not. Maybe I’m feeling the lack of closure or and craving big rewards?


Days 20-21DAYS 20-21: Improvement to visualizing the different “modes” I am in during the day: producing, consuming, interacting, etc. A key insight about “deep dives” bubbles to the surface! A way of tracking resistance occurs to me!


Day 22DAY 22: Sunday review shows a LOT of consuming and no chores/maintenance work. It’s Sunday so maybe that’s OK. More followup on “deep dives” and the necessity of dealing with uncertainties in projects.


DAYS 23-29DAYS 23-29: An entire week of data presented as weekday vs weekend, and as a week of 111.75 hours. Also, revealing just how much time I spent playing a new video game, and the lessons I’ve been learning from it. It’s a LOT of time.