Create not consume

Now this may come as a shock to some of you but I remember a time before there were iPhones and no it is not the plot to The Land Before Time movie. We had phones but they were attached to the wall or connected to a really long cord unless your family was really cool and had a cordless phone. There was no Netflix just basic cable and VHS tapes. The social network was your neighborhood friends and walkie-talkies. Pizza was about the only thing you could get delivered to your house. Yeah that means there was no Amazon Prime so you had to find what you wanted in the store. 

Now compare of this to the world today. The world is literally at our fingertips. You can have whatever food you want whenever you want and you can have it all delivered to you. The craziest part is that you can do all of this from one device now without even leaving your recliner. Even crazier is that you can do it all without even lifting a finger, thanks to voice controlled devices which you can simply speak and your wish is granted. You can connect with friends locally or anywhere across the world. If you want to learn a skill or really anything just search for it and find a video on Youtube to teach you. 

Now I am not saying all of this because I am one of those old people who hates technology. I enjoy all of these advancements and honestly not sure if I would want them to go away. Or what I would do if they went away. They do make life easier in some cases and offer us services that our grandparents never would have dreamed of. One person can change the world with just a phone and video. The life of ease, happiness and connection is great but we have to be careful.  

Think about this: the end goal of all these inventions and devices is to keep you the customer happy, so you continue to consume a product. Companies will go to great lengths to keep you, dare I say, addicted to their product. We are in a consumer world. We can consume endless amounts of digital media. The issue I believe is that we have become mindless drones that do whatever the screen in front of us says.  It’s like the Pringles slogan, “Once you pop, the fun don’t stop.” Think about the last time on your phone when you completely lost track of time. Or you went online to look something about but got distracted and three hours later you had forgotten why you got online in the first place. We will gorge ourselves on media day after day because we are addicted. We can’t even live in the real world anymore because we have FOMO so we are constantly checking to see what is going happening online. 

Let me ask a question: When’s was the last time you created something? And not just a video of the latest dance trend on TikTok or a random Snap you took to keep the streak alive. I am not saying you have to go and build a piece of furniture or restore a car, although that would be really cool. I am saying when’s the last time you created something simply for the joy of creating? Not creating to get likes or impress people but just creating because you wanted to.  It seems to me that very few people have an original thought. We have become obsessed with likes and followers that we don’t even care what we produce. We try to figure the algorithm in hopes that we go viral. And I think it is robbing us of our joy. We have become content with having other people entertain us. That’s why we check our phones all the time because we are bored. We need constant entertainment. I remember when I was kid and if I said, “I am bored!” to my mom she would respond with, “I can find plenty of things to keep you entertained.” Usually, all of mom’s “ideas” included some sort cleaning around the house but now you can get on your phone.
We have lost the great art of boredom. Yes, I said boredom was an art because it can lead to some great thoughts and inventions. The keyword being “some.” There were things we, my siblings and I, came up with when we were bored that were really dumb but it forced us to think. I mean my brother and I invented a game in our backyard where we threw a ball on the roof and waited for it to roll back. You scored a point if you correctly predicted where the ball was going to fall off the roof and caught it before the other guy did. We would play for HOURS or until one of us got mad and then quit. 

But this rarely happens anymore. You don’t have to think anymore because your phone can entertain you. If you have a few minutes to kill you can hop on your phone and watch video, check social media or email, play a quick game or whatever you want. We all are guilty of this when we wait in line for groceries or for the doctor to call us back or when we go the bathroom. And every time we do this we miss the opportunity for boredom to kick-in which I believe can lead to innovation and creation. 

What if instead of turning to our phones and going online when we get bored, we embraced the boredom and created something! 

Following is just a short list that I started as I began to recognize the ways in my own life that cause me to consume rather than create. 

CONSUME:
Mindless scrolling through websites or social media. I mean sometimes I don’t even really look just scrolling to pass the time. 
Repeatedly checking my phone for…what? Seriously, why do we check our phones all the time? 
Skip songs on radio or Spotify. I don’t like what is being played so I can tailor it to fit my wants and needs. I have never really thought about this before but when’s they last time you listened to all the songs that came on instead of skipping it or switching the station? 
Which leads to the next point: We don’t have to do commercials anymore. We can pay to get rid of ads or wait 5 seconds to go on to our video. Have you ever watched a full Youtube ad instead of rushing past it? 

CREATE:
Challenge this week: Create something! 
What if for the next week you did one of the following: Posted a video of yourself talking about your day. Or talking about your favorite hobby. Or post your own joke. Or your own thoughts. Or just produced something that is created by you.  And don’t worry if they are perfect or are going to go viral. Just share you.  Go build something! Or paint. Or write. 

OR…If you are feeling really crazy take a fast from social media or your phone for a day!