On Consumption vs Production

How to improve yourself and be happier, online or offline

I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather, so I’m taking the blog in a slightly different direction this week.

I’m sometimes in a spot where young people ask me for advice. Sometimes it’s about a specific project they are working on, or about a career choice, or just about a generalized sense of ennui they seem to have. I’m not a life coach or a mental health professional and I have no formal qualifications. There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know and I’m not saying you should necessarily trust me. But there’s one piece of advice that I consistently give out that I do stand behind. It made a difference for me when I first internalized this, and maybe it’ll help you too. It sounds like the simplest thing in the world:

Doing things is better than not doing things. If you’re unhappy, there’s a good chance it’s because you don’t do anything.

You Have To Do Stuff

We’re all trying to build a sense of self-worth. Some of us are happy, some are depressed, and plenty of us are somewhere in between. But one thing I’ve noticed is that there seems to be a strong correlation between the people who are actively doing things and the people with good mental health.

“Doing things” can have a wide variety of meanings here. It could mean learning to play guitar, and then playing a few small shows. It could mean performing theater on stage. It could mean starting a blog, or a podcast, or a company. It could mean raising a kid or making pottery. Learning to code. Volunteering at a homeless shelter. It could be virtually any act of creation or production. But it must be something that is external to yourself and provides real value to someone else in the real world. Somebody, somewhere, should benefit from whatever you’re doing.

The world is filled with people who need things. As you go through life, other people will mostly judge you for your ability to help them get what they need. You may think that you have a lot of great internal qualities - you’re a considerate person, you are kind to animals, you remember birthdays, you have interesting hobbies - but if those things don’t help others get what they need, they’re not going to care. This may strike you as unfortunate or unfair, but that’s the way they world works. You want things and I want things and everybody constantly wants and needs a huge variety of things. We need entertainment, we need physical goods, we need things to eat and read and enjoy. The people who help fulfill those needs are going to swim in success and popularity.

So much of our culture and our approach to mental health is inward-looking. Therapy often focuses on getting you to understand your true self, analyze your own nature, your relationships, your past, your quirks, etc. I’m claiming that focusing on yourself is often the wrong approach. For most people, going out into the world and improving someone else’s life will improve their mental health and life satisfaction more than 20 therapy sessions focused on their internal state of mind. In some metaphysical sense, you are what you put out into the world. If you don’t put anything out into the world, that’s probably why you’re dissatisfied with your life.

You can apply this logic to dating. Let’s focus on young men, since I talk to them more often. Lots of guys want tips on how to get a girl, as though there are Three Simple Tricks Ladies Can’t Resist. The only tip that matters is “Become the kind of person women like to date”. Provide them value.

This sometimes makes people mad - shouldn’t women like me for who I am? Well, no. They’re not obligated to do that at all. And women need things, just like anyone else. Jason Pargin at Cracked wrote about this thirteen years ago:¹

I'm asking what do you offer? Are you smart? Funny? Interesting? Talented? Ambitious? Creative? OK, now what do you do to demonstrate those attributes to the world? Don't say that you're a nice guy -- that's the bare minimum. Pretty girls have guys being nice to them 36 times a day.

"Well, I'm not sexist or racist or greedy or shallow or abusive! Not like those other douchebags!"

I'm sorry, I know that this is hard to hear, but if all you can do is list a bunch of faults you don't have, then back the fuck away from the patient. There's a witty, handsome guy with a promising career ready to step in and operate.

Saying that you're a nice guy is like a restaurant whose only selling point is that the food doesn't make you sick. You're like a new movie whose title is This Movie Is in English, and its tagline is "The actors are clearly visible."

If I asked you to list good things about yourself, would most of them be internal qualities? Or could you also list a lot of things you do that impact other people’s lives? If the main things you can think of are in the first category, I’m sorry, you’re the movie titled This Movie Is In English.

You might have to change major things about your life. You even might have to change who you are. That’s the process of self-improvement happening, and it starts with doing things and creating value for other people.

The Internet Makes Doing Things Easy and Hard

Here’s the good news - it’s easier than ever to start a podcast, to start a blog, to really start creating content in the digital space. The internet makes it so, so easy to start producing stuff and doing things. It’s also easier than ever to learn valuable IRL skills via online tutorials and communities.

Here’s the bad news - the internet provides you these tools, then actively tries to trick you into not using them.

What are your hobbies? Lots of people say things like “Listening to podcasts, or watching Netflix. I love listening to this genre of music! I have a few video games I love to play. I also spend a lot of time scrolling social media and commenting on stuff.” Unfortunately every single one of those things is consuming other people’s content. None of it does anything for anyone else.

There’s nothing wrong with consumption in the abstract. Virtually all of us consume online content. But the entire superstructure of the internet is designed to trap you in a never-ending cycle of consumption. Your feed is controlled by algorithms trained to show you whatever will keep you scrolling longer. Scientists at social media companies are constantly thinking about the drip-drip-drip of dopamine they release in your brain. They build their site in certain ways, they introduce new features, and all of it is explicitly designed to get you addicted to the infinite scroll. There is a vast army of people working very hard to ensure you keep consuming an ever increasing amount of content. And they don’t care at all if you never do anything.

It can be really, genuinely difficult to break out of that loop. But that’s what you have to do. Pargin phrases this as “You hate yourself because you don’t do anything”. You are instinctively realizing that nobody else values you that much, because you don’t bring any value to their lives, and you wind up depressed. Once you start doing things and creating value, that cycle ends. I know that it can be hard to break out of the cycle. Passive consumption is so easy. It’s designed to be easy by geniuses with PhDs in keeping you put.

Do something. Anything! Build a chair. Learn to crochet and make stuff for your family. Learn to code and create a cool bot. Start a blog and build an audience. Volunteer at an old folks home. You know who society universally agrees is worthless? The people who, after a disaster, only offer up Thoughts And Prayers. You know who society agrees is amazing? The people who donate real money, or better yet who show up to actually rebuild things. Don’t let your life be the equivalent of thoughts and prayers.

Have a Bias Towards Action

Here’s another piece of advice someone gave me once: Nobody, on their death bed, expresses regrets that they tried too many things, took too many chances, or did too much stuff. If they have regrets, it’s almost always about the thing they could have done, but didn’t do. They regret they chance they never took.

If you’re currently thinking about some kind of new project, or hobby, or effort, you should do it. Especially if it involves you creating or producing something and not passively consuming content. You should have a bias towards doing things, towards change, and towards action. There have been studies where people randomized a major life decision they were uncertain about, such as quitting a job or leaving a relationship. The people who were randomized into the new action or the life change were significantly happier down the road. There’s strong evidence that people should quit their jobs and move residencies more often. Humans are generally too risk-averse and too afraid of change, so consider this article permission to do that thing you’ve been wanting to do.

It may take a while. I co-founded the Center for New Liberalism, and while our community started in 2017 it wasn’t until 2021 that it turned into a full time job. I’ve produced more than 300 episodes of the New Liberal Podcast and nearly 200 posts on Infinite Scroll, and I’m just now kinda sorta getting to the point where I feel like a competent commentator with a real audience. But I’ve never once regretted quitting my stable, high-paying data science job to work at CNL, podcast and write. And I doubt you’ll regret the risks you’re thinking about taking either.

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This advice obviously doesn’t apply to everyone. If the cause of your depression is that yesterday an alligator ate your dog, this post isn’t for you. But my experience tells me that a lot of folks benefit from hearing this. If you’re doing nothing, start doing something. If you’re doing something, but not that often, do it more. And if you’re already creating and producing, keep it up - and don’t be afraid to try brand new things and take risks.

That’s the only piece of advice I consistently give. It was valuable to me and I think it’s valuable to others across a wide variety of circumstances. Don’t get trapped by sites that want you to mindlessly, passively consume your life away. Get out there and make things, create things, do things.

1. Much of this advice is cribbed directly from Pargin’s article, which I highly recommend