Understanding the Producer and Consumer philosophy

Right from the moment we are born and we start sucking milk from our mother’s breasts, we are consumers. And we are doomed to remain purely consumers, except a handful of us, who cross the producer-consumer chasm, and etch their names in history.

History will remember the actor who acted in most movies, or the football player who scored most goals. I am sure no one gives a damn about who has watched the maximum number of movies or football matches in their life.

You may or may not have heard of the 1% rule of internet culture (also sometimes known as the 90–9–1 rule). The Wikipedia article should get you up to speed, but the crux of it is that in common social media platforms, 90% people are lurkers (reading things, never responding), 9% are contributors (moderators, commenters) and only 1% are the creators (who produce original content). I am sure a similar ratio exists on Medium too. Only about 1% of Medium’s total user-base actually generates read-worthy articles.

What not many realise is that, a similar effect can be seen in larger social sphere of live, and in the general existence of humanity as well. And the key to success in life largely depends on the amount you produce vs the amount you consume. 

Listening to music, watching movies, eating, buying clothes are all consumer activities.

On the other hand, composing music, developing a software, cooking food are producer activities.

The fact that we cannot wrestle with, is that all of us have a limited amount of time in our hands in our short journey on earth. The amount of time you spend consuming directly subtracts the amount of time you could have spent producing. Also cooking food that you yourself will eat, or building a software that will never be used by anyone, is not a high impact production activity, and you can consider those as negligible when you calculate how much time in life you have spent on ‘producer’ activities.

That said, you must keep in mind that, your capability of producing, depends on a variety of factors. There could be physical/psychological constraints. But most importantly, production is a factor of quality more than quantity. There are players who have spent more hours on the football field than Ronaldo or Messi. There are actors who have spent their entire life, maybe 10x the number of hours spent on a set by Angelina Jolie or Tom Cruise standing in the backdrop as a supporting cast, while no one ever knew their names. And Angelina Jolie in El Classico or Messi in Tomb Raider wouldn’t work out either. 

Whether you are a great dancer or a sharp business analyst, there is going to be that one domain, where your ‘produce’ if of higher quality than others you know, and you can produce more in less time. Concentrate on that.

Great actors, sportsmen, entrepreneurs, political leaders leave mark in history simply because of the sheer impact of what the produced.

When your time’s up on the face of earth, and you have to bid farewell, you’ll be remembered by what you produced, and not what you consumed. The only way you are going to make a mark on the face of the earth is by producing a net amount more than the net amount you consumed.

So cut down on that TV Series bingeing, quit lying around staring at the fan, and start producing. Something. Anything.