Consumption-to-creation ratio

You're currently reading this post either in your RSS feed, in your inbox, or in your browser. You are consuming content. Consuming content is what the majority of the people do most of the time online. But what's the ideal ratio between consuming and creating content? I'd argue that a 100/0 split in favour of consumption is not ideal the same way a 0/100 also isn't. You need to consume at least some content in order to help your ideas evolve.

I posted 429 times on this site since January 1st, 2017. That's 429 posts in 2704 days or one every roughly 6 days. How many posts have I read in that same time span? Let's be conservative and assume I read 5 blog posts a day. That's more than 13500 blog posts and would put my consumption to creation ratio at around 97/3 which doesn't sound that much different than 100/0 but the actual, practical difference is huge. The difference is a blog with 429 posts in 7 and a half years.

Could that ratio be better? In theory yeah but how much better? Let's imagine I was posting once a day, every day. That would put my ratio at around 85/15. In order to go below that I'd either need to consume less content or I'd have to post more than once a day which, on a personal blog, it's completely unreasonable unless you treat your blog as a Twitter/Instagram replacement and that's not my case.

That 97/3 split, as I said, comes out of the very conservative assumption that I consume 5 posts a day. It doesn't take into consideration everything else I might consume: books, audio content, movies. If I were to factor in all that consumption I'd bet that my ratio is probably more close to 99/1 which sounds wrong but it really isn't when you stop to think about it.

I believe people should consume less content and produce more. Finding an output for creativity is important. But it's unreasonable to expect people to stop consuming content and replace that consumption with creation because the ratio will always be inevitably skewed towards consumption. And that's ok. If you're not a creative person, if you find hating yourself because you consume too much content and not create enough, embrace the fact that even a very tiny improvement, from 100/1 to 99.9/0.1 can mean a lot. It's the difference between letting your blog die and posting something a couple of times a year. Which is a substantial difference if you ask me!

Also, while I'm here talking about ratios, it's important to acknowledge the fact that not everyone can be creative in the same way. I often write that everyone should ditch social media and start blogging but the reality is that most people on social media are lurkers and for a lurker there's no point in having a blog. But, what you can do, is to engage with the people who do blog. Send them an email, let them know that you silently consume what they create, support what they do via tiny donations. It goes a long way.