A few months ago, I came across an interesting article which highlighted the fact that our day-to-day activities can be categorized into three buckets:
While I was working, this balance was somewhat intact. But in the past few months, I have been noticing that this balance has gone haywire for me. The "consume" part has consumed most of my available time. The available time for myself has gone down considerably ever since my daughter arrived. Not that I'm complaining. Motherhood has been a delightful experience and is teaching me a lot which I was totally unaware of.
The limited time which I get is spent on reading different articles which people share in my social (twitter, facebook, linkedin) world and the numerous RSS feeds to which I have subscribed in Google reader. These articles and blogs give me many perspectives and ideas about startups, marketing, product management, technology, analytics etc. The information goes in but I'm not making the best use of the knowledge I have gained. Many useful articles get bookmarked under different folders - "read & review", "to process", "future ref". My firefox bookmarks is getting piled up everyday.
This continuous flow of information which I'm "consuming" is making me feel restless and unproductive. While I researched more on why I feel this way, I came across a thought provoking article on similar lines. One of the points mentioned in this article answered my question
My resolution for the coming year is to "Focus a lot more on create". "Create" could be anything - writing an article, getting back to blogging, coding/learning a new programming language, podcasting, cooking a new dish, learning a new art form etc. I want to journal how I go about this creation journey.
Please comment if you have any other ideas to get the balance of "Create, Consume and Connect" right.
P.S. I'm not sure how much time I would get to "connect" with my 3 month old daughter at home but will keep my options open.
- we create something
- we consume information
- we connect with others
While I was working, this balance was somewhat intact. But in the past few months, I have been noticing that this balance has gone haywire for me. The "consume" part has consumed most of my available time. The available time for myself has gone down considerably ever since my daughter arrived. Not that I'm complaining. Motherhood has been a delightful experience and is teaching me a lot which I was totally unaware of.
The limited time which I get is spent on reading different articles which people share in my social (twitter, facebook, linkedin) world and the numerous RSS feeds to which I have subscribed in Google reader. These articles and blogs give me many perspectives and ideas about startups, marketing, product management, technology, analytics etc. The information goes in but I'm not making the best use of the knowledge I have gained. Many useful articles get bookmarked under different folders - "read & review", "to process", "future ref". My firefox bookmarks is getting piled up everyday.
This continuous flow of information which I'm "consuming" is making me feel restless and unproductive. While I researched more on why I feel this way, I came across a thought provoking article on similar lines. One of the points mentioned in this article answered my question
"we want to know more about the world in order to have lesser surprises, and hence we tend to read more and more, especially if it is information that we perceive as relevant to us."I have decided to correct this imbalance, going forward. As a first step, I have unsubscribed from many RSS feeds in Google reader. I have kept the feeds list to a minimum and will reduce it further based on my usage.
My resolution for the coming year is to "Focus a lot more on create". "Create" could be anything - writing an article, getting back to blogging, coding/learning a new programming language, podcasting, cooking a new dish, learning a new art form etc. I want to journal how I go about this creation journey.
Please comment if you have any other ideas to get the balance of "Create, Consume and Connect" right.
P.S. I'm not sure how much time I would get to "connect" with my 3 month old daughter at home but will keep my options open.
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