Cody's blog

Author: Cody

  • Creation: It’s Good for Your Soul

    The Path: Create for Your Community

    Creating something is good for your soul. You can feel it when you’re in the flow state of creating something. You feel focused, time flies, you’ve never felt so whole, you know you are on The Path. You don’t need to subscribe to a religion to feel it, if you’re an atheist, you can call it the universe, whatever floats your boat but you know there’s something special about it. It’s almost as if something divine above is connecting with something within you. This feeling is good for you, if you’re stressed prior to this feeling then you’re usually relaxed after, you’re at peace, you’re vibrating at a higher level. I’ll say it again, creating is GOOD for your SOUL.

    Profit: A Measurement of Your Idea’s Value for the Community

    Profit is a dirty word among the unwise and it’s sad to hear because they usually mean well but they don’t understand deep mechanisms and merely demonize any capitalist adjacent words. In a REAL economy, your profit, your net worth, your savings are measurements for how much you’ve provided your community, how much you’ve ADDED to your community minus how much you’ve SUBTRACTED from your community. Think about it, if you have a lot of money in a bank account, you’ve created value and you haven’t spent that value. This is obviously assuming a moral economy with a hard money at its base which is not something we currently have, we’ve perverted money and have corrupted the game. It is no longer about providing value but getting as close to the money printer as you can, creation in the market, the entrepreneurs are benefited most by getting government contracts or bank contracts or getting in any industry that is heavily regulated by the government such as healthcare. All this to say, in the right economy, profit isn’t a dirty word, its your value you’ve provided to your community, to your fellow humans, it is not evil to pursue profit from your ideas or your creations.

    The Graded Path: Cultivating Creativity, One Step at a Time

    We’ve covered that when you’re creating then you’re on The Path. You are starting to enter a state when you’re generating or giving to your community and it feels good when you’re on it even if you’re not creating anything of value for anyone immediately but the trouble is getting started. Small wins are key, it is hard to transition your brain from mostly consuming to creating, creating is difficult. Start slow wins, create in public, add something of tiny value, tiny steps upward and getting those wins are important in building the momentum you’ll need to stay on The Path. Eventually you’ll be facing up a mountain that seems to be a sheer cliff with some of your ideas but if you’ve started up the path, you’ve gained the wisdom of where to look for handholds that will help you up the mountain. Don’t immediately try rock-climbing until you’ve done some hiking. This is my small attempt. Write something in public. Video something in public. Even if it makes some tiny impact, it was worth it.

  • Consuming: The Spectrum

    Healthy Consumption

    My previous post about balancing the scales painted consuming as all bad and I think in comparison to creation that is mostly the case but like most things there are spectrums of consumption and some are worse than others.

    The healthiness aspect of consumption is directly related to it’s proximity to creation. If I am consuming a tutorial with the explicit intent to immediately use that knowledge on the path to creating something then that’s about as good as it can get when it comes to consuming.

    The next best is something that improves some aspect of your life but you still need to implement it into your life in some way. Reading something and then writing about what your particular views are on it is a good way to make consuming something even better for you. If I merely consume and move on to the next thing and consume again I would say it’s not helping my life, sure, some knowledge might pop up again but I do think I lose access to that information unless I create on top of that knowledge or ruminate on it constantly.

    Another aspect of healthiness is length of content and not multi-tasking during the consumption of the material. Some people would declare movies as strictly waste or bad use of my time but I disagree. Narratives are powerful so it depends on what story the movie is attempting to tell and also if I am keeping my attention on the movie. The attention aspect is important because of the amount of things reaching for it currently and the more you can curate what actually gets your attention the better. The longer you can focus on something the better, don’t burn out your dopamine receptors with quick hitter content.

    So, to summarize, there are aspects of healthy consumption. The closer it is to creation the better, i.e. consuming a tutorial I am planning on using immediately is good consumption. Write or create immediately after consuming something, even if it wasn’t for the explicit reason to create something, it will help solidify and give a reason for the consumption. Length of material matters, focusing for long periods of time on something, even if it’s a fictional movie is better than other forms of consumption.

    Unhealthy Consumption

    The worst form of consumption is probably intuitive for everyone, it is the YouTube Shorts, it’s the TikToks, it’s the quick repetitive dose of dopamine that is shortening attention spans but is still gripping in the long term. Trust me, I’ve been there, YouTube Shorts start and somehow I’ve watched three hours before being able to finally exit the app. It feels terrible, everyone has been there, you haven’t done it in a while, you’re stressed out, you need a break, I deserve to do this for a little bit. It actually feels like a drug. If I have to consume something where I want my mind to relax and relieve some stress then I need to watch some long content and leave the phone away from me.

    Shorts are the absolute worst but the next worst is still probably on YouTube. It’s something slightly helpful or informative but it’s a 10 to 15 minute video, I speed up to 2x speed so I can consume it faster. I don’t ever use it but found it entertaining and useful at the time, possibly keeping my phone near me so I can look at that when the entertainment value of the video lulls. It’s also not a good feeling to come out of this consuming pattern. I tend to feel more tired than when I started doing this and usually it’s for hours at a time.

    Tutorials or longform content that is supposed to be helpful, even 1+ hour. Courses where I’m getting into the groove of simply consuming course content but never using the skills gained. This is another way to fall into feeling productive while not being productive at all. This was my biggest addiction for a while but I’ve seen how useless learning things can be if I don’t attempt to do anything with the knowledge shortly after, I lose the skills quickly.

    Tools to Curb Unhealthy Consumption

    The best tool is simply understanding that some forms of consumption are good and some are bad for you and need to be curbed. A lot of people simply shrug at their habits of falling down shortform content consumption and don’t understand that actual harm they are inflicting on themselves.
    Another thing that has helped me immensely is getting rid of the apps off of my phone. I use YouTube via Brave browser on my phone and block short content, I did the same on my iPad. I have Focus YouTube extensions on my Computer that block suggestion and only show my subscriptions.
    The understanding that taking courses, trainings, and classes without the goal to immediately start producing something with the knowledge gained from these was enough to stop going down this path for me.

    VLOG

  • Create vs Consume: Balancing the Scales

    Initial Thoughts

    This is going to be the very first part of something I’m going to attempt over the coming, however many months, to get myself back into the mindset of creating. It’s hard to create, even if it’s something simple like a blog post. I’m fine with journaling, there’s 0% chance that anyone else will see it, a blog on the other hand, while close to 0% for me it is still higher and so there is that extra pressure of creating something that is worth at least some modicum of attention.

    The project: Attempt to create more and consume less and hopefully get to the point where I’m at least producing 50% of the amount that I consume (I listen to way too many podcasts so this is probably impossible).

    Consuming

    I am extracting, in a way, from society instead of adding to it. While most of the things I am consuming are infinite because they’re merely data packets and by me consuming them I am not depriving anyone else from consuming it still feels at least somewhat extractive if I never produce anything myself. I do tend to consume things that I think are good for me in the long run, thought-provoking content, tutorials, philosophy, etc, so it could be worse but it does make me feel productive when I’m not actually producing anything which can be a little dangerous if I spend 100% of my time consuming and not creating anything, I’ll feel creatively bankrupt and it will only get worse with time. The hill will look steeper and steeper to do even the most basic of creating. The amount of effort it took to merely attempt to write my thoughts in a potentially public forum like this felt herculean.

    Creating

    There’s something therapeutic about finally starting something and working on it, some idea you’ve been itching to create, insanely difficult to start and then extremely enjoyable once you’re in it. These feelings are a great indicator that you’re on the right path. Fall down a 3 hour YouTube shorts bender, write down how you feel after that then do the same after an hour of working on something you’re interested in, the feelings are night and day and the people consuming non-stop wonder why they’re in a depressive funk. I am on the path while I write this even at the very low level that blogging is creating. It’s on the path, it’s a grade of trail that’s very easy but it’s still slightly upward in its trajectory and I’ll feel the sense of accomplishment I feel at the end of a small hike, it’s going to feel good. This is my pursuit.

    The Project

    This is the details I’m going to commit to here, publicly. I am going to produce one blog a week about some topic I find interesting. This will help me start working on the creativity muscle with a very low-level and easy creative task. It will help my ability to organize my thoughts on a subject I’m interested in and continually improve my ability to convey them. I will then create a video once a week conveying my thoughts verbally to a potentially public venue, so I have to try and tighten up my ability to convey the thoughts on the spot, no notes, no cuts\edits and post it despite the extreme hesitancy I’m already feeling merely thinking about it.

    Here’s to my attempt at balancing the scales!

    VIDEO