Consume less, create more
Originally published in my newsletter on December 6, 2023.
Create Something
Not to leave a legacy, you won't be here to see it anyway, but to be of use. Make music, write a book, build a table, anything. You'll feel good about yourself, plus you give something back to people to use or enjoy. - Darius Foroux
Hey friends,
How are you? As I write this, I am battling with a cold the weather is getting colder than usual here in sunny Barcelona. But I finally managed to find some time to write the second issue of The Garage.
Like last month, I share with you a powerful idea that stuck with me, what I have been up to in November, and my top three favorite things of the month.
In this issue, I want to cover a topic that has been in my head lately, the lack of balance between our consumption and creation habits. It's time to face the facts. Most of us consume massive amounts of content like articles, books, news, and podcasts, but we don't create or contribute nearly enough.
In order to start exercising our creative and contribution muscles more, we must strive to maintain a healthy balance between consuming and creating.
Let's look at some ideas to make it happen.
Creation over consumption
Reflecting on my consumption-creation balance made me realize that I was benefiting greatly from what others were sharing or creating, while not contributing as much as I would like.
I wanted to change that. So, I started with small steps like sharing articles or quotes that resonated with me. Later, I moved on to bigger things like building things in public and writing and sharing my ideas. This newsletter is a result of my efforts. I want to work with the garage door open, meaning I want to be transparent and share my work and ideas with others.
It can be difficult to shift our focus toward creation when we are constantly bombarded with information. Notifications, new content, and news updates are just a few examples of the distractions that can hinder our ability to create and share.
To combat this, we must make a conscious effort to say no to these distractions or, even better, declutter our digital environment to create a space that fosters creativity.
"We evolved for scarcity but live in abundance. There's a constant struggle to say no when your genes always want to say yes." - Naval
My plan for the upcoming month is to complete a "digital decluttering challenge". The challenge involves getting rid of something every day, with a focus on the following areas:
- Newsletter subscriptions that I never read
- People or publications I follow on social media
- Apps on my phone that are not of any use or get me distracted
- Online accounts of services I don't use anymore
- Whatsapp groups and phone contacts that are not relevant anymore
- Consolidate the apps I use. Do not use two apps for the same job, e.g. note-taking.
Starting 2024 with a decluttered digital environment will help me create and share more. It will improve my signal-noise ratio.
Join the challenge
I would like to invite you to participate in a challenge that can help you balance your consumption and creation habits. It is a simple challenge that requires only 10-15 minutes of your time each day.
The goal of this challenge is to reduce the noise in your digital environment by removing one thing every day. This small change can make a big difference over the next few months.
Building
In November, I focused on finishing the minimum-testable product (MTP) for automated bank account balance collection that I shared with you last month.
The tool automatically retrieves my account balances from multiple banks and adds them to a Google Spreadsheet using the GoCardless Bank Account Data.
I completed a proof of concept to see how difficult it would be to integrate with Notion. I know a lot of people uses Notion to organise their life. After a few hours, I was able to successfully integrate with the API. However, upon further consideration, I decided to discard the idea.
Notion is a great tool for creating pages and databases, but it lacks the ability to visualize data. I looked into using Notion2Charts to solve this problem, but I believe that adding another tool to create data visualizations would make the user experience more complicated.
I was chatting with a friend of mine who works as a software engineer in a bank, and he told me that banks are still having issues with maintaining their APIs to comply with EU P2DS regulations. This means there's a lot of maintenance work involved. So, I've decided not to pursue my prototype and turn it into a product.
I don't want to waste my time and effort on something that might end up with flaky bank APIs and a poor user experience.
I decided to park the project and focus on another idea in December. I have two candidates:
- An aggregator of learning resources for people working in the tech industry who are looking to spend their personal development budget. The idea is to provide curated lists of high-quality courses, books, and tools that can be purchased using the budgets that companies offer to their employees.
- A tool to gather data insights from the various online services we use. Think of it like Spotify Wrapped, but for every tool you use online to track things, such as Strava, Google Fit, Goodreads, etc. My idea is to apply GenAI to help people understand their data.
The next step is to choose one of the two ideas and quickly build a proof of concept. It is a tough decision as I like both ideas a lot. Next month I will tell you which one I picked
Writing
The highlight of the month was when the technical article I wrote in October got listed in one of my favorite newsletters about tech leadership.
It made me super happy and gave me the boost I needed to keep writing about my work experiences. Plus, it helped me get more views on my post. Yay!
In November, I focused on recycling old content. I took one article I wrote back in 2017 and I tried to refresh it a bit and give it a new angle. It is an article I invested a decent amount of time writing but didn't make an effort to share and promote.
This is a mistake most people make. Not taking the time to choose the right article headline, think about the target audience, and share and promote it via the right channels.
Everybody hates spending several hours writing and perfecting the article and then clicking publish and not getting any feedback in return.
Don't be afraid of promoting your content. Publishing through a Medium publication and sharing your content on your social networks, like Linkedin will increase your reach. I am trying to get better at this.
Next month I will be focusing on writing regularly and trying to improve my storytelling skills. I want to try to find focus and consistency.
I am currently taking a course on how to ideate, write, and share articles on Medium that I think will help me to get better at it. My plan for December is to write another in-depth technical article about a topic I am tackling at work. I hope I can do a bit of just-in-time learning and apply what I learn in the writing course.
Reading
After finished reviewing Atomic Habits (I talked about it in the previous issue of this newsletter), I wanted to review a book on the topic of productivity, decluttering, and finding focus.
I chose one of my favorite books on the topic, Digital Minimalism.
The book introduced me to the concept of applying minimalist principles to how we use technology and helped me to be more mindful on how I use my phone.
Ideas I took from the book that helped me:
- Take long walks, embrace boredom.
- No social media apps on the phone. Check them from the laptop.
- Turn off push notifications.
- Use social media intentionally.
- More screen-free time.
I leave you a paragraph from the book that really resonated with me:
"Digital minimalists see new technologies as tools to be used to support things they deeply value—not as sources of value themselves. They don't accept the idea that offering some small benefit is justification for allowing an attention-gobbling service into their lives, and are instead interested in applying new technology in highly selective and intentional ways that yield big wins. Just as important: they're comfortable missing out on everything else." - Cal Newport
My goal for next month is simple, finish the books I started during 2023 but couldn't find the time to finish.
Favourite things of the month
Three things I really liked this month:
- Becoming a Power Reader: Battling Information Overload, Developing Skills, and Building a Personal Brand (Article) - The article discusses how to become a power reader and tackle information overload as a digital professional. The author recommends using RSS and newsletters to collect content in one place, and organizing it with a tool like Readwise Reader (I love this app). They suggest triaging incoming content to decide what's worth reading and dedicating focus reading time to the pieces that are worth diving into.
- The Deepest Breath (Documentary, Nextflix) - A documentary that follows the journeys of a champion freediver and an expert safety diver as they pursue their dreams in the world of freediving. The documentary explores the thrilling rewards and inescapable risks associated with reaching the pinnacle of this extreme sport in the depths of the ocean. I was barely aware of free diving as a sport, but this documentary blew my mind.
- I made an F1 ELO Engine. Who's highest rated? (YouTube) - As a huge F1 fan, this Youtube video made my day. The guy had an amazing idea, applying an Elo rating system (like the one in Chess) to rank the F1 drivers. Guess who is the GOAT (Greatest of all time)?
Thanks for making it this far, I hope you've enjoyed reading and perhaps even discovered something new and interesting. If that's the case, don't forget to subscribe!
Also, if you give the challenge a go, feel free to share how it went or get in touch by replying to this email.
- Until next time.
Writing time: ~5 hours
Grammarly score: 85
Coffees consumed: 3 flat whites
Monthly Recurrent Revenue: 0 euros.
Total subscriptions: 12 (+10 from last month, thanks!)
Listening: Orinoco Flow - Enya