Watch out: this post is 14 years old.
Extra Credits is a weekly video blog that takes a deep, analytical look at games and the games industry, but in a friendly and engaging cartoon package. I love it. In season 3, they spent two episodes discussing game addiction; the second of which was an extremely honest and very moving story told by the show’s writer, James Portnow, about his struggle with an addiction to gaming. I found it fascinating — it’s 20 minutes long, but I really think you should watch it.
It made me think about addiction and compulsion, and so I thought I’d share a habit I’m trying to break: consumption addiction.
I don’t mean food; I mean consumption of information. I mean podcasts, videocasts, blog posts, tutorials, talks and any other form of digital content you care to name, including Twitter.
The internet makes it stunningly easy to access a wealth of information on a very large scale, and more is added faster than is consumable. While this is one of the reasons I love the internet, I fell a trap where I was consuming so much I wasn’t creating.
On the surface, it feels great; learning, gaining knowledge and understanding is fantastic, and that’s why it’s so tempting to keep on consuming, even when I felt the nervousness that comes with creative drought.
At worst, I’d spend many hours in a day watching every single video I could find containing a few of my favourite people (across a variety of topics): Christopher Hitchens, Dan Dennet, Richard Dawkins, Ryan Dahl, Paul Irish, Sam Harris, Jason Fried and others. I’ve watched some talks, lasting over an hour, 4 or 5 times.
I would have days where I’d become very depressed because, after all that, I hadn’t created anything. Nothing had come of it and it had no tangible benefit. I realised I was consuming merely to pass the time, and using it as a way to escape from real work.
Now, I’m trying my best to create something every day, blog as often as I can and generally be a source rather than a destination for the information on the internet. I still value consumption extremely highly — there’s nothing I enjoy more than learning something new — but I need to be a creator, not a consumer.