Human beings are used to consume. From the time we’re born, all we care about is to survive.
The first thing we do when born is to look for our mother’s breast.
We are not capable at all of producing anything of importance, and this makes total sense for an infant.
But what happens when we are grown ups?
Well, for some people, not much is changing. Although they pass from infancy to childhood and then to adulthood, they continue to almost solely consume bad products like TV soap operas, movies, etc.
There’s an imminent danger right there. The risk of forgetting how to provide more value to the society.
The more you’re drugged into consumption, the less you focus on production. And when I say production, I mean producing anything of importance.
The more you can produce and the more you can expose this to an audience, the more total value you provide to the society and the more chances you have to become wealthy.
Remember the golden rule of money making? Impact millions to make millions.
Revenue = Scale X Magnitude
It’s kind of impossible to produce anything of importance while sitting on your couch all day long thought. Isn’t it?
According to my experience, to make lots of money, you need to transform yourself from a consumer to a producer.
So here’s my 3-step plan from consumption to production.
Stage 1: Bad consumption
This is the first stage where most people are born (and die). All they care about, people at this stage are consuming stuff. This is the stage we want to leave behind if we want to go towards excellence.
Anything that doesn’t make us more productive belongs to this category. There’s no need to name them one by one. But here are some prime examples:
- TV series
- magazines
- video games
- low-quality food
- wrong mentality ideas
If you want to achieve excellence, consumption of these products, like for example a movie or a TV series, or a hangout with people of lower value, should be kept to an absolute minimum. The less you expose yourselves to this stuff the better.
This is the only category of time consumption that doesn’t offer anything more than some emotional pleasure. I have some of it in my daily regime, but it’s kept to a minimum, and I don’t even record it in my Pomotodo timer.
Stage 2: Good consumption
Our first goal is to move into this category, little by little. We need to change our habits from consuming useless stuff to consuming useful stuff. That is stuff that makes us more productive, like:
- books and articles about your business
- documentaries
- podcasts
- webinars
- videos (not with funny kittens)
- events, like presentations or business meetings
- healthy food
I can’t stress enough how important it is to continually feed your mind (and body) with high-quality products. The more products you consume from this category, the better person you become.
I record activities of this type on my pomodoro timer with a #Consumption tag so I can track how much of my time goes into consuming stuff.
Stage 3: Production
This is the holy grail of excellence. The more you produce, the more value you provide.
This is the tougher stage of all to achieve. Production or action requires a lot more energy than consumption, and consequently, it’s a lot harder to perform.
Think of this example. It’s like reading in a book that you need to outreach a hundred blog authors to exchange a few backlinks. You can read this in like 3 minutes right? But what happens when it’s time to do it? It can take hours to complete.
Producing stuff is the hardest part of all, but it has the biggest impact as well. It’s usually out of our comfort zone, and it requires much more time to create habits around it. Remember, energy preservation is a bitch.
Some examples of producing stuff are:
- creating content for your blog
- publish your next book series
- outreach to other online entrepreneurs for a collaboration
- negotiate with a factory in China to ship your new FBA product
- revise your business marketing plan
- improve the onboarding mail sequence of your business
For good or for worse, nobody changed the world by reading magazines or watching TV. The ones who changed the world went out there, created the TV and sold it to the masses.
To track down this time I use the #Production tag in my pomodoro tracker and I always aim at a ratio of at least 70% production to 30% consumption within my day.
[bctt tweet=”Nobody changed the world by watching TV. The ones who changed the world went out there, created the TV and sold it to the masses.” username=”projectbebest”]
Action plan
Let’s see how you can achieve this transition. To make things as hard as possible, let’s assume that you’re completely in stage 1 at the moment.
Little by little, using this method, rewire your brain to stop consuming bad stuff and start consuming useful stuff. You don’t have to do it in a day. One habit at a time.
The cool thing about it is that the better products you consume, the better the body and brain will start to function, pushing you even further into good stuff consumption.
After a couple of months, your mind and body will be in an excellent shape, and you’ll be ready to take full action.
Now it’s the time to start this business venture, start training for the triathlon, or whatever you have set as a goal.
As time passes, again remember to switch from good consumption to production.
The only way to achieve greatness is by taking massive action.
The more you produce, the better it is. But always stay within the basic principles of scale and magnitude. In other words, flipping burgers all day long isn’t going to move the needle.
Depending on the period, this ratio might change a bit, but I always want to produce as much as I can.
If at some point you find yourself to consume more than you produce, that’s a clear indicator that you’re not expanding fast enough.
It’s a sign that you’re absorbed into your comfort/lazy zone, and you’re not pushing hard enough.
That’s why it’s vital to track all your productive activities. It’s a sure way to notice positive or negative trends in your life.
Summing up
This is the 3-step process to excellence. From consumption to production.
- Eliminate as much of the bad consumption as you can.
- Increase your good consumption until you have a solid mind and body.
- Substitute good consumption with full-scale production to make a huge impact.
