Notes: The Dao of Input and Output
Harmonizing The Dao of Consumption and Creation: Proposing Quotas for Creative Consumption and Production
I watched my daughter immersed in her work, stubbornly refusing to go to bed. She was not “practicing her piano” in the usual sense but deeply engaged in composing her own song, writing it out in her unique system of letters and spacing—a method faster for her than conventional sheet music. This was creation at its most energetic, a stark contrast to the rigid, routine scale or chord exercises she approaches with far less enthusiasm. Hers was a creative act removed from instruction and repetition, pushing against conformity to uncover some primal energy. Similarly, after being gifted a small LEGO set, she eagerly built the kit according to the instructions, only to break it apart soon after to incorporate the pieces into a more complex, evolving skyscraper she’s been working on.
Watching her, I saw something powerful: the natural harmony between consumption and creation—what I’ll call the Dao of Creation—a balance we often abandon as adults. We drift into passive consumption, forgetting the purpose of what we take in, allowing our creative energy to stagnate. This essay proposes a return to that balance, where each act of consumption fuels a corresponding act of creation, restoring agency and depth to our lives.
Breaking Passive Consumption Habits
We’re held hostage by passive consumption loops that aim to sedate and restrict our natural rebellious creativity. Social media, news, the hypnotic spectacle of endless scrolling, TV—it’s all designed to sedate, not stimulate. Breaking free from this requires a conscious disruption of habit. For those who need help boosting willpower, I recommend imposing restrictions: apps to limit social media (Opal + Cold Turkey), timers to dedicate equal time to creation, not just consumption.
Another technique is to start each morning: Another technique is to start each morning with 30 minutes of uninterrupted creation—writing, drawing, anything that circumvents the trap of passivity. The early subconscious state, that liminal awareness before full wakefulness, becomes a channel for unexpected insights. With each act of morning creation, I break the grip of digital hypnosis, carving out space for something raw and unfiltered, a form of autonomy reclaimed from the forces or habit of passive consumption.
Consumption drains energy, while production, paradoxically, increases it. There’s a tingling sense of pull and gratitude in creation, releasing the processed unconscious energy that has built up from consumption, transforming it into new ideas. We’re all familiar with the intense flow state that arises in productive moments. Compare the drained feeling after doom-scrolling Twitter or hyper-consuming images on Instagram to the energized state felt after a session of deep creative flow.
Production as Thinking: Reclaiming Space from Over-Consumption
Consumption saturates every moment. Audiobooks, podcasts, social media feeds—all become an endless rush to fill every empty space. This deluge leaves no room for true thought or reflection. I recommend cutting back on this constant stream to reclaim something rare in today’s world: mental solitude. Thinking itself is a lost art, sacrificed on the altar of “staying informed.”
Real thinking requires an absence of consumption, space for ideas to unfold and transform. This shift to internal creation is like reprogramming my brain, an act of defiance against the dopamine-fueled feedback loops engineered to keep us passive. The idle moments—now restored—become incubators of ideas, each silence a possibility, each thought the beginning of creation. As simple as going for a walk without any music or podcasts, to deep multi day meditation retreats, for trying new hobbies one has no prior reference point to. Try ikebana, try calligraphy, take a pottery class, these new experiments in production can filter down into other streams of consumption and production, influencing both personal and professional life.
Returning to Active Reading: Production as Integration and Learning
We live in a world of easy consumption, where information flows like a torrent, leaving us numb. Passive reading becomes another input loop, devoid of output. To counter this, I recommend reclaiming reading as an active process—an act of wresting knowledge from text, bending it into a personal framework.
Instead of merely highlighting or dog-earing pages, I recommend writing notes in your own words, to use deep note making tools like Obsidian to build a network of interwoven ideas, or learn the deep techniques of a zettelkasten or second brain for processing consumption into tangible material for production. This is more than memory; it’s integration. Each session of active readings becomes a node in a self-made matrix of understanding, each act of consumption feeding a system designed not for passive storage but dynamic thought and insight. To consume without producing is stagnation; to produce from consumption is liberation.
All consumption, I believe, should be matched with an act of production to fully process and internalize the experience. Recently, during a visit to the Los Angeles Museum of Art, I joined a guided tour, expecting a quick and broad overview of the highlights. Instead, the docent dedicated nearly an hour to “Sweet William,” a single work by John Chamberlain—a towering, abstract sculpture of crushed car parts. She unpacked its layers in exquisite detail: the context, Chamberlain’s biography, the aesthetic intricacies, even the materials' resonant history, its role in post war propaganda. But the real surprise came when she handed each of us a sheet of origami paper, inviting us to crumple, fold, and twist them into our own miniature sculptures inspired by Chamberlain’s technique. Consumption seamlessly transformed into production, as we spent nearly as much time balancing and shaping our tiny creations as we had absorbing Chamberlain’s. I left the museum with more than the memory of a single art piece—I carried a tactile understanding, a miniature echo of the work itself. Rather than skimming countless images, I had engaged deeply with just one, emerging with something meaningful, created and sustained through the act of imitation. This same process embodies the deeper balance of the dao of consumption and production.
Production as a Release of Subconscious Energy and Accessing True Intention
Experiences pool in the subconscious, each encounter and sensation a drop that eventually demands release. Creativity is this release—a controlled eruption of the chaotic underworld within us. As the poet Stanley Kunitz put it: “The unconscious creates; the ego edits.1” We consume, and this fuels the depths, but it’s in production that we channel this hidden reservoir, crystallizing raw potential into real form. The reservoir grows as we live and consume, but without creation, it stagnates (Freudians might argue that this stagnation can lead to unhealthy release). This is more than self-expression; it’s a purification, a refinement. Creation transforms the unseen chaos of experience into something purposeful, a ritual that allows us to inhabit the world as intentional beings, each act of production an assertion of purpose.
Experiments in Limits of Consumption
I recently found inspiration in artist, David Choe’s tutorials on creative consumption. One experiment he suggests is: “8+8+8+8 rule”—eight albums, movies, and books for eight weeks—radically limiting consumption to sharpen the clarity of creation. By curating intake, we amplify depth, transforming each consumed piece into something that drives outward production. This is the Dao in action: a balance where creation and consumption feed each other, generating a perpetual cycle of meaning rather than depletion. Consumption no longer drains; it becomes fuel, much like the example above at the LACMA.
Creating Without the Pressure of Public Consumption
Public production adds a layer of constraint, a sense of performance that can twist intention. By producing privately, we free ourselves to explore the darker, unpolished aspects of the mind. Writing, creating, or releasing any form of expression just for ourselves becomes an exercise in radical authenticity. Creation here is not for applause but as an alignment with our inner terrain, a confrontation with the unspoken. It’s a quiet rebellion against the constant demand for output that meets public approval, an act that strengthens our internal compass.
Public Production for Personal Growth
Public creation can also enhance our sense of purposeful consumption. Sharing or collaborating with others can make both consumption and production more enriching. Simply sharing knowledge or experiences from a good book (consumption) or working on a collaborative art project (creation) bridges these two spheres meaningfully. Likewise, publishing an essay, a story, or a picture provides a way to release content and drive the feedback mechanism. The goal is to balance the two in equal measures.
In a world where consumption dominates, producing as much as we consume disrupts this one-sided flow, reanimating the process of creation as a resistance to passivity. Every act of mindful creation, no matter how small, reclaims intention from the labyrinth of consumption. Will you be a passive participant or actively shape what you take in and release into the world?
Forget these rules, forget these suggestions. Go consume and produce your own!
I can’t find the original source for this quote heard it before and have a search attributes to Kunitz: See https://www.quotetab.com/quote/by-stanley-kunitz/the-unconscious-creates-the-ego-edits
Love this.