“There are consumers and creators. Consumers spend five hours per day engaging with content. I’m a creator. I want to create the content that people spend all their free time engaging with.”
At the time, I didn’t know my new roommate all too well. He seemed like a nice guy at first. I’m almost certain my comments rubbed him the wrong way.
It wasn’t long before I discovered he was the angry, sociopathic, lone wolf type who spent all day and night drinking beer and watching Star Wars, leaving for casual, part-time work only occasionally as he found himself able to carry his lazy, drunken (or hungover) body out the door.
How Much Time do You Spend Engaging with Content?
BroadbandSearch has shown that people spend an average of 58 minutes per day on Facebook, 40 minutes per day on YouTube, and 53 minutes per day on Instagram. They’ve got some interesting stats on other social networks too.
I honestly think those numbers are low.
The stat that I often like to refer to is from 2018, which showed that U.S. adults spent nearly six hours per day watching video (TechCrunch).
Just because those six hours are distributed across different platforms (Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, etc.) doesn’t mean the average has changed one iota.
If anything, with the pandemic, I would suspect these numbers have shot through the roof.
You Can Still Consume
“But… I love watching my favorite YouTuber!”
Consumption isn’t the problem. Especially when the choice is intentional.
But classic personal development has it that if you just took 30 minutes out of those six hours and dedicated it to study in a specific area, you could become an expert in that field.
I have had people debate this point, but the adage that you can “stay ahead a lesson,” in my experience, is 100% true. This comes from someone who occasionally taught piano (guitar is my main instrument), despite not being able to play piano all that well.
The boring math shows that 30 minutes x 365 days = 10,950 minutes (or 182.5 hours).
So, with just 30 minutes per day, in a year, you would have spent nearly 200 hours studying in your field of choice. Maybe you wouldn’t be a world-renowned expert in a year but imagine if you did this for 10 years.
Get Busy Creating
Last night, I was watching one of the training videos my business coach had created. The focus of the training was on developing a six-figure per month business (that’s $100,000 and up per month).
One of the key things he mentioned is the fact that, if you want to be earning those types of sums, you’ve got to get busy creating. You will probably be spending a good chunk of your time creating content that connects with your audience.
Whether you start a membership, affiliate business, infoproduct venture or otherwise, I think his observation is spot on.
The content you create can be leveraged to promote your business, establish your brand, boost your authority and credibility, capture and nurture leads, make sales, and train your team. It can even be repurposed into products.
And my coach found that the more content he published, the more sales he ultimately made.
Shake off Perfectionism
You can’t be prolific if you’re going to be a perfectionist. The two don’t go together.
I’ve written five books, over 400 stories on Medium, and 670 posts on Music Entrepreneur HQ. Music Industry How To has over 1,100 posts and I’ve written about 35% of those (385).
If you want to count all the posts, I wrote for my niche blogs, InfoBarrel, long forgotten guest posts, ghostwritten posts for a variety of publications and blogs, my numbers are basically in the thousands.
And I’m not even close to being the most prolific. There are plenty of people who’ve published significantly more.
The point is that there’s no space for perfectionism in my life. If I were worried about that, I would have lost the game before getting on the field.
And the reason I keep getting up to bat and enduring failure is because I have a vision of helping people like you.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, my best friend and I were able to escape the toxic environment our new roommate had ushered into the entire household.
What was once a safe, wholesome, and friendly shared space was quickly turning uncertain, scary, and even dangerous.
There’s something to be said for being mindful of who you say things to. But the truth always stings when you hear it for the first time.
The truth always stings when you hear it for the first time. Click To TweetI hope my ex-roommate learned from that experience. I know for a fact the landlord ended up selling that home, so I’m almost certain there wasn’t a peaceful, amicable end to it all.
But it makes the point. You will either spend all your free time drinking and watching Star Wars, or you will spend your free time intentionally, making things people engage with.
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