Recently, I was watching a great interview featuring Vinod Kumar Shukla and his son, hosted by Manav Kaul. In it, the son says something about his father that really caught my attention: “unka ek bhi kshan aisa nahi hai jo rachnatmak na ho” (“not a single moment of his day is not creative”).
In today’s world, on one hand, there is so much content being created, and on the other, a lot of “passive consumption” of that content. By “passive consumption,” I mean consuming content while being distracted and not paying full attention to it.
There is another sneaky character in this mix, which feels like “active consumption” but is more like “active distraction.” This is when you think, “I am doing this right now to fill my time, but I really want to be doing something else.” I call this “sneaky” because you’re watching or reading something you like, and even thinking about it a bit, but if you don’t follow up with some action—like diving deeper or asking questions—then it’s still passive consumption.
That was a bit of my primer on “consumption.” Getting back to the point of “creation,” I think it is one of the best feelings in the world. Creating something that you brought into existence from your mind, through any medium, can be anything from growing a plant to building a rocket.
If you want to create in addition to your job, you need to find time for it in your day. That means reducing the time you spend on “passive consumption” and “active distraction.”
If you need some inspiration, watch the little kids around you. I find them wanting to explore, experiment, and create things all the time, be it weaving stories or drawing.
I feel that one of the big reasons adults don’t create things is the fear of judgment, of not being good enough. But “what is good?” is subjective. For example, some people might love a book that others don’t like at all. If you enjoyed creating it, then that is good enough. That is the only benchmark. Plus, with time and practice, you will get better at it.
The best part of creating is that, once you start, you realize that you hadn’t thought of a particular thing in your head, but you encounter it along the way. And that is the magic of creation: you discover things you didn’t know you had in you.
For me, writing this post is one of those things. I just had the quote in my head and wanted to write something about it. As it turns out, I first had to write a bit about consumption, and then about creation. Ideas pop up along the way, like, “Maybe I can draw something to depict this?”