99% of people are consumers

Today I realized that most people are consumers. It seems very hard to be a producer of content. Most people read, don’t write. They check the stories of their friends on Instagram but don’t post themselves stories. They do that because it’s the path of least resistance. It’s the easy thing to do. To adopt a producer’s mindset. To put your content under the spotlight, where criticism, self-doubt and approval seeking all mix together can be unbearable for people. You post something that you think is great, like a photo or a video, and it gets very few likes, it kills you a little bit inside, doesn’t it? So most people give up at that stage. They kill their muse so that they don’t need to bear that again.

But the problem is that they become soul-less, they have no passion, no hobbies. They don’t express themselves. But since everybody does it. It seems ok. I want to shout a big NO, it’s not ok. You have to pursue your curiosity, wherever that takes you. You have to follow the fire inside you, follow it, cherish it while it lasts. I’ve been blessed recently to have a couple of passions that simply obsess me: jiu jitsu, mastering Mandarin (reading great Chinese literature like 莫言，鲁迅，余华，史铁生), tennis, photography. I’m also grateful to be in the field of quantitative finance, that is also infinitely interesting. So my day to day cycles between those different activities. My life is just about digging deeper and deeper in those fields. It’s as simple as that.

Starting from today, I want to produce much more. In photography, it means taking more photos (and sharing them). On YouTube, it means uploading videos. On X, it means posting engaging content. I think the most important skill is actually the skill of writing because it organizes your thoughts. I’m thinking of publishing every day on substack. Then the ideas I shared can be re-formatted for YouTube, X, 小红书, etc. Another question that naturally arises is that in order to produce, you usually need to consume. My current morning routine is to read some Chinese book. It could represent one of my sources of input. The important thing is to produce everyday. I think one idea I have in mind is simply to build influence. Being cross-platform is one way to do that. I’m upping my strategy to do: Substack, YouTube, X, 小红书, IG everyday. It might be hard to balance with a full-time job, but I’m curious to see the results. Actually I’m so focused on producing now that I think I will stop reading as a morning routine, but instead think about content to produce. I need to be totally production oriented. I need to shift from being book-smart to being street smart as Nassim Taleb would say.