A fool and his time are easily parted

Over 50% of all American teens see themselves as 'content providers'.  Seth Godin exhorts his acolytes to above all else 'ship' (i.e. focus on the act of completing a project rather than its quality).  500 shows at the Edinburgh were free.  Prosumer technology abounds.  This August Twitter had 96 million unique users.

We are all producers now.  The financial cost of entry to a vast array of creative endeavours is approaching zero which means every moment we're not at work we're on the horns of a dilemma: -

Do I spend the next hour consuming someone else's creativity or producing my own?

But if you're serious about being self-employed in a creative field then this zero sum game should haunt your every waking moment.

Unless you're actively working on a sitcom script then watching Arrested Development reruns isn't 'research' its 'leisure'.  This is fine provided you label it as such.  Same with reading your favourite Blogs instead of writing your own or slipping into the back of a gig when you told yourself you'd be writing new material.  A stand-up comic on the UK circuit can even convince himself that time spent on Facebook is a bit like work.  Time spent reading this Blog is time you're not creating something worthwhile.

Likewise time spent writing it.  There's a hierarchy of creative activities:-

- a Tweet is not that Blog post
- a Blog post is not that new joke
- a new joke is not that sitcom pitch
- a sitcom pitch is not that novel or short story or screenplay or business plan

A fool and his time, etc.