From consumption to creation

I started college in 2009, when I was 17 years old. Thanks to a good enough laptop, free college internet, and an intranet that was chock full of pop culture, I consumed information like there was no tomorrow. And I'm trying to pull myself out of that mindset after 15 years.

That's not to say that I haven't created anything. I started this blog when I was in college. I used to organize sessions on popular astronomy as part of the student astronomy club. Towards the latter half of my college years, I wrote small snippets of code to simulate toy physics problems. In my final year, I publicly shared the code used for my thesis work. After graduating, for the past eight years, I have been contributing to the Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) ecosystem. I've fixed bugs, I've added features, I've helped with house-keeping. I've written marketing content for a product that I was working on. I've given talks on Python and the Python ecosystem.

But if I have to look back on the past 15 years and categorize it as consumption or creation, I would categorically classify it as consumption. I spent most of my time outside of school or work consuming content, whether that is books, music, web articles, tv shows, movies, documentaries, podcasts, YouTube, etc. It's not that content consumption has been a waste of time. Surprisingly, the content around the global FOSS ecosystem that I've consumed over the past decade, especially over the past five years, is one of the fundamental reasons why I'm with FOSS United today. And the content around software development practices has helped me become a better developer and a better mentor to younger developers.

The fact that I've spent a majority of the past 15 years consuming content instead of creating content isn't a new revelation to me either. I've become keenly aware of this fact, and more uncomfortable with this situation, over the past year. And six months into my role at FOSS United, I feel like I am at a tipping point where I need to drastically reduce how much I consume and lean heavily towards creation. Don't get me wrong. There isn't anything inherently wrong about consumption. A human being could meaningfully spend their entire life consuming information that is being created. Personally, I think i am finally interested in stepping out of my comfort zone to write more and read less.

Thankfully, my role at FOSS United leads naturally to more creation - I need to start and maintain conversations with communities that are interested in FOSS, I need talk to students and make then interested in contributing to FOSS, I need to attract and retain organizations that want to support FOSS. I've spent a majority of the past six months observing and making notes. And I believe it is finally time for me to kick creation into high gear.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. It was first described by Justin Kruger and David Dunning in 1999. Some researchers also include the opposite effect for high performers: their tendency to underestimate their skills. In popular culture, the Dunning–Kruger effect is often misunderstood as a claim about general overconfidence of people with low intelligence instead of specific overconfidence of people unskilled at a particular task.

- Dunning Kruger effect

Shifting gears from consumption to creation risks the possibility of me losing touch with the happenings of the FOSS ecosystem. The content I create risks becoming irrelevant sooner rather than later. Or, the foundations of the content might themselves be lacking because of my lack of changes in the ecosystem. I will always be afraid that I am overestimating my understanding of the concepts and that I am missing something fundamental.

But it feels like it is finally time to take that risk. I hope that the network around me will support me and enable me to consume only what is necessary. And I hope that the community around me will allow me the benefit of the doubt and forgive me for any mistakes I make.

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