There is a quiet anxiety that runs through modern life, and most of us feel it even if we can't quite put our finger on it or give it a name. The feeling that there isn't enough. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough food in the fridge, not enough fuel in your car, not enough opportunity, not enough recognition. Just not enough. We scroll, we shop, we stream, we consume, there’s all this stuff that bombards us every day. There’s so much of everything. There are so many people doing things that we didn’t, don’t, can’t, won’t. Somehow, even with all of this everything, the feeling only grows. The well gets shallower the more we drink from it.
This is not an accident. It’s the only logical outcome of a life based on consumption.
Originally, Rule #52 was: "If you only ever consume, everything will always be running out. When you create, nurture, and produce; abundance follows." Hopefully the TL;DR version does not lose any impact. It sounds simple. Almost too simple. Like a motivational poster that doesn’t really mean anything. A thing that people say to seem profound but without scratching beneath the surface of it. A smile on their mouth but not in their eyes. A cold, dead look with a hand out and the expectation that you’ll fritter away your resources to pay for this meaningless jumble of words. The most important truths are always simple on the surface but hold within them depth and an opportunity for you to think for yourself.
Stop for a moment and reflect on what consumption feels like in the moment. It feels good. Buying something new delivers a small but real hit of satisfaction. And it’s often actually delivered. A nondescript cardboard box holding dopamine. Hopefully you’ll actually use the thing after you buy it, too. Hell, people even watch unboxing videos to get some of that second hand goodness. But it’s not just about buying physical things. Watching a great series, eating a delicious meal, reading a brilliant article, listening to the perfect song. None of these things are bad. Human beings are designed to take pleasure in beauty and experience.
Consumption itself is not the problem. When consumption becomes the only mode you operate in, though, that’s where things begin to fall apart. When you are purely a consumer, you are always dependent on something outside yourself to fill you up. This arrangement has no end. There is no final shovel full that fills the hole. The more you consume, the larger the hole gets. Madness, right? That would be like if you were eating and instead of getting full you got hungrier! Psychologists call this hedonic adaptation. The new car stops feeling new. The promotion stops feeling special. The dopamine hit fades faster each time, and you need a bigger one to feel the same effect. Suddenly you find yourself looking at other cars on the road with desire. You want something else. Something more.
Consumption, by its nature, depletes. It drains your time, your money, your attention, and gives nothing back in return. If you only ever withdraw, eventually the account runs dry. You feel this already. Look at your actual bank account. A game of keepy-uppy where everyone and everything wants a piece, and you scramble to the end of every month just to top the balance up again.
There is a better way. I'm not going to tell you to stop consuming. That would be like telling you to stop breathing, and that only ends one way. The better way is simpler than that. Start by creating something.
Making Things Changes Everything
I’m going to be Captain Obvious here for a moment. Creation works differently to consumption. Scientifically, you cannot create or destroy energy. So we’re not really creating in that sense. But in a way consumption feels like destruction. A destruction that we are all addicted to. Creation then is the antidote to that addiction. Once you begin to create, the difference is almost physical. The dopamine doesn’t come from the easy task of consumption. It comes from solving problems because creating is actually difficult.
When you make something, you are no longer waiting for the world to hand you a feeling. You are generating one. Creating doesn’t have to be “making” per se. You could be writing a business plan, a novel, a blog post. It can be planting a vegetable garden, building a piece of furniture, recording a podcast, raising a child (after all you’re effectively creating a future adult in that glorious chore). You could be cooking a meal from scratch instead of ordering delivery or going to a takeaway. It could even be work related. But let’s leave that one alone for a moment. There’s other problems down that route. Creation is when you add something to the world that wasn't there before. That act has a compounding quality that consumption will never have.
Let’s take the vegetable garden example. Think about what it actually means to grow a garden. You start with seeds. Maybe you got them from someone or bought them in a shop. They cost almost nothing. You put them in soil, you water them, you tend to them and nurture them. Weeks later you are pulling real actual food out of the earth or from a stem or branch. You didn't consume your way to that onion, or carrot or tomato. You created a garden where it grew. With the right care and attention, the right weather and some luck you'll probably have more vegetables than you can eat. With more luck, you'll get the seeds needed for the next growing season out of it too. That's the nature of creation. It tends toward surplus.
As an aside… if you do decide to grow vegetables, grow ones you will eat. Don’t pick the ones that look fancy or seem “cool.” There’s nothing worse than growing something that goes to waste. Start small and simple. Grow the ingredients for a mirepoix (carrots, celery, onion). A tomato vine. Overwinter garlic or leeks. Corn. Peas. Beans. Ok, ok, I’ll stop.
The same dynamic of surplus from creation plays out everywhere.
If you write and publish regularly, it builds a body of work that will continue to reach people long after the writing is done. The mentor who invests in a younger colleague creates a ripple effect of growth that neither of them can fully trace. The parent who nurtures a child is, quite literally, creating the future. The volunteer who cleans up a stretch of road makes the area better for everyone in it. Creation will not only fill you up, it will overflow.
Let’s Not Forget Nurture
I mention three things as the antidote to excessive consumption: creating, nurturing, and producing. That middle word is the one that will be easy for you to skip over, and it might be the most important.
Nurturing is what makes a single act of creation into a lasting abundance. You can plant the seed, but if you don't water it, it may not grow. You can write the first chapter, but if you don't return to it, there's no book. You can finish the book but not edit or publish and nobody will ever know about it. You can start a business, but if you don't tend to the relationships, the culture, and your craft, whether that’s making a product or providing a service, it will stagnate and fail.
Nobody has time for patience anymore. It's unfashionable, practically a character flaw. We live in a world that rewards speed and novelty above everything else. Something new every thirty seconds. A new video, a better frontier AI model, new car, new clothes, new opinions, new wars. The idea of returning to the same thing, day after day, tending to it without any guarantee of reward, feels almost absurd. For the generations raised on instant delivery and algorithmic feeds, patience is suspicious as well as difficult.
Nurturing requires patience. Here's where the trouble starts.
The internet makes it feel like billions of people are constantly doing extraordinary things, and somehow you are not one of them. Everyone is launching something, building something, shipping something. That comparison freezes you. You sink back into the couch, reach for the phone, and do the only thing that reliably makes the feeling go away, even if only for a few minutes. Back to the dopamine. Back to the scroll. Afterward, you’ll feel worse than before.
Abundance doesn't come from a single heroic act. It comes from showing up to the same thing, again and again, long after the initial excitement has worn off.
An oak tree doesn't grow from an acorn overnight. A successful business doesn't happen on day one. Your meaningful life will not be assembled from a flat pack in a weekend. These things have to be grown or built. It requires you to put something into them, not just feed from them. You will need patience and concentration. Effort.
Abundance Is Not The Goal
Here's something interesting about the word "abundance" in this context. I’m not saying "create things so that you can have abundance." It says abundance follows. It's a by-product of the process of creation. To borrow from Dr Seuss, This may not seem very important, I know, but it is, so I'm bothering telling you so.
When you create purely for external reward, for money, for fame, for validation, it’s likely that you will find the work hollow and the success, when (if) it comes, unsatisfying. You’ve just found a way to keep digging that hole with extra steps.
The people who seem to genuinely thrive are almost always people who are so absorbed in the act of making and tending to something that the abundance catches them by surprise. A writer who hones their craft ends up with a readership. A craftsperson who builds quality products ends up with a waiting list. The teacher who pours everything into their students ends up, decades later, surrounded by a community of people whose lives they shaped.
Abundance exists as the byproduct of creation because that generates value. It generates connection, skill, identity, meaning, and sometimes, eventually, material reward. It won’t come though if you lead with the getting, not the making.
So what does this actually look like, in a practical sense? Why all the words, Shane?
Start smaller than you think. Changing from full-time consumer to starting to be a creator isn't an immediate jump. It's a decision, made once and then often, to add something to your world rather than only take from it.
Write. Build. Cook. Teach.
Starting that project you've been thinking about. Say yes to something that requires you to make instead of simply buy. Don’t just Surf, Click, Pay and wait. Use the things around you to make the thing you need. The opportunity to consume and get those dopamine hits will always be there. The streaming services aren't going anywhere. The scrolling is always available. Make some room in your day, real room, for the other thing.
Once you experience the particular satisfaction of looking at something that didn't exist before, you start to understand what I’m really trying to get at. It's not a life hack. Or easy. It won’t yield results straight away. It might frustrate you even.
Sure, you’ll keep consuming. But create more. Nurture what you've made. Produce with intention. The abundance will follow.
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