Are you Maker or a Taker?

I spent an hour (and maybe more) last night on my phone, and I can’t tell you a single thing I learned or really remembered from that hour.

I was in that very familiar “doom-scroll-state”, you know, that hypnotic trance of 100% consumption—fully locked in. And yes, I should know better. I was switching between X, Substack, YouTube, Instagram, and even Strava and checking out all the posts, lives, shorts, and clips of just random crap.

I went to bed feeling full, but not satisfied. It was a feeling I think we all know too well.

This whole experience got me thinking about a simple, fundamental divide in our world: the one between the producers and the consumers. The makers and the takers.

From the moment we’re born, we are all consumers. We need food, water, warmth, and love. These are non-negotiable inputs. Our educational system, for the most part, continues this programming. It’s basically a 20th-century model built to create efficient employees. We were taught to sit down, be quiet, and consume a curriculum. The test was to see if we could repeat the information back. We were being trained for an assembly line, even if it was a white-collar one.

But at some point, a life of pure consumption starts to feel hollow. It becomes a detriment.