Consuming is easier than Producing

Consuming is a lot easier than producing. Right? Because I can read an entire book in less time than it takes me to write an entire book, even if my book is half the size. I can eat a meal quicker than I can make it. I can play a game faster than I can design it.

Producing is just hard. Okay, so it takes a lot more time, right? But is that the only reason it's hard? Like, watching a 20 second shot and filming a 20 second shot are both 20 seconds, but there's so much more to producing than just recording it down. I need to storyboard it, get costumes, actors, cameras, and a bunch of other stuff before I even film the scene. Then I have to record the same scene dozens of times. Then there's the editing process, sound effects, and, unless you're Christopher Nolan, GCI effects to add.

All of thise individual pieces take time, and it adds up. I think it's more than just the fact that it takes longer though. Well, if you want to make quality content. There's an episode of Monk (Mr. Monk Gets Married) where a person hides gold by melting it down and mixing it with ink, then writes in books to use the ink/gold, hiding the gold. That's a LOT of ink to get rid of, and a LOT of writing. So he just writes down random stuff. "June 12, 1856. Raining all morning. I had beef jerky for breakfast. There's a cloud in the sky that resembles President Pierce. This chair is squeaking. Something smells good. I love smoking 'tobaccy.' I just sneezed."

Anyone can write quantity, but it's quality that we're after. And, with the exception of Brandon Sanderson, people can't just write quality all of the time. They need to go back and re-write and revise and rework. I think that here is where the difficulty arises. When I produce, I want it to be quality stuff, not just a bunch of quantity. 

And so I think that that's the reason why producing is hard. Of course, I've heard people say that to get quality stuff you need a lot of quantity. Pretty sure I've heard that somewhere.