Output before Input

How do you start your day? What are the first things you do when you wake up?

I believe most of us function kind of on autopilot. Because honestly, those people who jump out of bed full of energy are probably more the exception than the rule. Or do you think it’s normal to wake up at five in the morning, take a cold shower, meditate while watching the sunrise and by seven already have founded three new companies?

You probably wake up, take a shower, make some coffee, get ready for work. And, somewhere in the middle of all that, you probably check your phone a few times. Or several. Or maybe you were already checking it before you even got out of bed.

I, for example, used to brush my teeth while checking my notifications or scrolling through Instagram. Within a few minutes, my head was already full.

A message to reply to. Work from someone I admire. An insane project happening on the other side of the world. A news story. A cat video. Another video. Someone running at 5 a.m. and starting their company by 7. It’s kind of crazy when you think about it.

Our brains naturally react to whatever catches our attention, and notifications, messages and this whole flow of information do exactly that. They interrupt whatever was happening inside our heads and make us respond to something that came from outside.

So, in practice, I would wake up with my mind in probably the quietest state it would be in all day, and the first thing I would do was open the door and let all that noise in.

Until I heard an artist called Tom Sachs talk about “Output before input”, meaning: produce before you consume.

So now, when I wake up, I brush my teeth, go to the kitchen table and do this exercise. Sometimes I write, sometimes I draw, I could paint, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is expressing yourself in whatever way feels right to you. Opening that channel out.

There’s no obligation to create something good. Much less a work of art. In fact, it’s important that there isn’t that pressure.

The idea is simply to get something out of your head before the whole world starts putting other things into it.

It can be a thought, a memory, an idea, something that’s bothering me, a completely random sentence.

I just let it out.

And the funny thing is that, even though I’m a painter, lately a big part of all this has been coming through writing.

I haven’t been doing it for that long, but I’ve already noticed a few changes.

First, my days simply start better.

There’s something very different about starting the day reacting to the world and starting the day by creating something of your own.

When you create first, references help you build something that has already started inside you.

When you consume first, sometimes it’s hard to even tell where the reference ends and where your own desire begins. And I believe that goes way beyond art.

There was also something I didn’t expect.

I started noticing patterns! I don’t keep rereading everything I wrote on previous days, but when you realize you’ve been complaining about the same thing for the third week in a row, something happens.

You start thinking: “Maybe the problem isn’t exactly what I thought it was”, other points of view start appearing and some changes begin to become clearer.

Because during those minutes there’s no Instagram, no messages, no one else’s opinion.

It’s you and yourself. And yeah, maybe that scares you a little.

But I think that if spending a few minutes alone with your own thoughts feels scary, maybe that’s exactly a sign that you should try it.

Change creates insecurity. Our minds prefer to keep walking through a chaos they already know rather than step into a kind of peace they still don’t know how to deal with.

We live in a time where practically every empty second can be filled with something.

Waiting in line? Phone! Elevator? Phone! Breakfast? Phone! Silence in a conversation? Phone!

We barely let our minds be alone anymore, and maybe some of our best ideas need exactly that empty space to appear.

And it doesn’t need to be an hour. Ten minutes, man!

If your first reaction is “I don’t have ten minutes in the morning”, open your Screen Time. I’m sure they’re in there. 😂

I don’t want to turn this into another obligation or into one of those stories about how there’s some perfect routine capable of transforming your life.

There isn’t!

Some mornings I’ll still pick up my phone first.

The difference is that now I understand the value of protecting a small space before letting the rest of the world in. Of creating before consuming.

Of getting something of mine out before receiving hundreds of things from everyone else.

Output before input.

Tomorrow, before picking up your phone, try giving yourself those ten minutes.

Write. Draw. Scribble. Create something. It doesn’t matter.

You don’t need to show anyone. Maybe you don’t even need to look at it again.

Just try to see what happens when, for a few minutes, the first voice you hear in your day is your own.

And if one day you want to tell me what those ten minutes changed for you, I’ll be more than happy to hear your story!