Mistaking the collecting for the creating

Many of the tools for creative organization and visual bookmarking are actually just digital hoarding platforms in disguise.

Users spend hours at a time loading up their boards with beautiful pictures of recipes, crafts, home decor, inspiring quotations and travel destinations.

But nobody is actually doing anything. People aren’t cooking, traveling, or redecorating, they’re just collecting.

It’s inspiration, not execution.

Which is fine if that’s your goal. Finding your happy place, sharing your ideal self through personal bliss collages, that serves a useful purpose in life. It’s a lovely respite from the chamber of horrors of human existence.

But let’s be careful not to mistake the collecting for the creating. Perfecting the art of hoarding, drifting from one set of pictures to another, pinning away our plans for the future, there’s no growth there. If we spend valuable time that we intended to spend on doing actual projects only looking for more projects, then all we’ve done is procrastinated in a really pretty way.

If we uphold this save it for later mentality with everything we do, then we will never get around to doing any of the things we saved.

That’s my philosophical objection to digital hoarding platforms. It turns people into list makers, not opportunists. We develop an addiction to the instant gratification of having something without truly needing to possess it. That feeds our materialistic instincts with virtual things and experiences.

And we justify our compulsion because there’s no requirement of physical space or money to maintain it.

Researchers at the national institute of health have been trying to classify digital hoarding as a new subtype of hoarding disorder for a while now. Their hypothesis is:

The accumulation of digital files can lead to a loss of perspective, which eventually results in stress and disorganization. Although digital hoarding does not interfere with cluttering of living spaces and personal hygiene, it has an immense impact on daily life functioning.

Now, there’s not enough data currently to have a statistically significant theory, but it’s only a matter of time.

How much time are you spending on digital hoarding? Have you ever convinced yourself that you were creating when you were really just collecting?

It’s easy to get sucked in. Because it feels so satisfying. Each picture you save makes you feel one step closer to your goal. Like it’s already become part of your identity. And by sharing those pictures with the entire internet, it tricks your mind into the social reality that you’ve actually accomplished something.

Once again, we’re mistaking collecting for creating. And frankly, that’s not why we’re here on this earth.

Each of us has been born with amazing talents, and our job as human beings is to regift those talents in a way that improves humanity.

We don’t need to save another picture of a beautiful thing from somebody else’s life, we need to go make beautiful things ourselves.

Are you a creator or a collector?