This post belongs to Murfie Musings–a series where folks at Murfie and our guests take the time to share what Murfie is up to as well as explore issues that matter to media ecology.

My friend Pete’s post on Facebook sparked a conversation that I’ve been involved in before as well as sparked my imagination.

It’s common to identify oneself as one thing or another without realizing that we’re composed of all sorts of other things. Perhaps we’re more talented in one thing or simply prefer one over the other. But we are generally discouraged from acknowledging that we are composed of a variety of skills and passions due to the fear that cultivating these “non primary” skills will somehow “dilute” the primary skill. However, my experience demonstrates that the opposite is true.

I believe in variety and balance and I know that personally my best ideas have been inspired by exposure to diverse and unrelated topics (the TV show Connections demonstrates this well), so I propose a new CCC: Create, Curate and Consume.

The new CCC suggests consciously dividing your time into thirds and focusing each third on one of the three C’s (I’m not sure that thirds are correct, but it feels right).

Most likely one of the C’s comes so naturally to you that you’re unaware of even doing it, but working the other two into your schedule may require some conscious effort. Restraining yourself from the C you spend most of your time on now will require discipline as well.

You might be saying now “why would I stop doing what I’m best at?” I would counter by saying that even though you’re excellent at Cx, do you not find yourself at times lacking the will, or the ability (or even desire) to continue pursuing Cx? Embracing another C can sometimes help clear these hurdles, and in my personal experience it has both fortified and inspired me in the C that comes most naturally.

So what does this have to do with Murfie?

In a way, Murfie embodies all three activities in a microcosm. Through existing recordings, musicians contribute to the first C, Create; in addition to existing recordings, Murfie is actively working directly with musicians to explore ways to bring new recordings directly to our members.

Curation is handled by our members themselves, whose collections represent and reflect their personal taste in music. Through sharing these collections via Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist and other means, our members also select and present music to existing and prospective members. Here again we are working on new ways to make curation easier for members and provide news ways of sharing curative activity with other members and the rest of the world.

Surrounding all of this is the third C, Consume. This is the direction from which we see the most new members join our ranks, as consuming music is the easiest way to get started with Murfie.

Chances are you already engage in these three C’s without thinking too much about it, but I believe that making a conscious effort to balance the time you spend on them will improve both your experience as well as those around you. I’m going to conduct an experiment on myself to this end, and I invite you to join me and share your experiences in the comments below.

Postscript:
Why “new” CCC?  The original CCC stands for the Civilian Conservation Corps; which you can read about on Wikipedia.