We should strive to live a life of action rather than consumption!
There are three reasons why I believe this is the case:
The most effective and satisfying learning I do is when I have a meaningful application of my learning as the end goal. Without an application as the end goal, it is easy to hoard knowledge endlessly without ever actually using it.
"The Brazilian teacher Paulo Freire knows this from experience. He discovered that any adult can begin to read in a matter of forty hours if the first words he deciphers are charged with political meaning. Freire trains his teachers to move into a village and to discover the words which designate current important issues, such as the access to a well or the compound interest on the debts owed to the patron. In the evening the villagers meet for the discussion of these key words. They begin to realize that each word stays on the blackboard even after its sound has faded. The letters continue to unlock reality and to make it manageable as a problem. I have frequently witnessed how discussants grow in social awareness and how they are impelled to take political action as fast as they learn to read. They seem to take reality into their hands as they write it down." Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society
Creativity can roughly be summed up in the following equation:
Creativity = novelty + utility
If you make creative output into the real world your goal, by definition your aim will be to provide valuable goods or services to others. You will be making the world a better place.
If you are free learning, you face two economic challenges:
Making the end goal of your learning to share creative output into the real world can solve both of these issues.
In terms of the first issue, if your output has utility, people will pay for it.
For the second issue: focusing on creative output enables you to build up a portfolio of projects that you could show to a potential employer. Take GitHub for example - contributing to open source projects is an extremely strong signal to a potential employer that you are competent and can apply your skills in the real world.