Producing enlivens me. But it should be noted that there is delineated class of things that does so. Making a meal or roasting coffee might do it to a degree, but, as a general rule, the productions in question are limited to those in which the inserted intentionality is unquestioned.

I am thinking of cases like doodling an image of myself. Or emailing. Or choosing one mode of expression over another synonymous with it. In performing the way I do, I thereby extend outward.

This, I think, is what Hofstadter has in mind in his I Am a Strange Loop. Yet I can only guess. (I have only read reviews.)