– This update improves the stability, compatibility and security of your design life. Recommended for all users.
New years resolutions. Usually the by-product of a rare moment of drunken contemplation while killing time waiting for the countdown. Most are well meaning yet futile stabs at improving your life, calling your mum more often or not drinking for January. Both frustrating and will just cancel each other out anyway. Not what your typical Creative person needs in the long January wait.
Instead, try out some of our simple suggestions below to revamp your Creative lifestlyle and help you push it a step further. Nothing ground breaking or life changing. Just simple, practical advice, and then we’ll let you get back to all that work you should probably be doing instead.
#1 – Purge and De-clutter.
We’re all guilty of it, messy desks are the never-ending to-do’s on everyones Evernote list. Empty out those draws, shred or recycle those stale print samples, clean that sticky R key on your keyboard. Take a moment to harken back to the days of roller mouse balls and how disgusting yet satisfying it was to clean them out (you can achieve this same feeling with a iPhone lightening port and a paperclip). If like me you got a funky cookie shaped USB coffee coaster & warmer for Christmas, you’re going to need to re-arrange and find a new home for things, put some of your stuff in a colleagues drawer and make your desk look all neat and tidy. You may have people bemoaning you ‘a clean desk is a procrastinating worker’ they say, but feel free to retort to such cynics that you are creating a better workspace for working effectively. And that you’re armed with a hot plastic plate on a cable and shouldn’t be questioned wantonly.
#2 – Relight your fire
Passion is much like that wind up shower Radio you once thought would change you & your neighbour’s lives. But left un-used on the shelf it’s no use to anyone, you’ve got to furiously crank it up every now and then to breath some life into it and discover what you’ve been missing out on. Let the good times roll. One way our Paperhat Creative team did that recently was attend a creative lecture after hours. I forget what it was about, but I’ll be damned if we didn’t all feel creative when we were asked to doodle notes on paper and stick it to the wall afterwards for everyone to review. It was like being in school again. This strongly reminded me of why I much like being an professional creative, where I can feel productive and get inspiration from simply standing around with other tipsy creatives, waving a pint around while discussing peoples ideas and sketches with the sincerity of a real grown up adult. You can put some drive back into your passion in many simple ways like this and help keep your creativity flowing at full force again.
#3 – Get out of work more
Develop a taste for expensive coffee. It’s elitist lifestyle will reel you in to the point that you’ll find high street coffee shops too pedestrian and will actively go out of your way to seek out your fix. This also applies to craft beer, the results are the same – getting you out of the norm and breaking your habits mixes things up. Gives you time to mull over projects in the background. Maybe you’ll feel spontaneously adventurous one bleak Monday morning and try out a cinnamon Cronut that piques your interest. Who knows, maybe you’ll even survive it. Maybe you’ll go on to warn the rest of humanity of the heart stopping dangers on social media, only to discover an fledgling underground resistance movement that just so happens to need a logo. You never know, new opportunities can present themselves in unexpected places. Escaping the 5 walls of your studio to hunt down Guatemalan elephant coffee and more filters for your AeroPress can give you a better space to think and mix up your approach.
So there you have it. I did warn you this was remedial egg sucking for most creatives, but New Year resolutions are meant to be easily achievable anyway. For us creative types it really isn’t that hard to kick things into a different gear, you just need a bit of a nudge.
