How Getting up Early Killed my Creativity

Being creative, being inspired, giving inspiration and having incredible ideas – it’s all the way I am and the way I want to be. Whenever anything disturbs my creative balance I feel wistful.

Instead of working on my new ideas, I start thinking about things I haven’t achieved. Completely unproductive…

There are different reasons for this creative stopper. Sometimes serious, sometimes not. It can be some a sort of tragedy or just a flat sandwich.

For me, there two such “small” things that really make me uncreative. It’s cold rain and getting up early.

People tend to tell me that I should control my own creativity and that it has nothing to do whether I stay up late or not. They often forget about the importance of rituals. I don’t mean religious ones, but everyday rituals.

How you prepare your meal, where do you like to get your tea/coffee, what you do before sleep, who you talk with and many more…

Those rituals create our everyday lives.

One of my favorite rituals was my evening “creative punch”. I would eat a small supper around 8pm and drink a hot tea. Then I would sit with a guitar, check the sheet I was working on, play for an hour, write some more notes and forget about anything visual. Only sounds, music and melody would appear in my head. An hour of playing is usually just a warm-up. My hands become warm, fast and precise. A beautiful feeling.

Around 9-10pm I would get another tea and a snack. It could be either fruit or chocolate. My first tea was usually normal black with a bit of fresh lemon juice. The second one was strong Pu-Erh. Many say it smells.. heh, I love that smell.

Now, my creativity would peak. It’s the time when I would just flow into my head and get the most of it. The stream of ideas is endless and unstoppable. My hands rarely can keep up with the tempo as I write, draw, sketch, check notes, set lighting, write code, design… you get the idea. It’s my high time, an extreme lot of emotions, ideas and thoughts.

So now you can imagine how getting up early (and going sleep early) changes the whole ritual. If I end up getting up at 5am for a longer time, I guess I would have to create and learn a completely new set of activities that would trigger that magic switch in my head.

And why cold rain? Actually I should have written strong cold wind with rain… I just hate it.

What rituals do you have? It maybe just a small thing, everyone has it differently, but I would love to hear yours.

Take care!

ps: it’s not that I need those rituals all the time, however, getting into a proper mood is very helpful and triggers many ideas.