I’ve always tried to be a morning person. There was something so appealing about being up at 4:30 in the morning, hitting the gym, being at the desk by 6am, and absolutely crushing the day. And I’ve definitely done it a few times in my life and it feels great. But after a few days, my body starts feeling pretty awful, despite trying to keep the schedule as much as possible. At first, I thought that I just wasn’t committed enough. Maybe I didn’t have what it took to be as successful as those “other” people and that I am just destined for normality. But then a thought came into my mind. Maybe it just isn’t MY ideal rhythm for how I work. This realization was very early in my adult life because I have always been focused on optimizing my body and productivity. But I didn’t really know where to start. One thing that I did know, I was not very good at waking up early, consistently that is.
I suppose part of the problem was the nature of the work that I do. I remember a few years back, during Apple’s WWDC keynote (I usually watch every Apple keynote and have only missed one or two of them in the past decade), they were giving a nod to developers and it showed this city shot with all the dark windows except for the few that had a light on for the developers that were still working. While I am not a developer, this has been very much my reality. In my experience, the creative rhythm is a difficult one to strike. And when planning out a day, it can be difficult to find when to be in a creative mindset, and when to be in a business mindset. Naturally, the business mindset usually gets applied to the working hours, and the creative mindset is planned around that. Client meetings, emails, accounting, production planning, more emails, discussing feedback on a product, putting out fires in the company, and then more emails. Before I know it, I have run out of time in the day and have to push the creative work to a time where I can’t be bothered, the night. Of course, I have tried to set boundaries, as most recommend, but it has only gotten me so far. Sometimes, you can’t really force people to work around your schedule, especially in the creative industry. But the nighttime gives me the space to let the creative mind takeover completely.
It’s a magical feeling when the creative mind takes control. For me, it usually happens around 11pm and lasts until 3am. My mind, whether I am working on a project or not, will just suddenly start to see things in a more creative way. I will begin to see films that I want to create, designs that I want to make, and stories that I want to tell. It comes rushing into my mind and I literally can’t fall asleep because my mind is so amped. My heart rate increases, my breathing gets a bit shorter, I find myself just needing to create. I used to not do anything about it. I would simply write the idea down and then try as hard as I could to fall asleep, often laying there tossing and turning. When I was at university, I would actually drive to the gym and workout for three hours in the middle of the night, just to get out the energy and think about the creative things that were going through my mind. Eventually, I decided to trust the process and create around that schedule.
When I can feel a creative wave coming, I prepare by setting my environment so that I don’t have to do much for about 5 hours straight, unbroken. This usually involves having a cup of tea, water, eating a big healthy meal right beforehand, working out before that, and also saying goodnight to the family. I have to create in solitude. I put on some instrumental music, allowing my mind to wander. I used to try and fight this wandering process, thinking that the longer I was lost in thought the later it would be in the evening until I began to create. After all, I would still have to go back to being functional the next day in the business mindset. This used to bring me anxiety and it made the creative process even harder because I would force myself into a “creative mindset” and the work would end up being far off of what I believed that I was capable of. But I tried to let go of that fact and just accept that wandering is part of the process. I know why I am sitting down to work, I just need to allow the mind to unwind and let go of everything that is holding on to so it can let the ideas flow. The creative work is still going on in the subconscious, regardless of the action I am taking any given moment. Then, I feel a spark and it’s off to the races.
There is this beautiful moment that always happens. And every time that it does, I smile. I begin to feel the creative flow creeping in, after allowing my brain to wander. It is this soft transition into the work and an excitement to dive deeper into it. It is almost as if discovering something new. There is a delicate curiosity to the work and an openness to allow it to go wherever it wants to go. But the beautiful part is not the discovery (although it is great), it is the passage of time. When I next look at the clock, it usually has been two to three hours. And every time, it feels like it has only been thirty minutes. It’s this weird phenomenon that I believe we all experience. It is that immersive feeling where time decides to melt away, the creativity flows into the work, and that leads to creating some of the best work that we didn’t believe was possible. When I see the clock and it suddenly says “2:35am,” I always smile.
I’m not saying that everybody should be staying up late working and depriving themselves of sleep. In fact, I know that sleep is incredibly important and I spend a lot of my time trying to optimize my sleep for recovery and to re-energize my mind. But what I am saying is that you should find when you sit down to do something for twenty minutes and it has suddenly been three hours. That, regardless of what it is, is your creative mind taking over. I have created some of my best work in those weird few hours in the middle of the night. And it is the work that I am most proud of. But I am not proud of the toll that it has taken on my body. Over the years, I have found myself to be increasingly tired, my mind not as sharp the next day, and the late nights harder and harder to do. Rather than seeing it as my creativity disappearing, I have decided to look at it as my creativity shifting and developing as I go through life. Now, I can almost create at any time of the day, but it is because of the process itself. It is the blocking out of the emails, silencing of the phone, and the commitment to the process of creating. It is the tea on the desk, the exercise before creating, and taking the time to allow my mind to wander. I used to think that it was purely the time of day that aided in my creativity, but it turns out it was the process all along.
I still find it difficult to shift gears, especially on a particularly heavy week when I have a lot of important meetings and my mind is focused on the growth of the company. Sometimes, the gears get stuck; while other times I can just shift without even thinking. But I don’t waver from my process, no matter what. I carry a notebook alongside my two journals every single day. Inside that book is simply the things that I want to accomplish every day, in every area of my life. It is separated by my personal side of my life and my professional side of my life. On the personal side, I have to accomplish a few things in order to continue to operate at my best professionally. This includes breath work, movement (gym or yoga), cold (lake, ocean, or cold shower), walk (usually with Jeff in the forest), and learn. I used to prioritize the breath work and the cold, but I have realized that every single one of them is important because it supports the entire system. I don’t have a particular schedule to accomplish them every single day but I make sure that, no matter what, I do them. This allows the flexibility of a day where I have certain responsibilities, but can always make time to accomplish everything. The work tasks will never end, especially if you run a company. So it is important to make sure you accomplish the big tasks each day for your professional side of your life, but accomplish the personal ones no matter what.
These goals every day for yourself, they don’t have to be the same things I do. In fact, I would hope that they are not. We are have our own unique perspective with how we see the world, what we value in the world, and how we see ourselves fitting into that. But I would encourage you to make your own list of things that bring you back to center, no matter what, every single day. This makes the easy days extremely productive and it makes the hard days easier to make progress. The key is to do it for yourself and to stick with it. I read somewhere that it takes a habit 90 days to actually be come a habit. So commit to 90 days of taking care of your own body and mind, allowing it to be creative in whatever way that means to you, and see how things work out. You may find yourself losing track of time in the best way possible.