Do you guys have some tips to keep motivated and you know, creative?
There’s a healthy balance between forcing yourself to be creative, and just being creative because you feel like it. After enough years it should kind of strike an equilibrium, but for some, it takes longer.
Personally, I try to make sure that I am comfortable whenever I work. This can be anything from a drink of choice, to my favourite music cranked all the way up. I ‘ll always try to smoothen my workday as much as I can.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD -DO- SOMETHING ELSE
A surefire way to kill motivation is to over-indulge with forced creativity. This leads to exhaustion and frustration, so, for your own sake, get yourself a hobby outside of being creative ( and even multiple creative outlets too to swap between when one tires you out ). I’ve been to several art schools and courses and this is such an important thing. you need to be able to remove yourself from it all and just take a week off doing something non-creative from time to time. Myself, I LARP, RP, read comics and play video games. These things help me stay motivated by allowing me to do something else whenever I feel like my motivation is slipping. -Sleep-
Working crunch-hours is only helpful in small doses. Please remember to sleep, or you ‘ll suffer from all kinds of ailments that will negatively infect your creativity, no matter if you feel the negative impact or not.
That also means letting go on high, regular caffeine doses. the occasional cup of coffee is nice, and an energy drink during a heavy workload is okay. But keeping yourself in high gear for too long is, like sleep-deprivation going to kill your productivity over time. A tip: your body can only consume so much caffeine at a time before it hits a threshold. When this threshold is reached, you will find that you do not respond to caffeine with increased activity no more. To avoid this, cut out caffeine from your daily diet for a couple of days to allow your body to empty its caffeine deposits, and restore equilibrium again. Do this regularly, maybe take 3 days off the caffeine a week if you’re truly addicted. Otherwise, don’t feed your body caffeine for more than 2-3 consecutive days depending on your dose.
Stay healthy tooThis is going to sound really preachy, but your body needs you, and you need your body. Take time out to do something physically active every day. A brisk walk, an hour on the yoga-matt, anything helps. When we get too complacent just sitting and working non-stop, we forget the excitement and anticipation of having to hold off our productivity for a moment. And this kind of joy is vital to your motivation. This also keeps your body from degenerating, ( which, take it from me, whose working their way down from a full 110 kilo ) is going to be hugely beneficial to you. I know I know. I sound just like your mum, teacher and fitness-crazed friend - but please for the LOVE of all that is good, take care of your body. One artist to another.
And I’m not saying this as part of a discriminatory agenda: I’m telling you this because you only need a few years of stationary work before your physique starts to go into disrepair. Which is both expensive, debilitating, time-consuming, and painful. If you’re an artist - you should treat your body like your magnum opus. Your most viewed piece. Make sure it represents the artist in a way you, personally want it to.