More often than not, I go to bed thinking my creative output of that day has been dreadful. Maybe I’ve written a few chapters of a story. At the time, I felt productive and obviously felt like moving the story in the direction I chose. You can’t write down 3,000 meaningful words if you hate every part of your story in that moment.
But then night arrives. I look back at what I’ve done and I think: “Ugh. It’s all shit. Why even continue?”
I noticed this trend several years ago. I also noticed that it’s usually not true. If I just go to bed and try again the next day, this entire thought is gone. I wake up, I boot my laptop, and I continue that story as if I never doubted its value.
And so I learned not to listen to that voice. For years now I’ve expected my brain to look back on the day and always remember the work I’ve done as worse or less usable than it actually is. And I just ignore it. I don’t even let myself open the story again to check something, or open the picture of the illustrations I’ve made, because I know I’m not thinking straight in that moment. When the next day comes, and I’ve had a good night’s sleep, I can open the story and think “it’s actually quite good, let’s continue”.
This realization has helped me a lot, but I’ve noticed few people actually realize this.
That’s the first lesson of this short article: You’re Just Tired
After a long day, you’re too tired to objectively see the value of what you’ve done, especially if it’s creative work (and you’re a perfectionist). So don’t trust that voice. Ignore it, go to bed, restart tomorrow. It’s insane what a good night’s sleep can do for your confidence, your motivation, your perspective on yourself or your work. In a way, you “fix” doubts and insecurities by simply … not doing anything about it. In fact, by not doing anything at all! You just go to bed and recharge.
Recently, however, I’ve noticed another way in which this hurts me (and other people). A way I wish I’d known sooner, because it’s perhaps even more important.
Besides thinking about your work or passing judgment, you also sometimes make decisions at night (or when you’re tired in general). And these two things are a terrible combination.
If you already feel like you’re not doing any good work … and then you’re tired and you hit another obstacle … it’s tempting to make a major, sweeping, consequential decision right then and there to (for example) drop the entire project.
Looking back at my early work, I can clearly see this pattern. I even checked the dates on my notes or latest updates to said projects.
I have never abandoned a project during the day.
All the unfinished stories, unfinished games, half-recorded songs, I “gave up” on all of them during the evening or late at night. And the percentage of projects I dropped this way is far larger during periods where I was tired in general. For example, when I had to come back to university to finish my degree, it was incredibly hard. I remember being tired all the time just from having to motivate myself to do anything for that degree.
I didn’t actually have less time. (I only had to come back to get the final 2 of the 32 required grades.) My ideas and the projects I chose weren’t less promising. But because I was tired, I pretty consistently abandoned promising projects more than I finished them.
This is just silly. It’s the second lesson of this article: Don’t make any meaningful decisions after 6 o’clock. :p
Or, well, when you become tired (and you’ve done most of your day) depends on your schedule, of course. But you get the gist of it. Once there is any chance that you’re just tired, which is likely to be after dinner, do not make any major decisions. Don’t decide to drop a project. Don’t break up with someone. Don’t impulse buy something.
If you check my history, you can see that I became far more productive a few years ago. A rate of productivity that I’ve easily sustained and even surpassed. Well, this has been one of the subtle changes that made it all possible. I stopped making decisions about projects when I was tired. Instead, I delayed them to the next day, after a good night’s sleep.
And guess what? I never actually thought the project was worthless and gave up on it the next morning.
Maybe what I’d written wasn’t great, but it was salvageable. Maybe that illustration I’d done was actually quite good, I merely needed to fix one bad color choice. Or maybe there were no issues at all and my tired brain just defaulted to being perfectionist and remembering the details of my work wrong.
There have been SO MANY TIMES I woke up in cold sweat, far earlier than my alarm clock, because my brain was like: “Oh no! You made a major, major mistake in that story/code/drawing of yours!” A thought that cuts straight through my dreams and somehow wakes me up.
It was only right 5% of the time. All the other times, my tired brain had just misremembered what I’d done or not registered that I already fixed the issue long ago. It’s happening less and less now. And even if it does, I just write it down in my notebook and go back to sleep. I barely ever check what’s in my notebook anyways :p
That’s the article. If you recognize any of this, realize that you’re just tired. Don’t make decisions or pass judgments about anything in that state. Let it be, go to bed, and restart tomorrow. Most likely, you’ve completely forgotten all the reasons you thought you were doing something wrong or useless, and you’ll just continue on your merry way.