I’ve recently read an article in an old Computer Arts mag (October 2007 issue) that was lying around. It was mainly about how other graphic designers keep their ideas and creativity fresh in the corporate world, as well as getting through a rough day of nine-to-five.

I was actually glad to read that another designer also chose to get up early in the morning to work on personal artworks and projects. And I’m not talking about deciding to or not to get out of bed at 6 a.m. I’m talking about 04:00 hours. The time some people come home from a night out. Or the time bakers in the old world are already awake and baking the nth batch of fresh bread.

Up until this day, every time I mention that to people around me they’d think I’m a little desperate and should re-schedule my time, since “If you love something, you’ll always find time for it.” Yup it’s true, but hey sometimes your battery is just drained at the end of a long and fruitful day. And guess what, I found the time!

Going all the way back, the first time I tried hopping out of bed at four in the morning was back in my school days, just to get some homework done. And then of course I stopped after leaving school — A couple of months back though, I got up to hit the road for a couple rounds of jogging. I was standing at the front door, that’s when I noticed the world around me was just silent, streets were empty and I only could hear a bird or two twittering in the distance. You could say the atmosphere was like past midnight and your standing in the dark, in the middle of the living room.

After that I just had to try out working on a few projects, since I was desperately looking for time to work on some artworks. Getting through a long day and coming home, the only thing you sometimes want to do is just get to some video gaming or you end up watching some reality show you’d usually hate to watch.

That one morning I got down to some work on personal sites and ideas I had swimming in my head. And guess what? As if everything just happened magically, new ideas started emerging - they weren’t the greatest but I was thinking about the projects and artworks in front of me. Not that I’m saying the pieces I was working on turned out to be some kick-ass portfolio piece. But what really happened is I was actually was able to work on some personal stuff for the first time in a long while and I had the time to experiment and play. Something I haven’t done in ages.

I’m not really sure if it was a fluke, oddly enough on those days I got up early to work on my stuff, the ideas at the office came easier.

Let’s just say waking up early and being “creative” is like the warm-up before you get to the actual work-out. Instead of jumping in to warm-up-mode at 8:58a.m. when you enter the office, you’re actually already run-in and ready to tackle the problems of the day.

Yes, of course if you don’t go to bed early enough and you pull something off like that, you are bound to be really burnt out at the end of the day. Trust me I’ve been down that road once too many, but that’s not something Redbull can’t fix…