I saw a post about other people’s creative rituals for working and I thought I would share mine…

As a freelancer I tend to not have set times to go to bed or to wake up. Quite a few of my clients live in other countries, in time zones well behind mine, so I need to be flexible with my hours. Under normal circumstances I go bed around 1am to 2am and wake up around 8am. What I try to do is stop going online after 11pm because it takes me a couple of hours to clear my head of all the computer code before I can go to sleep.

These are my creative rituals…

#1 Planning

No matter how well I plan, I get urgent update requests quite often. For me there is no point having a set schedule until I’ve checked my email and social media for any overnight requests. As I’m getting out of bed I fire up the emails and social media tools. It’s after that that I start planning out my day.

I tell all my clients that the worst possible time to email me for an update is a Friday afternoon because I have a school run, take the kids out then I’m out over the weekend with the kids. Even though they know not to email me on a Friday afternoon 70% of update requests come on a Friday afternoon. I try to keep early afternoons on a Friday clear, just in case.

#2 Coffee, coffee, COFFEE!

It usually takes me 30 minutes or so to do the above and now the coffee-fueled web designer starts to energise 🙂

# Social Media Routine

I have several tools I use for social media to help make me creative and efficient. They help me with following, unfollowing, following back, scheduling and sourcing news-worthy posts to tweet about. This is an important part of my day and usually takes an hour or so.

#3 Music

I often fire up the radio and I’ll be listening to either Capital radio or the Chill-Out station, depending on my mood.

#4 RedBull

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn’t… but it’s Soooooo good 🙂

I will drink a can or two during the afternoon to keep that caffeine level topped up and keep the speed of coding from dropping 🙂

#5 Walks

I am very lucky to live in a very beautiful place. When I need to clear my head I have a multitude of places I can go with views like this:

Nothing makes me more creative than views like that!

#6 Fishing

This is perhaps the single most important creative semi-routine for me. I try to get out as often as I can because nothing clears my head more than being out fishing (All fish photographed and returned alive!).

#7 Lighting

I like soft lightning. I have a red bulb and a red lampshade so in the evenings I have soft, warm lighting in my room.

So these are my creative rituals. Tweet me and let me know yours.