Bobby Chiu's Routine

Just read this in an email notification. Offhand, it seems to makes sense. It's hard to create a routine in a creative atmosphere FEATURED ARTICLE Five Key Elements of a Great Routine from Bobby Chiu By Flynn Ringrose Number One is to wake up hours before your day job begins and spend that time doing your own stuff. This is very effective, but it’s difficult to keep up with because it often means you have to get up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning and that’s especially difficult in the Winter when the Sun isn’t even up at those times! This is great because, one, you’re beginning the day doing a hard thing which makes you feel good because you started off with something challenging. Two, when you get up hours before work and do your own art, you’ll see results, that you created something, and that makes you feel even more productive. Why give your best hours, and this is weird to say, but why give your best hours to your job? Why not give it to yourself which will in turn, benefit your job? Number Two is, don’t do emails until the afternoon. If you email them in the morning, then they might respond to you in the afternoon and you’ll have to respond to them twice in a day, instead of just once. Number Three, make your to-do list the day before you need it. I like to write my to-do list around 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. Just go through it ahead of time to update it with what’s important now and what you’ve finished. This is important because if you come into work in the morning and you know exactly what you need to do, you’ll be more efficient. If you don’t write down the first thing to do tomorrow, that’s when you’ll stand around the water cooler talking to your friends, get a coffee, look on the internet, whatever it is. It’s hard to get momentum when you start off slow, but it’s very easy to keep momentum when you come in running. You get through so much more stuff that way. Number Four, spend a minimum of 5% of your income back into your art. Spend this money on education for yourself, equipment, and networking. Equipment meaning a new computer, art materials, etc. Networking means going to conventions, workshops, that kind of stuff. A minimum of 5%. For me, because of Schoolism, I’ve been able to go way beyond that because I don’t need to spend money a lot of times to educate myself so I can spend money on other things such as attending events but after a while you get invited to events so you have to spend that money elsewhere and so on. As you start down your artistic path, that’s what’s going to happen to you and it’s going to get harder and harder to spend that 5% which makes it even more awesome. Number Five, always find room for non-urgent but important things. There are usually consequences you strive to avoid that force you to attend to super important and urgent matters in your life. Like you’re going to lose your apartment, the taxman is going to knock on your door, whatever it may be. But the things that aren’t urgent but are important, those are the things that are going to excel your life. Like maybe learning how to use ZBrush, even though you just like to paint. That’s going to help you in some way, you might not know how, but it’s just like how Steve Jobs learning typography helped him make the Apple Computer. Stick to those five things, and you’ll notice dramatic improvement in your productivity and career if you haven’t already. Bonus Q&A Does a routine really make a difference in your art? A lot of artists swear by only doing art when they feel like it. Do you think that’s dangerous just waiting around for inspiration? Man, the people who are waiting around for inspiration, they’re in trouble most of the time. Especially if you’re working on a film, waiting for inspiration, and you don’t do anything all day. Then what are you going to tell the director? What are you going to tell the producer? You can’t do that! And actually, the routine helps with that because if you have a good routine, you generally won’t have bad drawing days if you just stick with that routine. The only time I experience bad drawing days is when I don’t stick with my routine. Was there a time when you thought that you’d never need a routine? Totally, that was part of the reason I wanted to be independent, because I wanted to do my own thing and I didn’t want people telling me what to do and when to do it. Then business started picking up, and more and more people wanted to work with us. And when you want to work on more stuff, and accomplish more things, you need to have a routine to maximize your time. If you just go by the seat of your pants, you’re not going to accomplish as much. You might accomplish more interesting things perhaps, but not as many productive things.