I’ve been working in the design industry for roughly 7 yrs now and I’m still learning a lot of new things. The “Design Industry” is a very competitive place and you need to make sure that you are always up to date when it comes to the latest trends. It means that, aside from working my butt off 8-10 hours a day, I also need to find some time to study the new technologies and techniques (that keeps popping daily) to keep myself in the game and stay competitive. Failure to do so will result of you not being able to get some high profile clients and sometimes, losing your job. You need to adapt to the always changing trends in the design industry.

“Life is boring if you don’t “play”. You need to do something aside from work to keep yourself happy and healthy at the same time.”

Because of this, it’s kinda hard to find some time for yourself like playing games and working out. It’s also not fun anymore if what you’ll do for the rest of your life is work hard, earn money, and pay your bills. Life is boring if you don’t “play”. You need to do something aside from work to keep yourself happy and healthy at the same time. Every weekends, I always make sure to get some exercise by riding my bike. Cycling is my main hobby before I even start figure collecting. I usually do 40-60km every weekends (120km for the whole weekend). Working out is a must have with my current setup since I spend 80% of my time sitting in front of my computer.

Gaming also plays a big part in doing my job. I always allot 1-2 hours of my time daily to play games (Starcraft, Counter Strike, etc.). Actually, sometimes, I even play during work hours since gaming is my way of “kickstarting” myself before doing any design work. It basically makes my “design juices” flowing. Also, we designers experience a “phenomena” called the “Designer’s Block”. It’s an experience where we can’t basically generate any good design. It’s like our design skills are being disabled for no apparent reason and we can’t design anything at all. Playing games or doing something different like doing figure photography usually fixes this issue (at least for me).

“gaming is my way of “kickstarting” myself before doing any design work. It basically makes my “design juices” flowing.”

Below are some samples of my design and illustration work. I can basically do different design styles depending on the project or client specs (UI, Web, Print, Motion, etc). I was actually thinking of creating a separate link here on my site to share some of my designs and artworks I did in the past.

I don’t expect similar people to follow my advice but you should really try to somewhat find some time for yourself. Yes, work dedication is good and all since we all have mouths to feed and bills to pay. But it kinda beats the purpose of working hard if you don’t have the time to use your earnings and hard work to reward and make yourself happy. So the question is, do you still have time to play?