Find a Way to Go To Sleep
I fixed up my sleep schedule in late April/early May. I didn't think I had a problem until I realized that going to bed at 11 and waking up at 7:30 means nothing if you don't actually rest between those hours.
All my screens are off by 8:45pm now and I read before I doze off (Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth is like reading an informative meme before passing out). Sleep is more effective, exercise is more productive, and there are far fewer 'random' headaches or a need for mid-afternoon naps.
Best of all though, I can definitely feel a big difference in my creativity and endurance during creative tasks.
I took a weird hiatus in late 2023 after releasing SERAPH. It wasn't really intentional but I was burnt out from a handful of life events, some music-related, some not. I wrote or produced something daily but it became more of a job than the thing I'd always loved to do.
Not sleeping made it a million times worse than it would've been, and hindsight is 20/20.
I'm grateful to be someone that doesn't know when to quit because I think I could've easily called it a day and left music alone forever during that time period. Part of the creative journey is just stumbling along the way, and accepting that you might stumble for years.
It's much more human to figure out what went wrong and correct it. It's also much more human to refuse to outsource your autonomy for a soulless, cheap shortcut.
I used to say I was busy a lot, really I was "tired busy." Today I'm happily busy.
Find a way to go to sleep.