A little experimentation is always part of life. Mine, and I am certain of it, yours too.

I have plugged in my typographer’s keyboard and treat this as a new kind of practice.

Today was spent on undoing one of my own experiments: I’d added colored stickers to the spines of those books which were reading and study material during my graphic design study.

But, unlike the patches of colored paper, the system I use didn’t stick. I actually can’t even recall the colors properly: green was for design, blue was for? And black? Was black some kind of foundational knowledge?

So armed with soapy water, a toothbrush­−and later one of those nail‑polishing devices run on batteries−I’ve spent the afternoon and the early evening on removing these stickers.

For the most part, this worked fine with most books, but some types of coated papers proved more rugged than others. Would be interesting to know which were which. Maybe some other time for researching?

But what I’ve noticed was my complete disregard for separating work time from leisure time: I don’t think that I’m enjoying doing menial things like removing stickers. But I think I believe that getting things done today, at the expense of leisure, is better than continuing tomorrow.

There are those among you reading this who already know how flawed this kind of “work ethos” truly is. And there are those who will be surprised by how burning out and working overtime are connected.

I for one believe that this idea of doing as many things as possible in one day has hindered my own development more than anything else has: if I overdo it today, I will not regenerate in time until tomorrow comes around.

I will use this spot on the web as my after‑hours blog where I can reflect a little about how I progress and change, both as a graphic designer and as a student of design.

I have a schedule for myself. I have office hours. And I want to also have days where I can use an out‑of‑office message because I need to focus on a particular tough design or skill issue.

And boy, are there many of those!

I’ll keep track of my hours and learn to switch modes from work to free time more easily. I have an incredible log‑keeping book for that, made by a German company, which I barely used these last weeks because I simply did not reserve the time for myself. I’ll see to change that asap.

Source: My after‑hours blog on Tumblr Code & Canvas