Why this may be helpful for you
This is about why you need boring productivity techniques when you want to be spontaneous creative. Here, I want to give solid advice about what techniques you might try, because they are working for me. This is part of a series of articles which will run as long as I still have something to offer. I hope you give this train of though a try and it would be awesome to hear/read from you about this. If you’re in the mood for a bit more introduction, check the first article of the series. This fifth article is about a useful boost for your hardware.
Tip #6: Buy a SSD
That will be a short one: When you’re on PC and – have a digital step in your work flow – your should buy a Solid State Disk (SSD) to boost your system. When inspiration hits you, you don’t want to wait. A splash page is not that inspiring, especially if you already saw it a thousand times before.
I spent years and years buying more RAM and new / quicker PCs for the promise that they will be faster. Everyone was a disappointment until SSD came along. I’m on Windows 7 / 10 now and I won’t use a PC without SSD ever again. I own a regular PC and bought an additional internal SSD with a size of 128 GB (~ 60 € in Germany). I recommend to install the OS and your main program (for example Ableton Live) on this disk and put the bulk of data and other programs on your “normal” drives. That is only to save money and due to limited space on that disk: If you’re able/willing to invest more you can buy a bigger SSD and put all data on this drive. My “ready-to-create-time” went down from several minutes to 1-2 minutes. I’m not talking waking up from stand-by mode or hibernate, but a full Windows boot in this short time. Best investment, ever, puts a smile on my face every time I boot my machine. This is useful, too, if your creative process suffers from a lot of interruptions. This may be the case if you’re not a full-blown professional (sitting in your studio all day long) but a hobbyist who has some other stuff to do and a family next door.
So, when you need a PC to create, it should be up and running as fast as possible. SSD may be the boost you’re looking for.
-mE
productivemonkey 