Before enrolling in the Professional Communication program, many people told me that Making Media was the most exciting course where students can creatively make media production. As time passes, my Making Media course at RMIT is coming to an end with many fascinating, valuable lessons during the media-making process with Ms. Trang and my GIZACHOI team members. Besides the valuable design skills that will certainly be applied in my future career path in the media industry, the course helps me acknowledge the importance of time management skills to the productivity and creative thinking ability.

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Specifically, I realize that stressfully working near the deadline often leads to irrational decisions. This acknowledgment was obtained when our team did the magazine just one day before the presentation day. There were many worthless mistakes, such as missing in-text citation, using the wrong, inconsistent colors of text and background, etc. Fortunately, we recognized those mistakes and corrected them right in the morning of the presentation day.

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The reason behind this negative reaction toward stressful situations has been explained by the sympathetic nervous system of humans. According to Andrews et al. (2013), this system changes cortisol levels, increased heart rate in humans, and tends to be activated when a negative event occurs. Doing an exam or working near the deadline are examples which trigger this mechanism. Consequently, it leads to irrational decisions (Hewig et al. 2011). When we are in that situation, it is advisable to take a deep breath to calm the mind (Hodges-Schell & O’Brien 2015).

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This acknowledgement has significantly influenced the way I approach my future tasks, and assignments. I will start the tasks early to have sufficient time to finish those comfortably. Besides, I will be more mindful of my mental state. If I feel stressed, I definitely will take a short break or take a deep breath to calm myself down to minimize the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Therefore, I can make decisions with rationality, avoid any worthless mistakes.

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Besides, in the last 3-days finishing our magazine, I realized that insufficient sleep has detrimental consequences on creative thinking since I did not sleep well. There was a sleepless night for researching the content of the articles. Right on the day after, the design process for the magazine’s layout and photo editing apparently required my creativity to generate ideas. However, due to the low-quality sleep, I witnessed creativity degradation when our team brainstormed and discussed the magazine design. The ideas that I came up with were little, undistinctive, and took a long time to generate.

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Walker (2002) stated that sleep quality influences creativity, including the cognitive flexibility of the brain. According to Ritter et al. (2014), cognitive flexibility is the core factor affecting the brain's creative thinking. It indicates the brain’s capacity to switch between categories, avoid fixedness, and hence, think more creatively. Doing art or anything relating to design definitely requires this function. Sleep deprivation will result in deficits in cognitive flexibility (Honn et al. 2019). Consequently, our creative thinking ability is impaired (Jonn & Harrison 2001).

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Since I study in Communication and Design school, the understanding of the consequences of lacking of deep, sufficient sleep on the creative thinking ability is valuable. Because of that, I will never underestimate my sleep quality, especially when having a creative project. I have already started developing a timetable and disciplinarily stick to it to balance my study schedule with sufficient, high-quality sleep. Therefore, my creativity can be nurtured and enhanced so that I can brainstorm new ideas effectively. I can also avoid making irrational decisions in stressful situations due to the lack of time management.