First things first. If you drink booze, hot whiskey is one of the best things for a cold. It's boiling water, Irish whiskey, a slice of lemon with whole cloves stuck in it, and some sugar. It's amazing for a head cold and sore throat. It tastes amazing, it soothes your throat, it clears out your sinuses, and it leaves you feeling no pain :)
On to the design stuff.
Like everyone else, I use google and Pinterest and that sort of thing. But, more importantly for me, I read a lot of design books. Google definitely helps with the quick fix and "how do I do this thing that I know I can do in Photoshop BUT IT WON'T LET ME!" And Pinterest and Behance and Dribbble help with inspiration and with showing me all the things that CAN be done.
But I find reading design books helps me gain context and maintain (mental) perspective. I can learn how other people think through problems, how their minds work through a design. And I can take from that what will and won't work for me. Just following through someone else's intellectual process can help me create my own. I don't treat them as gospel, but I can evaluate them to see what I can incorporate in my own design work. I hope that makes sense.
I also work full-time (and have a part-time gig with a theater company). And try to have a social life. Sometimes, I really have to be conscientious about making time for reading. But I think it really does help me tremendously.
Additionally, I think that working outside the design field has some opportunities as well. We're surrounded by design. Library products and websites are some of the most poorly designed products out there. Studying what does or--perhaps more importantly--doesn't work in the design we see every day can significantly impact how we think about and execute our own designs. Artistic schadenfreude, in a sense, with a positive outcome.
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