Sagmeister on being inspired & experimental projects

Stefan Sagmeister likes hotel rooms as engines of inspiration. Especially when he just checks in to a new one, when he's away from the studio and has an uncluttered mind. But I love his insistence that good designers should schedule "regular" "non-client-driven" experimental projects. He keys in on the word "regular" to emphasize that such projects, which do not bring in income and may actually lose cash, should not be bumped from the work flow to make room for profitable corporate or paying projects. You can't really experiment on a client's time, and without experiment you cannot grow your creative skills; intuition and insight depend on repeated failure in laboratory-like thought processes. I'm very fortunate that I haven't had many corporate clients or paying gigs in the past ten years, so each of my projects results to some degree in outright failure. Does this mean that I am getting "better" as a producer and creator? I certainly have more inspiration and insight than ever before, and these elements in my thinking and spirit seem to grow markedly not on a calendar or clock but by each attempt at expression and by each abandonment of an expression to follow a new muse or moment.