Creativity isn’t something that you can turn on like a tap. Here are ways to stay creative even when the flow of inspiration runs dry.
Our time is limited. While it must be lovely to be able to leisurely make music when inspiration strikes, few if any of us have that kind of trust fund lifestyle. For most of us, music production is a part-time endeavor, a hobby, a side hustle. We have to cook when the time allows, not when we get the inclination. Some of us are full-timers, and while we may have more hours in the week to make music, the pressure is also more intense. This is our job, not just a hobby, and if we don’t deliver, we don’t eat.
How then to stay inspired and in the flow? Here are five ways that you can stay creative, all sourced from experience and some even based on science.
1. Get Bored
Before the release of the iPhone in 2007, people used to get bored all the time. Now, thanks to that attention-sucking slab in our pockets, we never do. Mind start to wander? Open Instagram and scroll away the day.
But the science is clear: we need to get bored to have creative insights. A 2014 study called “Does Being Bored Make Us More Creative?” found that boring activities do indeed lead to increased creativity.
“You need to be bored,” says Harvard professor Arthur Brooks in a video for the Harvard Business Review. He explains that when we’re not occupied cognitively, our thinking system flips over to another part of our brain called the default mode network. “The default mode network is a bunch of structures in your brain that switch on when you don’t have anything else to think about,” he says. “So, you forgot your phone and you’re sitting at a light, for example. That’s when your default mode network goes on.”
Arthur’s point is that we need to be bored in order to stay happy, but we also need it to stay creative. You won’t have any of those necessary insights if your mind is busy thinking about perfect snare memes. So put down the phone. Leave it in another room, far out of reach. And if no ideas come? Go for a walk. Stare out of the window. Drive around. That way, you’ll be able to experience what Rick Rubin likens to a positive distraction.
“When we reach an impasse at any point in the creative process, it can be helpful to step away from the project to create space and allow a solution to appear,” he says in his book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. “This way, we can remain present with it over time while engaging in a simple, unrelated task such as driving, walking, swimming, showering, washing dishes, dancing. These distractions keep one part of the mind busy while freeing the rest to remain open to whatever comes in.”
2. Set Constraints
Analysis paralysis is what happens when we’re given too many options. This is also known as the paradox of choice. It may seem funny to think of yourself as being “too free,” but with so many VST plugins in your DAW (and not to mention all those shitty snares in your sample folder), it can be almost impossible to even get started on a project