“It’s.. Blank!” — What is it to think?

It’s blank, you keep going at it and nothing works. You have officially run out of ideas. Was it all luck? Was there even any talent to begin with? Maybe you lack inspiration, but here you are looking at plenty of ‘inspiration’ online, yet nothing comes to you. Congratulations, you were right: “you are an imposter”.

Well, that pretty much describes the inner dialogue that surprisingly a lot of creatives go through. Oftentimes, you just have nothing, nada, empty… blank, and that’s totally normal.

Fortunately, ideas don’t just pop into your head randomly. There is always an inner process behind them. Of course, there are some few special ones that you swear are just pure magic, but most of the time, you can learn to control that process and actually get to work coming up with ideas. You don’t have to go through the self-doubt cycle every time you hit a “creative block.”

Digging deeper, it’s about switching between states in your mind and learning what works for you to enter what some people (mostly athletes) call “The Zone.” It’s that feeling where you enter a timeless space and things just come to you. It almost feels like a fast stream of thoughts that you tap into, and now you’re flooding with creativity. That is a feeling and a state that we can all control if we make the time and effort to learn about ourselves and the inner workings of our minds.

As Andrew Huberman said, quoting Rick Rubin’s advice to him:

“You have to do the work, to do the work.”

A process or a routine that you work on and go through respecting each step, no matter how ridiculous, and eventually you get to switch your state of mind to get working and be in “The Zone.”

I suggest listening to Lex Friedman’s podcast episode with Andrew Huberman to get a better idea about the state of mind. In that episode, Andrew describes how he has to go through a full routine before he starts his podcast to be focused for more than 2 hours, diving into complex subjects in neuroscience and such.

In the following list, I’ll be sharing some of the things that I found work best for me. Feel free to try them for yourself:

• Writing unrelated words or just doing it mentally for a short time. Every last word should have no relation to the previous one. Example: tree, CPU, cat… (Bonus tip: you can do this to help fall asleep faster. It helps your brain go to dream mode.)
• Going for a walk and counting specific things. Example: 5 red cars, 5 birds…
• Describing the task with simple abstract words. Example: sharp, square or soft, circle, round… This one is more about trying to capture the mood or the feeling of the idea.
• Trying to think about nothing for a couple of minutes or in other words, some form of meditation.
• Self-talk out loud and more specifically trying to imagine explaining the task to someone you know would ask you about it in real life (preferably alone or you have to deal with funny looks), or if you know someone who would bear with you to listen, do it for real.
• Solve some random easy-level puzzles. Don’t go for the difficult ones, just do the easy ones. It helps to build momentum and takes out that feeling of friction like a warmup.
• Start with an intentionally bad draft and build from there. Example: randomly placing shapes on a blank page.

Trying to be “creative” isn’t always a pretty picture. Sometimes it’s messy and all over the place, and that can even hurt your confidence. But the messier the journey, the greater the idea, so learn to embrace the mess and just enjoy the process, then shine with greatness.