🧠 How to Be More Creative

Unraveling the two-step process of Art

One winter break in college, I sat in my room in a deserted dorm building, recording a song I had just written. It was a song that I was incredibly proud of and excited to work on. I spent an hour recording the tracks, then 8 straight hours mixing them together.

I didn't check my phone or even take a break to eat. The only time I pulled my eyes from the computer screen was to rush to the bathroom and back. When I finally finished, I uploaded the track to my phone and stepped out into the crisp December air. As I wandered through the city to finally get some food, I listened to the finished song over and over.

That feeling—the feeling of conceiving of and bringing into existence a work of art that had not existed previously—is not one I can properly put into words. If you've felt it, I don't need to remind you. If you haven't felt it, this post will teach you how to get there.

Play Mode and Work Mode

Work without creation is toil.

—but also—

A good idea, never brought into being, is a miscarriage of your creative potential.

The single best piece of advice I can give: Break the creative process into two steps.

Comedian and writer John Cleese talks about what he calls the "open" and "closed" modes.

By the “closed” mode, I mean the mode that we are in most of the time when we're at work. We have inside us a feeling that there's lots to be done and we have to get on with it if we're going to get through it all. It's an active, probably slightly anxious, mode—although the anxiety can be exciting and pleasurable. It's a mode in which we're probably a little impatient, if only with ourselves. It has a little tension in it. Not much humor. It's a mode in which we're very purposeful and it's a mode in which we can get very stressed and even a bit manic, but not creative.

By contrast, the open mode is a relaxed, expansive, less purposeful mode in which we're probably more contemplative, more inclined to humor (which always accompanies a wider perspective) and consequently, more playful. It's a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play, and that is what allows our natural creativity to surface.

There is a dualism to creativity—and this is where most people get it wrong. It isn't enough to have good ideas. That is, to always be in the open mode.

You must also bring the idea to fruition through hard work.

Let's talk about each mode separately.

Play Mode—Creativity is Enumeration

All studies on creativity—to the extent such a thing can be empirically studied—have observed one common trait of creative people: They are idea generating machines.

When you are born, your brain contains twice as many neurons as it needs. Half of these cells will prune themselves through apoptosis so that only the best parts of you remain.

Creativity follows a similar process.

Generate as many ideas as you possibly can, then pick the best ones to work on.

It really is that simple. But it's harder than it looks. James Altucher, in his books Choose Yourself and Become An Idea Machine, suggests the practice of writing ten ideas per day. They don't have to be good ideas, but there have to be ten.

I've done this. More importantly, there are many days that I haven't done this because it is hard. But if you stick to it, you will increase your creativity by leaps and bounds.

Again, the ideas don't have to be good. Follow the advice of Ernest Hemingway: "Write drunk, edit sober." Taken metaphorically, this means that you should write in an uninhibited state. No idea is too stupid. The backspace key doesn't exist. Just create.

Take it to the next level: Murder your darlings. Before you become an idea machine, you cling to every good idea, fearing that it is your last. After repeating the creative process for years, you develop confidence in your ability to generate even better ones. To be truly great, repeat the selection process with your best ideas, allowing only the truly great ones to survive.

Work Mode—Become a Virtuoso

One of the best ways to increase your creativity is to become a master of your craft. Whether you become a virtuoso at an instrument, or a programming language, or a particular tool is up to you.

Mastery transforms conscious effort in autonomous ease.

When you no longer need to consciously think about what to do next ("how do I make that chord?", "where is that setting in the menu?"), you are free to spend 100% of your cognitive capacity on enriching the details and nuance of your work.

In scientific terms, you are transferring information from your long-term semantic memory into your long-term procedural memory in order to avoid filling your short-term working memory with anything other than pure creation.

🧠 Memory Systems

When I was writing my masterpiece in my empty dorm room, I had already been playing guitar for 8 years. This allowed my creativity to flow unimpeded, and no procedural detail was about to take me out of my flow state.