Today, I want to discuss the topic of finding inspiration. It’s a subject I revisit from time to time, as the sources of my inspiration often change. Occasionally, I find myself stuck in a rut, searching in the same places but not finding the quality of inspiration I seek. Today, I will cover three places where you can find inspiration. If you’ve never tried any of these, I recommend giving them a shot.
The first is your own mind. It may sound silly, but bear with me. There are few things like boredom to stimulate the mind. This is a challenging one for me because I detest boredom. I will do anything to avoid it. I would rather repeatedly stab myself with a fork than be bored. However, boredom can be one of the best ways to generate ideas. Our brains are connection machines, and if you sit with a problem long enough, you will come up with numerous ideas. The longer you do this, the faster you will generate ideas, and statistically, the better your ideas will be. You can train yourself to shorten your period of boredom, and your brain will automatically kick into idea generation mode to avoid that boredom.
When I am struggling with a significant challenge in one of my books, I write down the problem on a piece of paper and find a quiet place to sit. There are a couple of things you must do. First, get rid of your phone. Turn it off, put it in a different room, just ensure you don’t have it. Second, you can’t be watching something or playing a video game. You need to find a chair and just stare out into the world. If that is too distracting, stare at a blank wall. In my office, I have a cubby with blank walls. When I’m working, there’s nothing outside of my monitor besides these blank walls. This triggers my brain to problem-solve to avoid boredom.
The next thing you need is a timer. Time is a strange thing, and it flows differently depending on what you’re doing. You might think you’ve been sitting there for 10 minutes, but it’s probably only been a minute. Set a timer and commit to sitting in the chair until you figure it out. Your brain will kick into desperation mode and start generating ideas.
The second place I find inspiration is in other forms of media. If I’m writing a book, I’ll look at other stories. It could be video games, movies, manga, or any number of different things. I look outside the book world for cool images. Sometimes, I’ll Google something related to a problem I’m trying to solve and look through the images to see if anything sparks my imagination. The point of this exercise is to trigger your inspiration. The more time you spend doing this, the better your ideas will likely be, as you’ll move past surface-level ideas and delve into the deeper, weightier ideas that lie beneath.
The third way I find inspiration is by talking to other people. I reject the notion that creators should be solitary bastions of creativity. One of the best things you can do is find like-minded people who can offer advice on the problems you’re trying to solve. You don’t have to take their advice, but make sure they understand that brainstorming is just that – generating a lot of ideas. When we ask someone for an idea, they might think we’re implicitly giving them permission to tell us what to do. That’s not what we want. We want to say, ‘I’m looking for ideas because of this specific problem I’m having. I’m going to consider a lot of ideas, sit on it, think about it, and then make my own decision.’ People are usually happy to give us as many ideas as we want. Brainstorming often leads to exciting and fun ideas as we delve deeper into the well of creativity.
Another crucial aspect of this process is sleep. You can’t come up with good ideas if you’re not getting enough sleep. Our brains need sleep to be creative. This is something I’ve struggled with my whole life because I hate sleeping. It feels like a waste of time. However, sleep is vitally important. Just yesterday, I was in a mental space where I knew I could work, but things weren’t coming quickly. Instead of pushing through, I decided to sleep. When I woke up this morning, my brain was firing on all cylinders. So, if you’re not sleeping enough and having trouble writing, maybe the solution is not that you need to work harder or be more creative. Perhaps you just need to sleep more, so your brain is fresh and ready to be used.
Do you have a particular method for overcoming creative roadblocks? Is there a place you go to find inspiration? I’d love to hear about it.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/gdo-E_2FgKg
Thanks for reading and watching.
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