How I get my best ideas (my creative routine)

The written version of this week’s episode. The podcast is the full, unedited, chaotic version. This is the good bits, organised by taking the transcript and having an AI tool clean it up.

HEY!

I was supposed to fly back to Berlin yesterday.

Instead I’m sitting on the ground in a forest in Sweden, recording this week’s episode on AirPods and a laptop camera. Changing my flight was quoted at €15, then the Eurowings website broke, so booking a whole new one cost €100. I paid it, because I didn’t feel like leaving yet.

I wasn’t going to record at all this week. The show is called Unscheduled, I can do it whenever the hell I want, and nobody would have noticed a skipped Tuesday. But I was sitting there rereading The War of Art, and I caught myself asking: why the f**k am I recording this episode anyway?

The answer turned into the episode. And I think it applies to your business as much as it does to my podcast.

The nuggets (if you only read one section, read this one)

* Ideas behave like fish: you can’t summon them, you can only be out on the water when they show up. This is Rick Rubin’s framing and I’m stealing it openly. The fisherman casts lines for a chance to catch something. The fish might be there either way, but if you’re not out there, you catch nothing.

* A dedicated practice matters just as much for making money as it does for making art. You have to be creative to figure out how to generate revenue. It’s the same muscle, and it responds to the same routine.

* If talking is how you think, build your outlet around talking. This show is one unbroken, improvised take because talking is my way of getting ideas out. Your version might be writing or walking. Find it, then give it a slot.

* Your workspace trains your brain. A band walks into a studio and creating becomes natural, because the studio is where they create. My office is set up as a place where I go to check our numbers. Worth noticing what your space tells you to do.

* The content you make for other people doubles as infrastructure for yourself. This podcast is my brain dump, my idea generator, and my way of staying in touch with people without networking. Last week’s video handed me the idea for a whole new workshop.