How to be creative?
- Kuba Gołębiowski
- Oct 26
- 8 min read
Advice collected from personal experience, wise books and observations of other creators and entrepreneurs.
Act routinely and a lot:
Act routinely.
Inspiration is for amateurs. Creation doesn't happen in moments of inspiration, but between laundry, emails, and responsibilities. It's the daily practice of acting despite doubt. Develop habits and rituals that foster creativity—a favorite mug, time of day, place. Set small, daily goals. They don't have to be ambitious. You don't have to create in a rush. Create rhythmically. It's rhythmic regularity, not bursts, that builds mastery.
Do a lot.
Quantity leads to quality. This applies to every field. Want to take better photos? Take 10,000 photos. Learning to cook? Try 100 recipes. Want to get better at editing? Make 100 videos. It's impossible not to grow and discover something along the way.
Make peace with mediocrity.
Most of your work will be mediocre—that's just how it is. Fear of weakness kills more work than lack of talent or sheer volume of work. Tell yourself, "I know many of my works will be poor." Try, but don't let the pressure of "it has to be the best" hold you back. Creativity is living with a constant frustration between what you feel and what you can do.
Get lost:
Divide the process into two stages:
Uncritical creativity and critical editing. The former is about an uncontrolled flow of thoughts and ideas. Only then comes the time for analysis and selection. I have a saying: "Let's focus first on what we want, and then on what we can."
Enjoy boredom.
Turn off all the stimuli: your phone, games, constant going out. Your brain hates a vacuum, so when you're not doing anything, it starts creating. Einstein spent most of his life sleeping—and when he woke up, he changed the world.
Don't force, process in the background.
Don't control the process—let it happen. Your role is to create the conditions, not force the outcome. You can't rush the maturation of an idea.
So don't sit and stare at the wall, forcing your creativity, but rather engage your background processing. Showers promote creativity because the combination of relaxation, monotonous noise, and limited stimulation allows your mind to wander and connect information in new ways. When we're relaxed and not actively focused on a problem, our processes intensify—and that's when the "aha-moment" occurs. But it doesn't have to be a shower (although Aaron Sorkin reportedly takes eight a day when he writes).
Any minimal activity with your hands is good—it could be sailing, fishing, walking, riding a motorcycle, crocheting. Anything that lightly engages the body but doesn't overload the mind. Keep your hands occupied, and your brain will wander and create. When you stop working, the work continues. Rest is part of the process, not an interruption.
Appreciate the crap.
For you it's rubbish - for the recipient it's something unique and exceptional. Accidents at work are often the best works. Many works that audiences have come to love are works that their creators themselves disliked, wanted to throw away, or hid in a drawer.
Be curious.
Don't create to prove something. Create to see what happens.
Be honest.
Many creators get stuck because they want to be original. Originality is a result, not a goal. Don't try to be original. Try to be honest. The truth is always new.
Limit yourself:
Cut off everything unnecessary.
No matter what you're working on, it can always be shorter, simpler, cleaner. The process is simple: Create any sketch, rest, come back, and remove everything unnecessary. Think like a sculptor: cut away until only the essentials remain.
Love the limitations.
The fewer options, the more creativity. Replace an entire band with one guitar (Tommy Emmanuel, Marcin Patrzałek), record a cinematic movie with a home camera (The Blair Witch Project), start a business with a single laptop. Don't think "outside the box"—think inside the box and make it small. Fewer options. Fewer functions. Shorter deadlines. Creativity loves limitations. Dr. Seuss, as part of a bet, wrote "Green Eggs and Ham" using only 50 words—and it's his most popular book.
Collect thoughts
Collect experiences.
Our brain doesn't invent anything from scratch; it only processes what it's experienced. So surround yourself with experiences. The brain loves them and draws from them. Too few experiences and your ideas will dry up. Too many similar ones and you'll start repeating yourself. A variety of experiences fuels the brain.
Write down ideas.
Take notes, combine, and mix. That's how ideas are cultivated. Creativity is connecting things that seem unrelated. The world is constantly talking. On the street, in cultural works, at work. Most people don't hear it because they're preoccupied with themselves. Your works aren't about you. You are merely the instrument through which the world speaks to itself. A true Creator spends most of their time listening, not inventing. Ideas exist beforehand. You just have to be quiet to hear them. Creativity isn't a solitary genius. It's a network of connections between people, ideas, places, and time.
Take care of quality.
Our brain doesn't distinguish between the drivel of a patoinfluencer and the classics of philosophy; it absorbs both equally. And what you feed it becomes what you think. That's why we need to expose ourselves to the best that others have created, and then incorporate it into our own work.
Create, create, create!
Creativity is a daily way of being. How you look, listen, think, and respond to the world.
It's the courage to act without guaranteeing success. The humility to accept mistakes as part of the process. And the discipline to show up every day—even when nothing seems to be happening.
A true creator simply works until inspiration has no choice but to come to him.
Which is what I wish for you and myself.
PS Additional materials:
Books that delve deeper into the topic
Steal Like an Artist - Austin Kleon
Art & Fear - David Bayles, Ted Orland
Big Magic - Elizabeth Gilbert
The Creative Act: A Way of Being - Rick Rubin
Creativity — John Cleese
The Creative Habit - Twyla Tharp
Deep Work - Cal Newport
Where Good Ideas Come From - Steven Johnson
The Artist's Way - Julia Cameron
Quotes: Routine and plowing
"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself." -ChuckClose
“I know of no such thing as genius, genius is nothing but labor and diligence.” —William Hogarth
“Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” —Thomas Edison (not)
“I sketch everyday. Even just a doodle.” -Walt Disney (Mickey Mouse and Snow White were created from these sketches)
“I write 500-1000 words every day, usually at dawn.” —Ernest Hemingway
“I write everyday when I'm working on a script. Just 3-4 pages. It's not about perfection, it's about getting it out.” — Quentin Tarantino
“I write every morning, usually 5 am. Before the world wakes up. I aim for one scene, maybe two if I'm lucky.” -Shonda Rhimes
“Writer's block is a phony, made up, BS excuse for not doing your work. There's no writer's block. There IS lazy, there IS scared. Just accept the fact that you're mediocre and it's going to take a lot of effort to make it good.” — Jerry Seinfeld (King of daily discipline. He sits down every morning with coffee, a yellow pad and writes 2 hours straight. He's done this morning routine for over 40 years.)
“I deal with writer's block by lowering my expectations... I write a little bit, almost every day, and if it results in two or three good paragraphs, I consider myself a lucky man. Never try to be the hare. All hail the tortoise.” -Malcolm Gladwell
“My natural state is writer's block. Every day, I sit down and go, 'f*ck, I got nothing.' But I always say, 'I'd rather write shit than nothing.' Because with shit, you got something to work with.” -Peter Farrelly
“You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” -Maya Angelou
“It doesn't have to be a whole developed idea. It just has to be like a seed. And then when I'm ready, I'll just work on it every day.” —Francis Ford Coppola
The Pot Experiment: A pottery teacher named Brian once decided to divide his class into two groups. Group A was to make one pot a day for 30 days (for a total of 30 pots). Group B was to work on one perfect pot for an entire month. At the end of the month, Brian graded all the entries. Without exception, each of the top 10 pots came from Group A, the group that created every day. The group that tried to perfect one perfect pot received no top entries.
Quotes: Get lost
“Toys and games are preludes to serious ideas.” —Charles Eames
“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” -Ray Bradbury
"The one thing you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story. So write, draw, build, play, dance — and live as only you can." -Neil Gaiman
“The best art divides the room. If everyone loves it, you probably compromised.” -Rick Rubin
“There can't be art without risk. It's like saying 'no sex,' and then expecting there to be children.” —Francis Ford Coppola
“The same thing you get fired for is what they give you the lifetime achievement award for thirty years later.” —Francis Ford Coppola
“You have to really be courageous in your instincts and ideas. Otherwise, you'll just knuckle under and change it. Things that might have been memorable will be lost.” —Francis Ford Coppola
Quotes: Limit yourself
“Often, when you try to build upon things — when you add layers to try to make it sound bigger — the more you add, the smaller it gets.” -Rick Rubin
“I simply carved away everything that wasn't David.” —Michelangelo
“The only kind of writing is rewriting.” —Ernest Hemingway
“Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.” —Coco Chanel
“It's not the daily increase, but daily decrease. Hack away the unessential.” —Bruce Lee
“I took the bet. It was tough. It forced me to be economical with words. That's what made it fun and gave it that bounce.” —Dr . Seuss
“If you tell me to sit down and make a hit game — impossible. I can't. Zero chance of success. I need a constraint. I start with the constraint. I need to know the shape of the box. Once I have my constraint, now I'm cooking.” —Elan Lee
“My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints they imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit.” — Igor Stravinsky
Quotes: Collect Thoughts
“I have always kept a file of good advertisements, and I look at them when I am searching for an idea.” - David Ogilvy
“My head is a sponge... I listen. I watch. People tell me a joke, I remember it. If someone tells me a story from their life, I remember it.” — Quentin Tarantino
“Innovation happens when ideas have sex.” -Matt Ridley
“Ultimately, it just comes down to taste. You've got to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done. Then try to bring those things in to what you're doing. Creativity is just connecting things... We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” —Steve Jobs
“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” — Salvador Dalí
"Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find yourself." —Yohji Yamamoto
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