Creativity break: how do you get into your creative zone? | Khan Academy

2m read

·Nov 10, 2024

[Music]

I allow my brain to do the work to get into my creative zone when I have a problem to resolve. Sometimes I just sleep on it, and I let my subconscious mind work through resolving problems and solving problems. Our brains are always at work, like trying to be fragmented, break apart the things that we encounter.

So, I spend a little time thinking about how I can approach things creatively, and then I spend a little time not thinking about those things and allowing my brain and my subconscious mind to have an opportunity to do the work for me. A lot of times when I come back afterwards, I've got a great idea, I've got the answers, and I have new ways to solve and resolve things that I've been thinking about.

To get into my creative zone, I do something that I'd like to call productive procrastination. I start what I'm working on way before it's due, and then in fits and starts, I work well, giving my mind permission to wander to things that absolutely are not on the agenda. It's encouraged some of my most creative experiences—some of my best songwriting, educational videos, and even scientific breakthroughs—while I was supposed to be working on something totally unrelated.

And this won't work for everyone, but my mind is most creative when it's free to go on unplanned adventures. Good music also helps; a great playlist to me is worth its weight in gold. My playlists are special because they only include instrumental music and songs in languages that I don't actually speak, so my thoughts don't get too pulled into the lyrics themselves.

STOICISM | How Marcus Aurelius Keeps Calm

The Stilwell Brain

View All

Pitch Practice with Paul Buchheit and Sam Altman at Startup School SV 2016

All right, so up next we’re going to do pitch practice. This is something that we invented by accident a couple of years ago. One of our speakers had to cancel at the last minute, so we just threw together this idea: let’s bring up some startups. This is …

Activate – Trailer | National Geographic

I was lucky enough to be born into a situation where the basic necessities of life—food, shelter, clothing, education—were freely available to me. Nothing I did; I just happened to get it. And then there’s a billion people on the planet—nothing they did, …

Thermodynamic favorability and temperature | AP Chemistry | Khan Academy

The thermodynamic favorability of a chemical reaction can be affected by the temperature. Let’s say we have a generic reaction where the reactants turn into the products. As a quick review, when the standard change in free energy, ΔG° is less than zero, t…

Chasing Wolverines With Help From Ultra-Runners | National Geographic

[Music] This place is right on the fringe of so many important carnivore species’ habitat. In February of 2014, a camera trap here that the Department of Wildlife Resources had set up captured a wolverine on camera. That was the first time that had happen…

Curvature of a cycloid

So let’s do another curvature example. This time, I’ll just take a two-dimensional curve, so it’ll have two different components: x of t and y of t. The specific components here will be t minus the sine of t, t minus sine of t, and then one minus cosine o…

Quit Seeking APPROVAL Like a Loser (Stoic SELF-RESPECT) | STOICISM

How often have you felt like you were going through the motions, living your life based on the expectations of others, like you’re an actor continuously seeking approval and validation from an invisible audience? If so, you’re not alone. Like you, million…

Creativity break: how do you get into your creative zone? | Khan Academy

More Articles