We’ve all heard the story. A brilliant painter wakes up at 3 a.m., seized by inspiration, and produces a masterpiece before sunrise. A songwriter scribbles lyrics on a napkin and creates a hit. A startup founder has a “eureka” moment in the shower and walks out with the next billion-dollar idea. These stories are dramatic, inspiring, and easy to romanticize. They make creativity feel mysterious—like some magical force that visits a lucky few when the stars align.
The truth is a little less cinematic… and a lot more useful.
Creativity isn’t a mystical spark reserved for artists, inventors, or “naturally gifted” people. It’s not a personality trait, and it’s not something you either have or don’t. Creativity is a skill. It’s a process. It’s a muscle. And like any muscle, it gets stronger when you train it.
That realization changed everything for me.
Creativity as a Practice, Not a Gift
When I was younger, I used to believe “creative people” were somehow different. They were painters, musicians, actors, writers—the people who seemed to effortlessly produce original work while the rest of us admired them from a distance. I carried that belief with me well into my corporate years, until I started noticing something that challenged everything I thought I knew about creativity.
One of the most consistently creative people I ever worked with wasn’t an artist or entrepreneur. She was a project manager—organized, analytical, deeply practical, and about as far from the stereotypical “creative type” as you could imagine. Yet every morning, before opening her email, she pulled out a small notebook she kept on her desk. On the front cover she had written two simple words: What If?
Each day, she wrote down one unusual idea for improving her team’s workflow. Some ideas were impractical. Some were funny. Some seemed ridiculous. “What if meetings were standing only?” “What if everyone pitched their weekly progress like a movie trailer?” “What if our department operated more like a jazz ensemble than a hierarchy?” Most of those ideas stayed on the page. But every so often, one turned into a real improvement—shorter meetings, better communication, smoother collaboration, even measurable savings for the company.
What struck me wasn’t that she always had brilliant ideas. It was that she didn’t wait for them.
She practiced them.
That’s when I started seeing creativity differently. The most creative people aren’t necessarily more gifted than everyone else. They’ve just built better habits. Artists don’t improve by waiting for inspiration—they paint. Writers don’t get better by hoping for perfect ideas—they write through the bad drafts until the good ones appear. Entrepreneurs don’t succeed because lightning strikes. They test, fail, adapt, and try again. Improvisers don’t become spontaneous by thinking about spontaneity—they train themselves to make choices in real time.
Creative fluency comes from showing up, not from waiting.
How to Train the Creative Muscle
So how do you actually train creativity? In my experience—whether I’m teaching workshops, consulting with organizations, writing, or working with performers—there are four habits that consistently make the biggest difference.
Quantity before quality.
Most people stop after one or two ideas and assume they’ve reached the limit of what’s possible. In workshops, I’ll often ask a team to generate solutions to a problem. By idea number four or five, people start slowing down. By idea seven, someone usually says, “I think we’ve got it.” That’s when I push them: “Give me ten more.” And that’s when things get interesting. The obvious ideas come first. The safe ideas come second. But if you stay with it long enough, your brain starts making new connections. That’s where originality lives.
Try this: set a timer for ten minutes and challenge yourself to come up with twenty possible solutions to a problem you’re facing. The first ten will probably be predictable. The last five might surprise you.
Flipping assumptions.
Most people try to improve ideas by adding more—more features, more detail, more complexity. But creativity often appears when you do the opposite. What if you removed something instead? What if you simplified? I once worked with a founder who kept adding features to his product, convinced that more options would create more value. In reality, it was overwhelming customers. When we stripped the product down to its core function, engagement doubled. Sometimes creativity doesn’t come from adding. Sometimes it comes from subtracting.
Borrowing from other worlds.
Many of history’s great innovators were masters of cross-pollination. Pablo Picasso drew inspiration from African masks. Steve Jobs famously credited a calligraphy class with influencing the typography of early Apple computers. Some of my own best workshop ideas came from blending improvisation, storytelling, and corporate leadership into something that felt fresh. If you want better ideas, stop looking only in your own field. Creativity often happens at the intersection of unrelated things.
Make it a Ritual.
This may be the most important habit of all. Creativity responds to consistency. Writers write. Athletes train. Musicians rehearse. Creativity deserves the same respect. Even twenty or thirty minutes of intentional practice—journaling, sketching, brainstorming, asking “what if?”—can begin to rewire how you think. The goal isn’t to create something brilliant every day. The goal is to train your mind to stay open, curious, and ready.
Anecdotes from the Real World
A painter friend of mine used to wait for inspiration, sometimes staring at a blank canvas for days. Eventually, she changed one rule: paint for thirty minutes every morning, whether inspiration showed up or not. Some sketches went nowhere. Some mornings felt flat. But over time, those daily exercises led to the series that eventually got her gallery recognition. Not because the muse arrived—but because she was already working when it did.
Another friend, an operations manager, ran something he called “Bad Idea Fridays.” Every week, his team spends fifteen minutes pitching the worst ideas they can think of—ridiculous product features, absurd marketing campaigns, intentionally terrible solutions. It sounds silly, but more often than not, one of those “bad ideas” sparks a genuinely innovative product feature. Creativity thrives when there’s room for play.
That, ultimately, is the lesson.
The muse may visit now and then. But she’s unreliable.
If you wait for inspiration, you’ll create when you feel like it.
If you train creativity, you’ll create when it matters.
“The most creative people aren’t waiting for inspiration. They’re training for it.”
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The Takeaway
Whether you’re holding a paintbrush, writing a book, leading a team, or building a business, the goal isn’t to become “more creative.” The goal is to become creatively fluent—to build a mind that can generate ideas, solve problems, and find possibilities on demand.
That doesn’t happen by magic.
It happens by practice, play, and persistence.
Rep by rep. Day by day.
Want more practical tools like this? Join the Creative Fluency Lab—my weekly thinking practice where I share exercises, strategies, and creative tools to help you generate better ideas, get unstuck, and train your imagination. And as a bonus, when you join, I’ll send you my downloadable guide:
5 Steps for Upgrading Your Imagination
Because I don’t just talk about creativity.
I help you practice it.
