How long does an idea take to birth?

Ideas sometimes seem to need days or weeks or months to get to a point where they feel fully formed. If you try to force a solution to a problem into a preset window of time, you will almost certainly reach a suboptimal solution.

I’ll often have ideas sitting in my focus folder for weeks or months and keep tossing thoughts into them, and then one d... See more

Waits went on a whimsical rant about all the different forms that song ideas will take when they’re trying to be born. Some songs, he said, will come to him with an almost absurd ease, “like dreams taken through a straw.” Other songs, though, he has to work hard for, “like digging potatoes out of the ground.” Still other songs are sticky and weird,

... See more

That’s what I always think when I’m working on a project and it’s not working. I think — I will speak to the idea and say, “You came to me for a reason.” But in the meantime, I’ll come to my desk every day with the faith that you are also at my desk every day and that the two of us — this human being who is laboring and this mystery who is presenti... See more

The resonance of many profound creative pieces stems from a deep understanding of the human condition; and to get there the creative process necessitates a significant amount of trial and error.

Like with baking, you build intuition around the creative process. You watch your half-completed ideas rot in folders no one ever sees, and you start to realize that you usually only have one shot at making something (when the inspiration appears). You start to get familiar with the pang of guilt and frustration at what “could have been” if you jus... See more