“What I’ve found with daily routines,” he said recently, “is that the useful thing is to have one that feels new. It can almost be arbitrary. You know, you could say to yourself, ‘From now on, I’m only going to write on the back porch in flip flops starting at four o’clock in the afternoon.’ And if that feels novel and fresh, it will have a placebo

James Clear, author of the bestseller Atomic Habits, outlines a clear process for being creative and connecting ideas: 1) gather material, 2) intensely work over the material in your mind, 3) step away from the problem, 4) allow the idea to come back to you naturally, and 5) test your idea in the real world and adjust it based on feedback.

To support our practice, we might set up a daily schedule, where we engage in particular rituals at specific times every day or week. The gestures we perform don’t need to be grand. Small rituals can make a big difference.