by Russell Newton

The Routine Way to be Creative

Another creativity-boosting method many artists swear by is having a daily routine and sticking with it. As we’ve seen in the previous chapters, great ideas often come while you’re hard at work, not while you’re sitting around and waiting for inspiration to strike you before you get moving. You provide the best chance for creativity to flourish when you stick to a routine that preps and stimulates your mind to get creative, as attested to by renowned authors Haruki Murakami and Stephen King.

Murakami and King and Living Through Routines

Another creativity-boosting method many artists swear by is having a daily routine and sticking with it. As we’ve seen in the previous chapters, great ideas often come while you’re hard at work, not while you’re sitting around and waiting for inspiration to strike you before you get moving. You provide the best chance for creativity to flourish when you stick to a routine that preps and stimulates your mind to get creative, as attested to by renowned authors Haruki Murakami and Stephen King.

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese author who typically writes short stories that are both poignant and offer insight into the human condition. Many of his books have been adapted into plays and movies. Stephen King, on the other hand, is an American author best known for his imaginative horror novels—whether you know it or not, you have probably watched one of his books that has been adapted into a movie screenplay. By the way, together, they have sold close to one billion books, so there must be something that they are doing correctly.

The degree to which they abide by their daily writing routines is almost coordinated, but it just so happens to be what works for these two prolific writers.

Murakami and King both follow an ironclad daily routine to get them in the best condition for writing. Every day, Murakami consistently gets up at 4:00 a.m., works for five to six hours, and then goes for either a ten-kilometer run, a 1500-meter swim, or both in the afternoon. He then does some reading and listens to music and goes to bed at 9:00 p.m. every night. Murakami says the repetition of this daily routine, without variation, is central to his creative process. He considers this routine a way to mesmerize himself to get into a deeper state of mind, unlocking his creative potentials and awakening his artistic sensitivity as a writer.

Though Murakami never says as much, from a bystander perspective, it seems as if he is saving all his mental juice for his work at the expense of the variety in his life. This has some scientific support in the concept of decision fatigue—the continued weakening of our ability to ponder decisions as the day goes on.

King has a similar method for tapping his creativity in writing. He believes that if you stick to a schedule, then you habituate yourself to certain ways of being and thinking. For example, going to bed at the same hour and sleeping the same amount each night trains your body to expect sleep at that hour and for that duration. In the same way, King says, you can train your waking mind to work creatively by establishing a routine around it, such as by going in your writing room at around the same time each day and leaving your writing desk once you’re done putting out a thousand words for the day.

King himself has a routine when it comes to writing: he sits down in the same seat, at about the same time each morning (8:00–8:30), with a glass of water or a cup of tea, his vitamin pill, his music, and his papers all arranged in the same places. He says that consistently doing this same routine every day is a way of prepping his mind to have the waking dreams that lead to successful fiction stories—a way of telling his mind, “You’re going to be dreaming soon.”

In addition to Murakami and King, many other prominent writers have each developed their own unique customs and habits to get their creative juices flowing. Virginia Woolf spent her twenties writing two and a half hours each morning on a 3.5-foot-tall standing desk with an angled top, enabling her to view her writings both up-close and from afar. John Steinbeck always had exactly twelve perfectly sharpened pencils on his desk to ensure he never had to disrupt his creative flow just to replenish his writing materials. Agatha Christie had the habit of mulling over murder plots while crunching on apples in the bathtub. Anthony Trollope started his day at 5:30 a.m. sharp and strictly stuck to the routine of writing 250 words every fifteen minutes.

Some of these routines begin to sound more like superstitions, but perhaps that is part of their effectiveness. If you engage in a certain set of actions and behaviors, you believe that a certain outcome is likely to happen. And so you cause it to happen.

Whatever the case, creativity doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It is routines that stimulate and set the stage for its arrival. Having a routine of your own is like dusting off the sofa, plumping up its cushions, putting out snacks on the coffee table, and inviting creativity over like a friend you want to spend hours and hours with, just bonding and enjoying good conversation together. In other words, routines make it easier for creativity to come sit with you and stay with you when you need it to. When you build a habit around working on that creative task every day, regardless of how motivated or inspired you feel, creativity becomes more of a natural outcome to an honest day’s work instead of some elusive ideal you have to keep chasing after.

Dr. NakaMats, the Most Unconventional of All

The connection between the mind and the body is another important factor to consider when trying to get more creative. Creativity can be sparked by methods that stimulate the physical body, and while this is unconventional, it has one powerful proponent. One of the best proofs of the mind-body connection is exemplified by the creative process of inventor Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu, better known as Dr. NakaMats. Dr. NakaMats is the inventor of the floppy disk—and several thousand other gadgets and gizmos, including the CD, the DVD, the karaoke machine, the fax machine, fuel-cell-powered boots, the world’s tiniest air conditioner, and a self-defense wig, among others. With 3,300 patents to his name, Dr. NakaMats is an embodiment of the prolific creative. His creativity method? Oxygen deprivation.

To spark his creative thoughts, Dr. NakaMats goes on long underwater swims, diving deep and holding his breath for as long as he can in order to starve his brain of oxygen. He warns that too much oxygen in the brain inhibits inspiration from striking, so the key to boosting inventiveness is to limit the oxygen available to the brain. He reports that by forcing himself to stop his breathing underwater, he gets to visualize an invention half a second before death. At that point, he notes the idea down on a proprietary waterproof notepad, then comes up to the surface with an all-new project in mind.

It was by depriving his body of oxygen that Dr. NakaMats was able to jolt an idea from his brain. You may raise your eyebrow at this, but it’s undeniable that some aspect of this process assisted Dr. NakaMats in some way. In instances where someone is as much of an outlier as Dr. NakaMats is, and he also uses an outlier of a technique, they may very well be connected.

But while Dr. NakaMats uses oxygen deprivation to stimulate his inventiveness, on the other end of the spectrum are creatives who try to boost their creativity via methods that improve oxygen circulation throughout their body. One such tactic is exercise, which fosters healthy blood flow and better oxygen delivery to different parts of the body, including the brain. With increased oxygen supply, the brain has an improved capacity to carry out its activities, including the cognitive efforts required in the process of creativity.

For instance, a 2014 Stanford University study found that walking significantly improved convergent thinking and divergent thinking, which are cognitive processes essential to creativity. Other studies have shown that in those who exercise at least three times a week, convergent thinking is significantly improved.

Thus, thinkers and artists who use exercise as a creativity method are obviously on to something. History’s notable thinkers Henry David Thoreau, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche all had a habit of theorizing while walking. Celebrated author Ernest Hemingway boxed, novelist Haruki Murakami loves running, and writer Kathy Acker engaged in bodybuilding. Guido van der Werve, a Dutch artist and composer, competes in triathlons and attests that going for a run makes him sharper and improves his focus and concentration.

So evidently, oxygen has some effect on creativity. But how could two seemingly opposite methods—depriving your brain of oxygen and improving oxygen supply to your brain via exercise—both improve your creativity? The answer may have something to do with adrenaline. Adrenaline is a hormone produced by your body when you are in a state of stress, whether physical, mental, or even imagined. Increased demands on the body, such as an emergency situation, trigger an adrenaline boost, which helps you cope with the stress by making you quicker, stronger, and sharper. Forcing an oxygen shortage in your system (as Dr. NakaMats does) and increasing oxygen supply by physical exertion both put your body in a stressed state. This, in turn, elicits an adrenaline rush.

With more adrenaline in your system, you get to enjoy enhanced perceptiveness, a better ability to think of new ways you can use existing resources, and a sharpened capacity to make new connections—all of which produce a boost in your creativity.