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Where does creative inspiration come from, and how can you tap into it? The answer lies in deliberately curating your environment, connections, and experiences. Every artist draws from external sources—whether consciously or unconsciously—so the key is being intentional about what influences you surround yourself with and how you engage with the world around you.
This guide explores seven powerful strategies for finding creative inspiration, drawing from Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist, Questlove’s Creative Quest, and Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act. By approaching inspiration with conscious awareness, you can transform your creative practice from waiting for the muse to actively cultivating it.
Table of Contents
1. Surround Yourself With Inspiration
According to Kleon in Steal Like an Artist, there is no such thing as a wholly original piece of creative work—every creator is influenced by other creators in some way. Accepting this truth releases you from the pressure of creating something the world has never seen before.
(Shortform note: Most experts agree that, as Mark Twain said, “there is no such thing as a new idea.” However, they argue that accepting this truth does more than just take the pressure off—it also frees you up to focus on the value your work adds to the world rather than how original it is. But take care if you plan to use your idea commercially—copyright laws strictly prohibit copying the unique expression of an original idea, so you’ll need to find a new way to express the ideas you incorporate.)
In Kleon’s view, once you embrace the creative influence other artists have on you, your job is to curate that influence. Do this by filling your physical and digital spaces with art, ideas, objects, and people that move and inspire you; this will set the tone for your own creative work. On the flip side, if you surround yourself with things that bore or depress you, that will negatively impact your own work.
Where should you start searching for inspiration to surround yourself with? If you’re overwhelmed with prospects, Kleon recommends starting by totally immersing yourself in one person’s work that deeply moves you. Study everything you can about them as both a person and an artist as you surround yourself with their work. Then, do the same with the people who influenced them. This way, you’ll feel connected to other creators, whether past or present.
2. Limit Your Artistic Influences
In a similar vein to Kleon’s advice of only focusing on one artist for inspiration, in Creative Quest, Questlove suggests you draw artistic inspiration from only a few select sources. He explains that having too many ideas and influences can make your work less original and impactful. Unlike artists from the past who had limited sources of inspiration, we can access millions of songs, books, videos, and artwork with a few clicks. This easy access creates a problem—when we can quickly find any answer or idea we want, we don’t spend time thinking deeply about our work or coming up with original ideas.
(Shortform note: In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains that having too many choices causes us stress and makes us indecisive. In the creative context, if you look at too many sources of inspiration, you might feel overwhelmed instead of inspired. To avoid this problem, give yourself some limits by setting rules and standards. Rules are automatic decisions you make in advance, like limiting yourself to one decade of music when looking for composition inspiration. Setting standards means filtering options into acceptable and unacceptable categories—like deciding to only draw inspiration from artists who emphasize storytelling in their works and skipping those focused purely on technical skill.)
How to Narrow Your Choices
Questlove offers two tips to cut down on the noise and be selective about creative influences:
1. Sort your ideas. Keep what you need right now, store good ideas that don’t quite fit for this project for later, and discard what doesn’t fit. When choosing influences, trust your gut feeling. You don’t need to fully understand why a piece of music or art moves you—what matters is that it sparks ideas. For example, you can create a painting inspired by the visual appearance of a mechanical device, even if you don’t understand the device’s function.
2. Identify everything you don’t want to be as a creator. Questlove argues that it’s easier to define what you’re not than it is to try to define what you are. For example, it’s often easier to say “I don’t want my music to sound like heavy metal” than to explain exactly what sound you want. By ruling out what doesn’t fit, you can focus on developing work that truly feels like you. This helps you branch out from others and create something genuine and original.
3. Interact With Other Creative Works
Questlove also writes that exploring and experiencing other creative works can inspire you with ideas and help jumpstart your creative process. He suggests three exercises:
1. Get organized. Simple organizing tasks like sorting art supplies or arranging recipe cards can be good warm-up exercises that put you in the right headspace to pursue creative work. Questlove writes that organizing slows your heart rate and puts you in a contemplative state that’s conducive to creativity. Also, when organizing, you may notice details or patterns in the artwork you wouldn’t ordinarily notice. For example, when going through a binder of art references, you might notice how artists use lighting in different ways, inspiring you for your next drawing.
2. Look at creative works in fresh ways. Try interacting with songs, books, movies, and other creative works in unconventional ways—like reading or listening to them backward or turning them upside down—to see them in a new light. For example, you could view photos in black and white or listen to a song at half speed. When you change how you look at something, your brain processes information differently and can come up with fresh ideas.
(Shortform note: When you look at familiar things in unusual ways, you’re practicing what literary theorists call defamiliarization. Victor Shklovsky, who introduced this concept in 1917, believed that when objects become too familiar, we stop truly seeing them—like the way you drive home on autopilot and barely notice the journey. By deliberately making the familiar strange, you force your brain out of this automatic perception, allowing you to experience ordinary things with renewed attention and freshness.)
3. Copy works you admire. When you’re struggling to come up with ideas, try recreating artwork that inspires you. For instance, if you’re an artist, you could practice drawing comic panels in the style of a graphic novelist you admire. Copying other works helps in two ways: First, it keeps you actively creating even when you don’t have original ideas. Second, it teaches you new skills because you must study the original creator’s methods, materials, and artistic choices, which builds a foundation that will help you flesh out your own style.
4. Step Outside Your Comfort Zone
Another method Questlove recommends to stretch your creativity is to try new things. He argues that creative people can get stuck doing what they know best—using the same techniques, working with familiar materials, or creating in predictable styles. When you push yourself beyond your comfort zone, you can discover ideas you might otherwise never try.
For example, in 1991, MTV’s show Unplugged invited hip-hop artists to perform their songs without electronic equipment. Questlove writes that when LL Cool J performed his songs like “Mama Said Knock You Out” with a live band instead of pre-recorded samples and electronic beats, he created entirely new versions that sounded more like folk music. By stripping away typical hip-hop elements, artists gave their songs new life and energy.
Questlove suggests several ways to challenge yourself similarly:
1. Spend time with different types of creators. When you see how creators in other fields create their work, you can learn new ways to approach yours. For example, if you’re a painter, you could spend time watching animators work. By observing their workflow, you might discover new ideas about color, rhythm, or composition.
2. Experience art that challenges or confuses you. When art feels strange or hard to understand, your brain works harder to make sense of it. This mental stretch can help you think in new ways. For example, if you usually listen to rock music, try listening to classical music.
3. Learn a new skill. Questlove suggests you spend a small part of your creative time learning something different from your usual work. For example, a dancer who takes up creative writing might discover new ways to think about rhythm and storytelling that enhance their choreography. You don’t need to become an expert at the new skill—just learn enough to gain new perspectives you can bring back to your main creative work.
5. Work With Other Creatives
Questlove encourages you to not only spend time with other creators but to work directly with them. He recommends working alongside other creative people in two ways: finding mentors who can teach you basic skills and partnering with other artists on joint projects.
Learn From Mentors
Questlove says that when you’re early in your artistic career, you should find a mentor to teach you basic skills and guide your creative development. He writes that the most important part of working with a mentor isn’t getting their advice—it’s how you use it. Focus on being a good student by listening, absorbing information, and using their feedback to improve your creative abilities.
Questlove notes that not everyone will have a formal flesh-and-blood mentor, and that’s OK. You can still learn by studying successful people in your field. For example, you can learn painting techniques by studying famous artists’ work in museums or improve your writing by reading and analyzing your favorite authors’ books.
Collaborate With Other Artists
Questlove writes that collaborating with other artists can push everyone’s creativity to the next level. He explains that most creative breakthroughs don’t come from inventing new things, but rather from combining existing ideas in fresh ways. When you collaborate with others, you combine your ideas and skills to make unique work neither of you could create alone.
To maximize the creative power of collaboration, don’t limit yourself to working with people similar to you. Try working with people from other genres or backgrounds. Their different perspectives help you learn more about your creative approach and also discover fresh ideas in your field.
Questlove adds that it’s natural to feel competitive when working with other artists. In fact, it’s a good thing—competition can inspire you to work harder and create better art. For example, Questlove recalls a studio session where he and a few other artists took turns playing their unfinished songs for each other. When his track “Double Trouble” received a lukewarm response compared to the others, he used that feedback as motivation, returned to the studio that night, and completely reworked it.
Questlove wasn’t competing for money or fame—he simply wanted to create something that would impress his fellow artists. This kind of healthy competition pushes artists to improve their craft. You can find similarly healthy ways to compete: Join local artist meetups where people share their unfinished work and give feedback. You can even challenge yourself by trying to match or surpass the quality of past artists’ work.
6. Spend Time in Nature
In The Creative Act, Rick Rubin suggests that immersing yourself in nature can stimulate creativity and provide a sense of clarity and inspiration that is often hard to find in urban or indoor environments. He emphasizes that nature acts as a catalyst for creative thinking by offering an escape from the distractions of daily life and fostering a space for reflection and introspection.
(Shortform note: Attention Restoration Theory (ART) offers an explanation for how nature boosts creativity. ART suggests that natural environments help restore the mind’s ability to focus and think clearly, which often gets depleted in busy urban or indoor settings. When you immerse yourself in nature, you engage with an environment that inherently captures your attention but in an effortless way, allowing your higher cognitive functions to recover and rejuvenate. This mental refresh can lead to increased creativity as it provides the space and clarity you need to generate fresh ideas and perspectives. So next time you need a creative boost, stepping into a natural setting might be just what your brain needs.)
Rubin offers practical ways you can integrate nature into your creative practice, including taking walks to clear your mind, using natural elements as direct sources of inspiration, or simply opening yourself up to the sensory experiences offered by the environment.
(Shortform note: By incorporating nature into the creative process as Rubin suggests, you open the gateway to innovative practices like biomimicry, the practice of learning from and mimicking strategies found in nature to solve human design challenges. For example, studying the structure of a lotus leaf has led to the development of water-repellent surfaces, while examining the efficient movement of birds has influenced designs in aviation. Biomimicry bridges biology with technology and design, aiming to create innovations that are sustainable and efficient by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies.)
7. Connect With People
Rubin also emphasizes the importance of human connection as a source of inspiration. He suggests that engaging with others, whether through conversation, observation, or collaboration, can spark new ideas and perspectives. He encourages you to:
- Listen actively to others’ stories and experiences.
- Observe human behavior and interactions in various settings.
- Engage in discussions with people from diverse backgrounds.
- Collaborate with other artists or creators to cross-pollinate ideas.
For example, if you’re a photographer taking pictures of a small town, Rubin would encourage you to spend time in local cafes, attend community events, and strike up conversations with residents. These interactions could lead to intimate portraits and candid moments that tell a richer story of the town’s character and its people. The resulting photo series wouldn’t only showcase the physical aspects of the town but also capture its essence through the stories and personalities of its inhabitants.
By connecting with people in these ways, you expose yourself to different viewpoints, emotions, and life experiences that can enrich your creative work and provide authentic material for your art. Rubin believes that these human interactions can lead to unexpected insights and help artists tap into universal themes that resonate with audiences.
(Shortform note: The concept of the “adjacent possible” offers a framework for understanding how these connections with people can lead to innovation and artistic breakthroughs. Developed by theoretical biologist Stuart Kauffman, the adjacent possible theory posits that at any moment, there exists a set of potential next steps or innovations that are directly accessible from our current state of knowledge and experience. In the context of art and creativity, this suggests that new ideas often emerge from novel combinations of existing elements rather than from isolated, radical leaps. As you engage with diverse viewpoints and experiences, you continually expand your adjacent possible, opening up new avenues for creativity.)
Explore Further
Want to learn more about where creative inspiration comes from and how to cultivate it? You can read the full guides to the books mentioned in this article here:
