What to Do When Inspiration is a No Show
FM (Friday Morning) Reflection #9
There are times when I sit down to create—whether it’s writing, solving a problem, or dreaming up something new—and nothing comes.
It happened to me as I considered what to share in this FM (Friday Morning) Reflection. Between travel, a busy schedule at work, and keeping up with the ongoing torrent of developments related to Generative AI, there was a lot that I had crammed into my headspace. Plenty to talk about, yet I was drawing a blank. For a moment I even considered, “maybe I should skip this week.”
But on my walk to the train on Thursday morning, I thought back to the trigger that led to how I now approach and ready myself for inspiration.
Years ago when I was a consultant, I was constantly on the hunt for the next big innovation, filling every moment with input—catching up on the latest news, poring over product announcements, joining webinars, and hands-on research. And I was teaching too, in the business school at the University of Cincinnati, helping my students to discover and nurture their own creative ideas every day.
Yet I found myself feeling stuck…uninspired…starting to regress toward the same solutions. It really bothered me, because throughout my career, I’ve always been pushing boundaries and on the forefront of “what’s next.”
I wondered, “what happened to all those great ideas that used to come so easily…so intuitively?”
I doubled down in the search for my misplaced creative mojo. But no matter how much I read or researched, new ideas were few and far between. I worried that perhaps the flame had gone out.
Then one day—when I was in the middle of something mundane like making a sandwich—a new inspiration popped into my head, seemingly out of nowhere and without trying. I wasn’t reading, working, or searching for inspiration; I was just…being.
And that’s when it clicked. It wasn’t that I lacked or lost my creativity, I just hadn’t left any room for it. In my effort to fill every moment with input and being busy, I crowded out the space my mind needed to process and to do what it does autonomously and naturally—to connect the dots and come up with new paths to possibility.
I realized that it is in the open space—the gaps between the noise—that new ideas emerge on their own, based on all that I observe, experience, think, and feel.
From that moment on, I’ve made it part of my process to hold space for creativity. Whether it’s going for a walk, riding my bike, or sitting on a park bench and looking at the trees, people, and landscape around me, I commit time to having no agenda and to just being.
I’ve learned to trust that creativity isn’t something I can force; it’s something that flows when I give it room to breathe. Quite simply, I find that my best ideas come when I’m not actively trying to conjure them.
I think back to the period when I was a child, having unstructured time. That’s where imagination thrives—in the open time and space where seemingly nothing is happening, yet it’s where everything is happening.
I’ve heard this from other people too—that some of their best ideas come when they are in the shower, out for a walk, or like me, making a sandwich.
In a world that constantly floods us with information and demands on our attention, our instinct may be to keep pushing, keep consuming—more more more. But often, I’ve found that when creativity and inspiration are elusive, the better choice is to pause the search, consider and take stock, and stop trying to fill the void for a bit every day.
We need gaps between constant input because it’s in those moments that our minds make sense of everything we’ve observed, experienced, and felt.
And mindfulness—an active choice to create space in unstructured time—frees our consciousness to wander, discover, and surface new ideas organically. They’re in there, we may just need to quiet the internal chatter, so that they can bubble up and find their voice.
So this week, when I was lamenting that I had nothing to say, I realized that I needed to make space for the idea to come. And sure enough, it did: the simple reminder that creativity and inspiration often happen when we stop trying to fill every moment and let ourselves just be.
Have a great weekend!
Photo Bonus
Sharing this with you as we wind down the summer. A literal example of what happens when space is made for inspiration. I was walking along the boardwalk at Playland Park in Rye, NY, admiring the dappled light as it reflected off ripples and footprints in the sand. And then, this happy pet frolicking on the beach ran into my frame and made the shot.
Captured with my Polaroid SX-70 using Polaroid Black and Yellow Duochrome Film.