Haruki Murakami running

Haruki Murakami runs a 10K and swims 1500 meters a day when he's in novel-writing mode. Alan Greenspan takes a long, hot soak every morning at 6 a.m. to get the gears turning—those gears that have turned the financial world for the past decade. Franz Kafka took lots of naps. Colette and Simone de Beauvoir surrounded themselves with a coterie of friends (and Colette got blood transfusions on top of that). It would appear that there as many strategies for keeping creativity flowing as there are artists and approaches to art itself.

Earlier this week with the release of Chad Hagen's 20x200 edition, Nonsensical Infographic No. 3 and No. 4, we mentioned briefly about his contribution to a nice piece of writing that's been making its way around the internet on overcoming creative block. Hagen was one of 25 creative professionals queried by Scott Hansen on what to do when you're not doin'.

Hagen's advice was among my favorite. He wrote:

I used to think I would eventually, if I worked hard enough, master art like a math equation and then I could relax and just make great stuff and let everything else follow. That time definitely never came, and I know now I never want it to, because the most important thing that keeps me creative is my wanting to be good. So if I’m ever in a rut, the best things to get me out of them is to put myself in places that engage that desire to be good...In my opinion, there is no better way to trigger your own creativity, than to see what great things others have made or are making. Going to museums, galleries, shows, etc. always inspires my mind in a way that make me want to get back into my own work and make good things.

Other good advice proffered in Hansen's essay: British designer Michael C. Place suggests that you cook something (and even offers a quick and tasty recipe to boot); Brooklyn-based artist Mike Perry tells you to get lost somewhere, literally (he recommends an Amtrak ride to nowhere specific); Justin Krietemeyer from the California think-tank National Forest wisely opines that good old sweat will keep the good ideas coming with the endorphins, writing: "Good ideas are stored in fat so if I burn some off I can free them up and use em" and perhaps my favorite (fantasy for many of us?) advice came from NYC-based graphic designer Nicholas Felton, who suggests filling up one's life with alternating kinds of experiences on odd-numbered and even-numbered years, thus "alternate the tenor of my years, like crop-rotations." In odd-numbered years Felton travels more often and works on personal projects, and in even-numbered years he stays closer to the home fires and concentrates on drumming up business and profit.

Two posters by Mike Perry

For my part, I am horribly susceptible to infinite web distractions, taking too long to finish something due to some imagined need for that thing to be an even more imaginary qualifier of "perfect," and to mentally self-flagellate for only crossing off half of my to-do list on any given day. When I really need to reign myself in and focus, I tend to the Platonic advice of "Know Thyself." I know I work best in the mornings and late evenings, so I make sure to tackle the things that take the most flexible mental energy in those time blocks. When I need to empty my mind so that it can be free to later explore undeterred by all the crap I've filled it up with, I'll make like Alan Greenspan and take a hot soak.

While I don't think I actively do this to get out of a rut, I often find that looking or researching the work of artists I am engaged with will push my mind out of a place it might have never even known it was in, sort of like the blissful feeling of a receding killer headache. My most recent artistic aspirin has come in the form of an early Duane Michals tome, Real Dreams, which was suggested to me through another inspiring source, the blog Little Brown Mushroom. Photographer Charlie B. Ward has been asking other photographers and art world aficionados about the first photobook that they remember affecting them in a powerful way. Recently he asked this of gallerist Bill Hunt, and the Michals book Real Dreams was his answer. My copy arrived last week, and I've been lingering over Michals' thoughts and handwriting with the kind of delicious relish that only comes when I encounter a true sympatico. I'll leave you with some of what's been nourishing me the last little while:

The history of photography has not been written. You will write it. No one has photographed a nude until you have. No one has photographed a sequence of green peppers until you have. Nothing has been done till you do it.

There are no answers anymore.

Get Weston off your back, forget Arbus, Frank, Adams, White, don't look at photographs. Kill the Buddha.

I am my own hero.

-Real Dreams, 1976 by Duane Michals

We invite you in the comments to offer your own favorite tried-and-true rut-busting techniques, or your favorite stories of thinkers and makers that have found ways out of the morass of the mind. Knowledge is power, and sometimes it's a very useful and crowd-sourced power!