✨ The Creativity Toolkit

Creativity is a magical force.

It, to me, is a spiritual practice. It helps us transcend 3D reality by touching something that’s beyond us.

The practice of actualizing that magic into a digestible form for human consumption is a skillset that is honed and developed over a lifetime.

This toolkit is intended to assist with that process — everything I’ve found helpful on my creative journey.

I’ll cover:

• Practices & rituals to summon flow

• Behavioral tools

• Essential reads on the creative process

• Supplements

• Biohacking technologies

• Physical Tools

• Personal musings on the creative process

• Science-based protocols from Huberman

Preserve + Protect Dopamine

Your baseline dopamine levels are essential for your creative output.

It’s the brain’s motivation supply, and the fuel behind abstract thought and ideation.

When you ‘spend’ your dopamine reserves on: checking texts, emails, news, sugar — you’re depleting the dopamine that could be used towards creative thought and output.

I can’t stress that point enough.

If you want to create better work, spend less of your dopamine on irrelevant shit, and check your phone less frequently (3-4x/day max).

Your elevated baseline dopamine levels will naturally become a wellspring for your brain to produce original, creative thought.

Create in the Morning, Before Anything Else

Before you respond to anyone, or have any inputs from the outside world — sit down and do your creative practice.

At this time, your dopamine levels are preserved, and you’re a clear vessel for creation.

Simply adopting this practice — not checking your phone until you’ve created for the day — will make a world of difference in your creative life.

Boredom

Boredom creates the necessary space for creative thoughts to form.

When the mind isn’t pre-occupied, reactive, and stimulated, it’s forced to come up with new things to entertain itself.

It’s also the space where self-reflection naturally comes in, which is supportive to the creative process — understanding where you’re at, what you’re thinking about, feeling, and experiencing, so that you can transmute that into your creations.

Go deeper on the power of boredom — Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Creative Self

Adopt a Professional Creative’s Schedule

In 10x is Easier Than 2x, Dan Hardy describes that high level creatives often split up their days, with the intention of delivering the best possible performance and highest quality, rather than sheer quantity.

You can split up your days like this:

Focus / Performance: give yourself completely to your creative work. Emphasize quality, focus.

Preparation / Admin — Prepare yourself for the focus / performance days. Get lingering admin items knocked off your list, without guilt for doing the easy things.

Rest — Actively rest and recover. Get inspired by consuming new books, music, podcasts, films. Allow your mind to wander and not be pressured to work on your craft.

Tune In

Get in tune with your body, mind, spirit — dance, yoga, meditation, tai chi, walk in nature, pray. Don’t skip this step before embarking on a creative session.

Ritual

Treat the creative process as a ceremonial ritual. You’re communing with something larger than yourself — call it God, the Muse, whatever.

As such, treat it with reverence.

Light incense, palo santo, or Sage.

Sit in silence for a minute before starting.

Feel the feeling of gratitude when you complete, and say thank you.

Start a Creator Collective

Start a small monthly creator gathering in your city.

It’s extremely supportive to have a group of creators to bounce ideas off of, get feedback, accountability, support, and share inspiration.

Every month when you meet — share what you did in the past month, what you’re aiming to do in the next month, and any support that you’re seeking.

It also creates a small deadline for you to create for the month, for the show & tell portion of the meetup.

Morning Pages

The stream of consciousness style journaling practice made famous by Julia Cameron is massively useful as a practice.

Get everything out of your brain, onto the page, without any judgment or editing.

See what threads emerge.

The dumping frees up space for you to create from deeper in the subconscious.

Supplements

Cacao

• Ceremonial Cacao is a drink that opens your heart with theobromine. It’s stimulating and dopamine-increasing (from PEA), but without engaging the left-brain too much like Coffee

• You feel like creating, but you don’t get the feeling that you need to focus and hammer through things like you do with Coffee. Coffee feels very linear when used with the creative process

• I use ORA Cacao — I add 10 chips and blend it with a tsp of coconut oil + cinnamon + C60.

  • (10% off with above link)

Carbon60

• C60 is a nobel-prize winning material that’s been shown to have profound effects on the human body

• C60, when bound to MCT oil, reaches the brain

• It’s been shown to induce neural outgrowth — suggesting neuroplasticity and neurogenesis

• Reduces brain inflammation and increases ATP in the brain

• I blend it with my cacao in the morning — it’s a beautiful combination for writing music

• Ian Mitchell, the founder & formulator, is an absolutely brilliant polymath chemist. Here’s a pod episode with him to learn more.

• C60 MCT Oil from Wizard Sciences 

  • Code ‘Human3’ for 20% Off

L-Theanine

• Induces Alpha brainwave states, reduces stress/anxiety

• Sports Research is a brand that uses Suntheanine, a patented form of L-Theanine that’s been clinically studied

Psychoactive Substances

Cann

• I love this 2mg THC + 2mg CBD drink for creating in the evenings — it’s a subtle lift & expansion

• Legal to buy online because it’s Hemp-derived!

• Drinkcann.com →

  • Code ‘Human3’ for 20% Off

Hape

• A ceremonial tobacco snuff that, in this context, gives you a jolt of clarity. It helps you get out of your own way, and allow the creative force to come through.

• Best to seek someone to guide you the first time, before working with it yourself

• I use Four Visions Vine of the Soul Blend

LSD + Psilocybin + Ketamine

• Microdosing is an obvious and powerful use of these substances to assist with creative flow

  • I use Mycology Psychology’s blends — it’s a bit pricier than DIY, but it’s really potent and clean.

  • I buy their 200mg blends, and then split them into my own capsules at 100mg each. It works out to $3.16/dose

• Mini-dosing: ¼ or 1/3 of standard dose gives you a mild psychedelic experience, that allows you to stay rooted enough to ground and execute your creative ideas

• Full-dosing: best for pure stream of consciousness expression, to edit later — leave an open canvas, journal, or voice memo going to capture any ideas that come through

Float Tank

• The float tank is the most reliable practice I’ve found to induce creative flow. By silencing all outside input, you find the still center within that is most inducive for creativity to flow through you

Technologies

Apollo Neuro

A wearable that calms your nervous system. Anxiety is the kryptonite for creativity. Apollo specifically reduces stress and anxiety with tuned vibrations to your nervous system.

• I use this while creating (and also for social events and sleep), it’s pretty great

Apolloneuro.com →

Sensai

Clinical-grade neurofeedback helps you train how to access states of Alpha, Theta, Gamma brainwaves — brain states correlated with creativity, focus, and insight.

Sens.ai →

The War of Art

The essential read when starting a creative practice, or when you need a kick in the ass.

If you’re simply not doing the work to create, giving excuses and bullshit - you need to read this.

A quick read that gets the point across succinctly with beautiful prose.

Big Magic

A beautiful account of the magical elements of creativity.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s insights will help clue you into the essence of creativity as a spiritual practice — one to fall in love with, appreciate, and honor.

(rather than dread and slog your way through).

The Creative Act

The Tao te Ching of Creativity.

78 reflections from Rick Rubin on creating the best art possible.

Open to any page, as an oracle deck, and get practical insights on creating your best work.

The Artist’s Way

Considered by many to be an essential read. Beyond the two core practices — Morning Pages and Artist Dates — there’s power in the writing itself and Cameron’s reflections.

Following through with the schedule of the program can also keep you on track with commitment to your development as an artist.

Steal Like an Artist

An engaging, beautifully executed guide on developing your own voice and style as an artist.

Creative Quest

I found Questlove’s insights on the creative process interesting and unique, considering his background as a musician and seasoned curator/DJ. I specifically loved the insight he brought to the power and art of curation.

Narrative Theory

Narrative theory can help individuals think outside their usual framework and access creativity in a childlike way.

Three steps to narrative theory:

1. World building: Create a different world structure for the creative idea 

   • Sets constraints and possibilities, similar to childhood imagination

2. Perspective shifting: Take on the motivation of someone else, rather than just their viewpoint 

   • Captures a set of neural circuits related to motivational states

   • Constrains the number of possible actions and outcomes in a logical way

3. Action generating: Force collaboration between individuals with different motivations 

   • Creates “creative collisions” where something new emerges from the interaction

   • Can be antagonistic, synergistic, or take on various forms depending on the motivations involved

Shape Creative Practice Around Mood

Divergent thinking can be loosely defined as the ability to ideate.

Before starting, assess your mood: low, medium, or high.

If in low or medium mood, engage in mood-​​elevating activities before attempting divergent thinking — cacao, yoga nidra (increases baseline dopamine 65%), sunshine, exercise, cold plunge.

If in a good mood, consider avoiding additional stimuli that increase dopamine levels. Further dopamine elevation can be detrimental to divergent thinking.

There’s a sweet spot — too high or too low of dopamine is challenging to divergent thinking.

Open Monitoring Meditation for Divergent Thinking

Open monitoring meditation involves sitting or lying down, closing your eyes, and allowing thoughts, emotions, and ideas to surface without judgment

Improves divergent thinking.

Focused Attention Meditation For Convergent Thinking

Focused attention meditation involves sitting or lying down, closing your eyes, and focusing on a specific element (e.g., breath, body part, sound, or visual point)

Improves convergent thinking (the ability to filter down ideas into action and execution), focus, and memory

art is a lover

do you spend every waking moment with your lover/partner? when you’re not together, are you thinking “i should be spending time with my partner?” do you suffocate your partner?

do you apply love, grace, flow, listening to her energy and flowing with her? ecstatic moments and the whole range of human emotion — disappointment, sadness, anger, frustration, joy, tenderness, excitement?

try treating your art the same way.

you are not an artist

you are an Artist. there’s a difference.

you’re the supreme conduit & facilitator between your inner universe and the eternal creative life force energy.

act accordingly — be the facilitator, not the identity.

process over output

are you properly cultivating the conditions for love, depth, richness, vision to come through your creations?

focus on this first.

then we can be less concerned about daily output.

the juicy stuff will come through — ebb and flow.

show up

“Reliably show up with an open heart, and the will to share whatever spirit you can muster.”

sit down and do the work every day.

it’s a consistent push from yourself to do this.

it gets easier. read the war of art. take cold showers or ice baths.

remember why

why do you create? go rediscover the feeling that compelled you down this path.

nature, conversation, art gallery, museum, concert, romance, road trip, plane trip, retreat.

we don’t rely on inspiration, but it’s a ritual that we need to continue returning to to keep the fire burning brightly.