The Creativity Toolkit: What I Do When I'm Running on Empty
Last fall my creativity felt a little...flat. Here's the toolkit I built to get it back.
Last fall, I found myself in a bit of a creative rut—a strange feeling when your job is literally to come up with ideas. I’d sit down to write and feel like I was just going through the motions. Concepting campaign ideas for Casa Zuma (something I usually love doing) started to feel like a chore. Even planning our annual holiday shoot, which is normally one of the most fun creative projects of the year, felt a little flat.
And I think the reason was simple: after 15 years of creating content online, things had started to feel a bit formulaic.
Here’s the thing about the creator economy we live in. The constant noise and pressure to stay relevant can push you into following a playbook—doing what “works,” optimizing for reach, repeating formats that perform well. And yes, that might help achieve certain metrics of success. But it’s honestly terrible for creativity.
At some point, I realized I had gotten so focused on consistency and efficiency that I’d stopped nurturing the more playful part of my brain—the part that feels curious and energized and excited about new ideas.
Maybe you’ve felt this too. You’re productive, you’re checking things off your list, you’re doing the thing… and yet you’re not actually that excited about any of it.
I always know I’m in my true creative flow when I have that lit-from-within feeling—the can’t-wait-to-jump-out-of-bed energy that comes from being completely absorbed in something. And last fall, even though I didn’t feel burned out or unhappy, my creative fire felt dim. I knew I wanted to get back to that fully alive feeling again.
When I examined how the stagnancy had crept in in the first place, I realized that it had started from good intentions. I’d been clearing space in my schedule, staying focused on my priorities, and being really consistent with my wellness habits. I was going to bed early, time-blocking my workdays, avoiding alcohol (no, alcohol is not a wellness tool… let’s be honest, a glass of wine has been known to get my creative juices flowing!).
In other words, I was doing all the things that are supposed to make life feel balanced and healthy. But somewhere along the way, I forgot: If I want to feel inspired, I have to actually be living an interesting life.
Creativity doesn’t just appear out of thin air. I have to feed it—with art, reading books, tasting new flavors, going to concerts, wandering through a bookstore, talking to people, having experiences that have absolutely nothing to do with my to-do list. Inspiration is everywhere, but if most of my day is spent on Zoom calls, social media, and personal development projects, I’m not actually anywhere.
Consuming other people’s content and calling it “research” is a cheap substitute for actually being out in the world and paying attention to what’s around you.
And I think this might be why so many of us feel vaguely off even when everything else in our lives seems to be working. We’ve gotten really good at the foundations of wellness—sleep, movement, nutrition, mindfulness—but creativity rarely gets included as a pillar of health. We treat it like a luxury instead of something essential, the first thing that gets left out when life gets busy.
But I’ve learned the hard way that when I’m consuming more than I’m creating, there’s a quiet flatness that starts to bleed into everything.
Over the past few months, I’ve been slowly untangling my “efficiency above all else” mindset and remembering that inspiration needs space. When I make room to play—to wander, try new things, notice what’s around me—I feel genuinely inspired again.
And what I keep reminding myself is that “doing something creative” is so much bigger than the narrow box we tend to put it in. Reading poetry counts. Baking bread counts. Dancing in the kitchen counts. Going to a museum, rearranging a room, taking a different route home—it all counts.
It’s a little like stretching before a workout. It loosens your mind up and makes it easier to think more expansively in every part of your life.
So I built myself a toolkit. Not for producing more content or optimizing anything. Just for feeling fully alive again.
Keep reading for:
The practices I come back to when I need to think creatively again
The 10% Rule that changed the game for me
The list of ideas I keep on my phone for when I’m feeling blocked
