3 Simple Hacks to Find the Muse Fast

Beloved body/mind-hacker Tim Ferriss recently shared a blog post about his morning journaling ritual. He bashes out whatever comes to mind for about 5-minutes to record all of his doubts, neuroses, concerns, etc. In the post, he contemplates two possibilities for the purpose of this exercise:

1. I’m trying to figure things out, and this might help.
2. I’m just caging my monkey mind on paper so I can get on with my fucking day.

Ultimately, he’s not concerned with the correct answer, because he has a technique that works to make him more effective on a daily basis.

Connecting to the muse can a notoriously difficult affair, but there are hacks like Ferriss’s that can stack the odds in your favour when it comes time to get down to business. Beyond journaling, here are a few I use:

1. Music – duh, but there’s actually more to this one. I’ve found over time that it has to be the right music, and it’s rarely the same thing twice. Some days that has to be brutal dubstep drops, and others, the soothing emptiness of Theta binaural beats. Whatever it is for you, if you’re struggling to hit your stride, it might be worth pausing to check if your tunes are “in tune” (ahem) with your mind.
2. Wordlessness – or, colloquially, staring into space. To tap into that big energy of the universe, sometimes you need to pull specific thoughts out of the equation. One possible technique is just to visualize putting any thoughts that come to mind into a bubble and then popping them. Another is to picture a concept like Love or Energy without any concrete form. Whatever you use, even 30 seconds of wordlessness can do the trick. You’ll find the thoughts start coming to you, as opposed to you frantically trying to chase them down.
3. Bite-sized work – I was able to write my first book because I didn’t write a book: I wrote 96 very short stories, which took about 2–3 hours each. I’m using the same technique to write my current project, Spendshift, and the results are equally promising – I’ve written 37% of the book in under 2 weeks (I know the precise percentage, because there are 100 sections in the book).

I’d love to hear yours, too. Sharing this kind of information is so valuable for building a creative community, and that’s just what I’d love to help do!