7 Ways To Get Inspired (When You're Absolutely Not Feeling It)

7 Ways To Get Inspired

In this article, I want to share seven ways to get yourself inspired. But I also want to address the number one thing that you can do that will prolong your rut. For most people, ruts will last from a few weeks to a few months, but there is one thing that you can do to radically prolong them.

Not accepting your reality as it is, except that you are resisting your routines, except that you are feeling flat, except that you are feeling uncreative. Acceptance is not approval, it's just acknowledging what is. Acceptance comes before change. Now, let's talk about five ways to get inspired.

Take Inventory of Your Life

Feeling uninspired can be situational. Taking inventory is part of acceptance. It's getting clear on what might be causing, or what might be contributing to you, feeling uninspired. For example, in a Harvard study that looked at over 9000 journal entries of 177 employees. They asked the employees to rate the amount of time pressure they felt on a daily basis. What they found consistently is if that rating was seven or over the employee’s creativity, their inspiration, if you will decrease by 45% sent.

So if you're in a situation where you have a lot on your plate, feeling uninspired is a pretty standard response. Take inventory of your life by writing two lists. The first list is a list of what is not working for you. The second list is a list of what you can do about those things immediately. For example, on your what's not working for me list, you might write feeling disconnected in relationships. On your what can I do immediately list, you might write a text to your partner ask them if we can do dinner, Journal about my feelings and what it is that I need to talk to them about and talk them about it at dinner.

Create For Someone Else

The second way to get inspired is to create for someone else. Rick Rubin, who is a music producer, has an exercise that he does with artists who are feeling creatively uninspired. When they're having a hard time writing new material for themselves, he gets them to write new material for someone else. He asked them to write the song that they wish they could see from their favorite artists or an artist that inspires them. What that helps to do is remove self-imposed boundaries.

Once you're no longer creating for yourself or creating for your own benefit, you can get out of your own head. If you're in a rut creatively or in your work, and you can't seem to find the inspiration to do your own thing. Try working on someone else's thing. I could write a script for another productivity YouTuber. You might pick an artist that you love and create art in their style that you would love to see.

Ask Yourself The Question

The next way to get inspired again is to look at whatever it is you are working on and ask yourself the question, who is going to benefit from my effort? It might be the one person who has followed you, because, you know, will love whatever it is you're doing. You might just be picturing the joy on your boss's face. It might be the confused customer from three weeks ago.

Daniel Pink in his book WHEN wrote if you're feeling stuck in the middle of a project, picture one person who will benefit from your efforts. Dedicating your work to that person will inspire you to your task. 

Create Rules

Another way to inspire yourself is to create rules. Animator Chuck Jones also created rules for his Roadrunner cartoons. Chuck Jones was a big believer in strict limitations,  or as he called them disciplines to Foster creativity. He once said, everyone, I've ever respected always uses restricted tools. Rules that are of your own making constraints that are of your own design are the funniest rules to make.

To create inspiration in your days, create rules for your days. Create rules for your work to be inspired by your work. Wherever you are feeling uninspired, create a set of rules and try to adhere to them.

10 Minutes a Day Every Day

The next rule to follow to get yourself inspired is 10 minutes a day every day. That's all. If you have a goal or a project that you've been feeling uninspired by, commit to just 10 minutes of action every single day.

No more and no less, that's important. No more, because you want your momentum and the energy that you're building to roll into the next day. And the next no less, because you need to spend enough time on the task to create momentum.

You need to sink into that task. The amount of times that I've thought that I was totally unmotivated, had no creative energy left to give, only to sit down, spend 10 minutes on a task, and find all of that creative energy coming back is unbelievable. In the words of James Clear, “Motivation often comes after starting, not before. Action produces momentum”.

Spend Your Time on a Different Creative Project

The next way to get inspired again is to spend your time on a different creative project.

In the book, Tools of Titans, a book that features some of the most successful people in the world, Tim Ferriss found that a commonality between a lot of these successful people was a side obsession. These people would work intensely on goals and projects, and then to blow off steam, they would be making specialty coffee just for fun. If you are struggling to get inspired, start tapping into whatever side obsessions are there for you. 

Absorb New Ways of Thinking

The next way to get inspired again is to absorb new ways of thinking. My routine more recently has been getting up in the morning and spending 30 minutes reading a book. I'm taking notes detailing how I think about those ideas, and I'm feeling more interested than I have in a while.

Go on to whatever Bookseller website you use, or the library website, or the documentary website that you follow, wherever it is, that you go to to get your media and then get out a bunch of media that you know will inspire you. It could be books that you have already visited before that inspired you previously. It could be completely new books that are in a field of interest that you wanted to explore for a while, following your curiosity.

I appreciate you so much, and I'll see you soon.