Protocols to Access Creative Energy and Process: Rick Rubin on the Huberman Lab
Summary
Rick Rubin, world-renowned music producer and author of The Creative Act: A Way of Being, answers listener questions about his daily creative practices, mental frameworks, and personal protocols for sustaining creative output. The conversation covers meditation, heart rate variability training, journaling, overcoming creative blocks, and the philosophy of making work without attachment to outcomes.
Key Takeaways
- Creative blocks are almost always caused by fear — either self-judgment (“I’m not good enough”) or fear of outside judgment (“nobody will like this”), not an actual absence of ideas.
- Treat creative work like a diary entry: it belongs only to you, cannot be judged as incorrect, and removes all performance pressure.
- Detach from outcomes during the making process — thinking about outcomes while creating actively undermines the quality of the work.
- Coherence breathing (6 breaths per minute, ~10–20 minutes daily) can measurably raise heart rate variability over time.
- Transcendental Meditation (TM) practiced consistently over years builds a cumulative base — “every session is a deposit in a bank” — that eventually changes how you engage with the world, not just how you feel during the session.
- Work on multiple projects simultaneously and follow momentum rather than forcing a stuck project; if the universe isn’t helping a project, don’t fight it.
- Get a complete rough draft down before refining — don’t get bogged down in perfecting individual sections at the expense of finishing the whole thing.
- Ideas don’t originate from the self — the artist is a vessel collecting and constellating information from the outside world. A narrow belief system limits available creative material.
- Capturing ideas in the moment (notes app, voice memos) is important; random moments like waking up, walking, or showering are prime idea-generating windows.
Detailed Notes
Coherence Breathing for Heart Rate Variability
Rick Rubin was introduced to coherence breathing specifically to address low heart rate variability (HRV). After researching what interventions could raise HRV, he adopted this technique and confirmed improvement through measurement.
- Protocol: 6 breaths per minute (approximately 5-second inhale, 5-second exhale)
- Duration: Aim for 10 minutes daily; 20 minutes produces noticeably stronger HRV results
- Timing: Flexible — done poolside after treading water, during travel, or as a standalone practice
- Mental approach: Rick counts breaths to stay anchored (e.g., “1-1, 1-2, 1-3… 2-1, 2-2…”) which occupies the mind with a simple task
Meditation Practice: TM and Extensions
Rick learned Transcendental Meditation at age 14. After nearly 45 years, the benefits are now deeply integrated — he doesn’t need to practice daily to maintain the baseline state, though regular practice amplifies it.
- Core practice: TM as a default; often transitions into breath work, then other practices
- Loving-kindness meditation (Metta): Four phrases repeated in sequence:
- May I be filled with loving kindness
- May I be well
- May I be peaceful and at ease
- May I be happy
- Progression: After ~1 year, shift from “May I” to “May we” (immediate family); after another year, extend to community; after ~5 years, extend to the planet
- Teacher: Jack Kornfield (Buddhist scholar)
- Key insight: Meditation is not the goal — it is a practice for life. The changes that occur during meditation are meant to improve your reactions and presence in the real world, similar to how the stress of exercise produces adaptations that improve daily function.
Creative Blocks: Diagnosis and Resolution
Rick reframes “creative blocks” not as a mysterious absence of ideas, but as a symptom of a specific fear:
- Self-judgment: “I’m not good enough” or “I have nothing to say”
- Fear of external judgment: “Nobody is going to like what I make”
Solution — the diary entry framework:
- Treat everything you make as a personal diary entry
- A diary entry cannot be judged as wrong — it is your experience
- This removes all external pressure and restores authentic creative access
- “If you’re living in this world of just being honest to where you’re at, there’s nothing blocking that”
Additional source of ideas: Ideas don’t come from sitting at a desk. Walking, observing, experiencing the world seeds new material constantly. The artist’s job is to notice — consciously and unconsciously — and form new constellations from gathered data points.
Outcome Detachment
One of the most emphasized concepts throughout the conversation:
- Asking “is this worth it?” or focusing on how work will be received while making it actively undermines the work
- The creative process is a devotional practice — you make the best thing you can, full stop
- What happens after completion — reception, sales, recognition — is entirely outside your control; placing energy there is a waste
- Exception: After the work is complete, it is appropriate to think about how to share or distribute it
- Illustrated by the Andrew Dice Clay story: Clay compromised his authentic comedic voice trying to please critics who disliked him, which destroyed what made him effective in the first place
Journaling and Dream Capture
Rick’s approach to journaling:
- Captures ideas constantly in phone notes; acknowledges this system is imperfect (sometimes can’t decode old notes)
- Considering voice memos as a future addition
Andrew Huberman’s journaling practice (shared during conversation):
- 1–8 handwritten pages per entry, starting in capitals, transitioning to cursive
- Diary-style: processing frustration, observations, emotional states
- Mentioned expressive writing protocol (James Pennebaker, UT Austin):
- Write for 15 minutes/day for 4 consecutive days about the most difficult or traumatic experience of your life
- Supported by 200+ peer-reviewed studies showing improvements in psychology, physiology, immune function, and infection resistance
On dreams:
- Rick has kept dream journals in phases; not currently active
- Looking back at old dream journals revealed that surreal, nonsensical imagery was consistently reflecting a single clear emotional theme from that life period
- Dreams are described as the subconscious mind’s “reflections” — not necessarily pointers but windows into how the unconscious is processing lived experience
- Creative implication: Instinct and the unconscious are where great ideas live; intellectually derived ideas carry less charge
Physical Practices and Environment
- Treading water: Daily practice while listening to podcasts; treated as endurance/low-impact cardio; skill improves quickly with consistent practice
- Air squats: Paired with coherence breathing during periods without access to equipment
- Sun exposure: Advocates for regular natural sunlight; deliberately does not wear sunscreen or sunglasses during beach walks; notes clear skin as a result
- Wired/air-tube headphones: Switched away from Bluetooth due to personal experience of lymph node swelling behind ears; now uses wired or air-tube headphones (no electrical component near the head)
- Phone out of bedroom: Reported improvement in sleep quality
- Diet: High protein, low carb, low calorie; grass-fed meat; minimal processed foods; lost 135 lbs via this approach after 20+ years of veganism that he reports negatively impacted his health
- Stimulation management: Lives a deliberately low-stimulation, monk-like life to protect inner creative landscape; curates people and environments carefully
Project Management and Creative Process
- Works on many projects simultaneously — idea phase, mid-development, and final refinement all at once
- Does not “abandon” ideas; views them as having their own timing: “The ideas have a time when they want to come to fruition”
- Follows momentum: when a project flows easily, work there; when impenetrable, move to another
- On deadlines: Unhelpful at the beginning of a project (too much constraint on open exploration); useful near the end once the creative code has been cracked
- Book writing advice: Get to a complete draft you’re satisfied with before refining any part of it; don’t perfect sections at the expense of finishing