Essentials: How to Access Your Creativity | Rick Rubin

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Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, [music] where we revisit past episodes for the most potent and actionable science-based tools for mental health, physical health, and performance. I’m Andrew Huberman, and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. And now for my discussion with Rick Rubin. Great to have you here today, Rick. >> Thank you for having me.

It’s a pleasure. >> Of all the topics in science and in particular in neuroscience, I confess that creativity is the most difficult one to capture. As I went into your book, the example that you give, this idea that ideas and creativity are a little bit like a cloud. If you look at it at one moment, you might think that it looks like one thing, but then you look at it a moment later, it could be quite a bit different, and if you look at it an hour later, it very well could be gone. How did that come to you, and how does it serve you in trying to ex- I don’t want to say extract, but trying to access creativity?

I think the best way to think about it is like a dream. It’s like if you think about your dreams, they don’t necessarily make sense. When you wake up, you’ll you might remember part, but not the whole thing. Then if you start writing them down, they’ll come back. And they may not make sense to you.

You know, maybe someday in the future you’ll be able to look back and understand what they mean, and maybe not. And that’s sort of how this the art making uh process works. It’s like we’re making things, and we’re looking for a feeling in ourselves. It could be a feeling of excitement or enthusiasm, a feeling of interest, a feeling of curiosity, a want to know more. It’s not an intellectual process.

It’s a different thing. I think language is insufficient to to drill down on creativity. It’s more um it’s closer to magic than it is uh science. >> Do you think kids are more or just by definition and by design more creative than adults. >> Yes, kids are they’re open and they have [clears throat] no baggage.

They don’t have any belief system. They don’t know how things are supposed to work. They just see what is. Most of us select from an endless number of data points of available to us to well, as a as a species to make sure that we don’t die and to procreate and to feed ourselves are probably the primary functions first. And then we learn things about what’s right and what’s wrong and we learn things about uh how to do certain things [clears throat] or we’re inspired by someone who makes something we love and we want to do it the way they do it.

And all of those things undermine the purity of the creative process. They can be um tools to build your skill set to be able to do it yourself. Like if you’re a a singer, you might imitate a singer you really like for a while to get good at it and then eventually come to find your own voice. But if you’re 3 years old or 5 year years old you try singing, you’re not singing like anyone else. You’re you’re singing with your own your own voice.

And when you make something, you’re making it based on not knowing. And I I think I had the advantage early in my career of starting making music without any experience, which was helpful because I didn’t know what rules I was breaking. I was doing things that other people wouldn’t do. >> When something feels creatively right, let’s say in the studio or maybe even you’re listening to something that somebody sent you. And again, this could be about writing or comedy or you know, or science or podcasting for that matter.

How do you say, keep going that way? When they might not even recognize that they did it. And I’m guessing a lot of times they don’t. >> I’ll try to be in a in a setting where as we’re talking about it, we can engage with it in that moment. Let’s say I was producing your new record and you played me something and I had some thoughts about it.

It wouldn’t be so helpful for me to tell you what those were. It’d be better for us to wait till we were in a place where we could try things and see where it goes. I wouldn’t rely on language to do it. It would be more of a making a suggestion of something that’s actionable, we try it, and then we have more data. It’s that simple.

So much of, you know, when we go to school, it’s to get us to follow the rules. And in art, it’s different because the the rules are there as a scaffolding to be um chipped away as need be. Sometimes they’re helpful, sometimes they’re not. Understanding how you feel in the face of other voices without second-guessing yourself is probably the single most important um thing to practice as an artist or skill set to develop as an artist is to know how you feel and own your feelings. If I’m undermining my taste for some commercial idea or uh it it defeats the whole purpose of doing this.

This is not That’s not what this process is about. This process is I’m doing me and I’m showing you who I am and you can like it or not, but either way, this is still how I see it. >> In your book, you describe, again, when you think about the creative process as a the cloud. For me, again, it serves as such a powerful anchor. And then I think about the the biology, the neurobiology of like strategy formation or strategy implementation.

And then almost by sheer luck or miraculously, I turn a few pages later into the book and there’s a description of how animals that are trying to accomplish something eat, mate, find water, the requirements of living. It requires a narrow visual focus. This is something my lab is kind of obsessed with and I’ve been obsessed with. And in that more narrow visual focus, we know that the the playbook becomes more narrow. Now at some point in order to come up with a new creative idea, that means that broadening vision is essential in some way or broadening thinking.

Well, it could either be a broadening or a narrowing, but it’s changing the aperture from the standard to present something new that maybe you already knew but didn’t know you knew it. It’s not unlike what a comedian does, you know, comedian makes you laugh. Usually what they’re saying, it’s outrageous, but you know that it’s right. You know, just no one says it that way or no one has said it that way before. But it’s always the truth in it that makes it funny.

Recognizing something that seems really obvious once you see it, but seems like nobody else sees it or no one else points it out. >> So do you think nowadays the fact that one can create something and quote unquote release it quickly? I can put it something out onto Twitter, Instagram now and I will get immediate feedback, which is external feedback of course, but then I can iterate on the basis of that feedback. Do you think that’s problematic for the larger opportunity for creativity? >> think it’s wrong or right.

It’s just it’s more information that you can use or not use and use it in a useful way and you know, you can make something and put it out and people could not like it and you’re like, “Oop, they still don’t get it. Here, I’m going to I got to go harder. ” There could be different stories that happen at the same time where you’re making something and you have an idea of what it is and then other people engage with it and they have a different idea of what it is and they like it for a different reason than you did or dislike it for a reason different than the reason you like it. We can’t control any of those things. The only part of it that we can control is how we relate to the thing that we make.

And any external information that undermines the clarity of that connection is probably bad for the art is my is my guess. All I’ve ever tried to make was something I like or something that I felt like was missing as a fan that I wanted and I nobody was making it. So, I’ll I’ll make it. >> When I listen to an album or a song, I