Essentials: How to Access Your Creativity | Rick Rubin

Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials, 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? And trying to, 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 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. That's sort of how this, the art making process works, is 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, I want to know more. It's not an intellectual process. It's a different thing. I think language is insufficient to drill down on creativity. It's more, it's closer to magic than it is science. Do you think kids are more, are just by definition and by design, more creative than adults? Yes. Kids are, they're open and they have 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 available to us to, well, 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 how to do certain things, 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 tools to build your skill set to be able to do it. Like if you're 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 three years old or five years old and you try singing, you're not singing like anyone else. You're singing with your own voice. And when you make something, you're making it based on not knowing. And 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 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 until 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 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 rules are there as a scaffolding to be 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. is probably the. single most important 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. it defeats the whole purpose of doing this. That's not what this process is about. This process is. I'm doing. 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. Hey, everyone. To celebrate the launch of my new book entitled Protocols, I'm pleased to share that I'll be hosting three live events very soon. The first live event is in New York City at Radio City Music Hall on September 17th. The second event is in Los Angeles at the Dolby Theater on October 8th. And the third live event is in San Francisco at the Masonic on October 28th. At each of these events, I'll be discussing topics from the book, and my favorite part, taking questions directly from you, the audience. To get tickets, you can go to hubermanlab.com slash events and use the code protocols to get early access. Again, that's hubermanlab.com slash events and use the code protocols to get early access to tickets. In your book, you describe, again, when you're thinking about the creative process as the cloud. For me, again, it serves as such a powerful anchor. And then I think about that. The biology, the neurobiology of 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 playbook becomes more narrow. Now, at some point, in order to come up with a new creative idea, that means 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. Yeah. Yeah. You already knew, but didn't know you knew it. It's not unlike what a comedian does. Comedian makes you laugh. Usually what they're saying, it's outrageous, but you know that it's right. 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 it 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 "release" it quickly. I can put something out onto Twitter or 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? I don't 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 can make something and put it out, and people can not like it. And you're like, "Oop, they still don't get it. Here, I'm gonna. I gotta 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 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 nobody was making it, so I'll make it. When I listen to an album or a song, I mean, I have to assume that they're, at some point, it becomes not strategy development or creativity, but strategy implementation. Like songs are going to come in this order, and at what point does one decide, "Okay, now's the time to get into that more narrow focus of effort. We've got it. Let's run with this." Because there is a component of the creative process that involves packaging and finishing. Is that part less satisfying to you, or is it just all part of the same larger arc? It's all part of the same thing. It's nice. There's a good feeling. There's usually a good feeling when something is done. It's a commitment, because up until the time that you say it's done, you can keep experimenting changing it you know if you think well maybe tomorrow i can make it better then it's not finished and you keep thinking that for a long time you can do that forever and never never put out anything getting to the point where you're ready to sign off is a good feeling one of the things i talk about in the book is um because it is a difficult thing to do because it's fun to play and it's fun to maybe it's not the best it could be yet you know um to use whatever the next project is going to be as motivation to finish the one you're working on now i'm very interested in you know your process when it comes to going from project to project and you know you're going to be doing work with somebody do you have a process for removing the functions of the day and that's what you were doing last week and what's going on and how do you clear the static what are some of the operational steps that you think might be more um generalizable to regardless of where some somebody in you know um africa is listening i would say when i'm when i engage in a particular project whatever it is i i dedicate all of myself for that period of time whatever it is whether it be 20 minutes or whether it be five hours whatever it is total focus and no outside distraction whatsoever and when i leave that space i'm going to be able to do whatever i want to do and i'm going to be able to do whatever i want to do in that process i do my best not to think about it when i'm away from it i don't bring any materials with me i don't leave the studio with works in progress and spend time listening to them during the day or looking for ideas i i stay as far away from it when i'm not directly engaging in it as possible and in the best of situations i have something else to totally engage myself in in between so instead of working on projects i'm going to be able to do whatever i want to do project a for five hours and then leaving and doing nothing i'm hoping to engage in a project b or b c and d with all of myself before going back to project a again even though you're disengaged do you believe that your subconscious is working it through i believe so i believe so and i think in general to stew over a problem is not the way to solve a problem i think to hold the problem slightly and when i say a problem you know when we're when we're starting a project there's a question mark at the beginning of every project i i'm always anxious when i start a new project because i have no idea what's going to happen i never know there's always a sense of anxiety because i know whatever's going to happen is completely out of my control something either interesting or not will appear and then we're going to follow that wherever it goes and until something appears for us to follow i have a lot of anxiety even though i know even though it has never not come you know it has come every time but there's something about it because i also feel like there might be expectation on me that i'm going to make it happen and i know that's not happening that's not how it works i'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors element element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't that means the electrolytes sodium magnesium and potassium in the correct amounts but no sugar proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance it's also important that you get adequate electrolytes the electrolytes sodium magnesium and potassium are vital for functioning of all the cells in your body especially your neurons or your nerve cells drinking element dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes to make sure that i'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes i dissolve one packet of element 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element sample pack with a purchase of any element drink mix again that's drink element.com slash huberman to claim a free sample pack so i keep coming back to is that i'm imagining in my mind i have two ends of the continuum one that is about fairly narrow focus training training strategy and then the other side is this the cloud and so we're taking this cloud and we're deciding what things are yes we go through our lives doing this all day with everything we see if it's something we don't know and something we're not familiar with first thing is is this doesn't make sense then what we do is without thinking we create a story that explains what just happened a hypothetical oh maybe he's running because his dog ran away and he's chasing his dog maybe that's why he's running and as soon as we have that thought of what it might be we relax because now it's not just a guy running and this is weird but it's a guy running oh he's probably running after his dog and now we register that story that we just made up without even knowing we were making it up as what happened and then later in the day if someone says yeah do you see that guy running out of bugs like yeah he was chasing his dog i saw that and you won't even realize that it was the maybe hypothetical story that was the first possible explanation that allowed you to continue walking our whole lives are reacting to things making up a story of what we think may have happened without realizing that's what we're doing and then living the rest of our lives as if that thing that we made up really happened and we never know that leads us to we can't know much do you know what i'm saying our resolution is so low on everything we're grasping at straws we have no idea we have no idea and there's great power in knowing that because if you think you know what's going on chances are you're being deceived not because somebody's deceiving you but because they're telling you what they see and they don't know it's all do you know what i'm saying it's all made up everything that we everything we know is made up maybe maybe it's true this brings us to pro wrestling it's it's it's the reason that pro wrestling is closer to reality than anything else we can watch or any other content it's we know it's made up we know that it's a performance it's storytelling and that's how everything is except we think wrestling's fake and the world is real wrestling's real and the world's fake i do want to ask you about wrestling so i have questions specifically about wrestling but it's really about process yeah what is the deal with your relationship to wrestling i think it maintains that kind of playfulness anything is possible we expect the unexpected all the time in wrestling and it's a way to have a kind of a feeling of the energy of a sport with with no competition it's everyone is working together to put on the best show they can so it's more like a ballet than it is like a sporting event i actually think the way you describe wrestling as you know it's the energy of the sport it's not the whether or not it's this move or that move or who wins or who loses it's the energy and i'm guessing it's the energy that it creates in you as an observer yes it's the energy creates in me and the reality that it's honest in what it is in a world where seemingly nothing is honest at what it is in some ways it's comforting and there's still this mystery of like well i wonder if that's true or not because we never really know someone gets hurt did they really break their back or are they just going on vacation we don't know we'll never know fascinating when you wake up in the morning um are your thoughts immediately structured or do you enjoy the kind of clearing of the clouds it's a it's a slow process for me to wake up and i like that i like not engaging too much too soon does it become more structured as the day goes on does your thinking become um more structured around projects and plans i try to um deal with things that need dealing with after that and in preparation for going to work and then when i go to work it's more like this free thing where i'm again hoping something good comes uh welcoming something good paying attention and maybe trying to will it to happen but knowing i don't have the ability to make it happen i can just be present for it and be ready if it does arrive obviously deadlines are relevant time of day right there's only so many hours in the day where one can stay in the groove or in this readiness to receive. Have you ever found yourself in that mode where you're kind of grinding like, ah, like here we are, like, okay, I'm not coming home for dinner tonight. It's the next, you know, we're going to push, put on the coffee pot kind of thing. A lot, a lot in the, over the course of my life, a lot, not as much now. And one of the things that I discovered through working on the book was we're not required to treat the different phases of work in the same way. Whereas before I did, before everything was in this state of play, everything had a wide open time schedule. It happens when it happens. If it takes two years or three years, it doesn't matter. It's not about that. It's only about this thing has to be great. And what I came to realize in working on the book is that there, there are different phases. And the first phase is this seed collecting phase, which is kind of an ongoing part of life in general. I do that always, whether I'm, whether I'm working on something or not, I'm always in the seed collecting phase and there's no deadline or, uh, anything that interests me that I think I want to learn more about, or has potential to be something, anything, something. I hear something. I think, Hmm, I'd like to read more about that. Or I wonder if I wonder if there's a movie about that. Is there a movie about that? If not, maybe there's a movie to be made. You know, like again, I want, this is something I want in my life. Let's see if it exists. If it doesn't exist, then maybe that's something interesting to pursue. Um, but I know that the desire is there cause I have it. So in the seed phase, there's no deadlines. It's just a wide open part. And then the next phase is called the experimentation phase where you, we start. Experimenting to see what the seeds want to do. You're involved, but you're not really dictating the action. You're, you're setting the stage for something to happen, but it's not about you yet. It'd be like the equivalent of you'd plant the seed, you would water it, you would make sure it was in the sun and you'd wait. Um, so you're involved, but you, you can't make it grow, you know, and then when it sprouts and it grows and, or if it turns. Into a plant, then you can look at the plants like, okay, how does this plant, what's the potential of this plant? And then, and then that the third phase is the crafting phase where it's like, okay, I have this plant. Maybe I'm going to trim it, or maybe I'm going to, uh, combine it with these other plants to make some, something else with it. Now it's like material that you have. And then finally is the, the completion or, or finishing phase, which is the final edit. And then finally, is the completion or, or finishing phase, which is the final edit. And I've come to realize that by the time you're going into the completion phase, you can have a deadline and it won't hurt the project. In fact, it might help the project. And I didn't know that before. So I've worked on projects that have gone longer than they necessarily needed to, and maybe not in the best interest of the project, because I didn't know that. I didn't. I didn't understand that, that the timing of that, because I, because I am so aware of the necessity in the experimental phase to not have a deadline that I assumed that that held through the whole project. It's not a clear phase one finishes, and then you start phase two, phase two finishes, and then you start phase three. You move back and forth between them. I'm collecting seeds all the time. I'm always in phase one. And then probably to some degree, there's always some version of experimentation going on. Maybe not now, but if something's on a list of things I want to look at, hopefully I'll get, get to the list and give them some experimentation and see what they can turn into. And then if they do turn into something, then they get to the crafting phase where it's more, okay, now I have this thing. What do, what do I know about this kind of thing? What can I match this with? What can I use this for? How can I be involved? As a craftsman by the end of the crafting phase or deep into the crafting phase, you can start seeing the end, you know, you can start seeing an end and then you can even dictate an end. But I recommend if you do just dictate it for you, not for anyone else, because if something comes up where you learn, if you set a deadline, a public deadline, and then a new discovery happens along the way and you realize, oh, this could actually be mine. Much better than I thought, but I need more time. It's harder to do that if you set the deadline. 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If you would like to try AG1 Pro, please do. You can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get a special offer. AG1 is giving away a free bottle of Omega-3 Coenzyme Q10 with your first subscription. Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to get a free bottle of Omega-3 Coenzyme Q10 with your first AG1 subscription. The chapter on self-doubt was really interesting to me. I'll read the first sentence of it, which is that self-doubt lives in all of us. And while you may wish it was gone, it is there to serve us. And it goes on to describe how to dance with self-doubt. As one gets better at their craft, you can imagine self-doubt goes down. I think that's the perception of a lot of people, right? You get better at what you're doing, self-confidence goes up, self-doubt goes down. But I think you and I both know a number of people who are successful enough to know that oftentimes there's a mirror image to that where people feel pressure because they did it once. Now they got to do it again. Self-doubt, it's like a checklist. It's like a list of things that you're going to have to do over and over and over and over again, and you're going to have to do it over and over again, and you're going to have to do it over and over and over again, and you're going to have to do it over and over again. Yeah, I don't think so. I feel like maybe there are some artists who are great live who've never captured it well on record. The Grateful Dead's a good example of a band where I feel like their albums are not their strong point, but if you hear live recordings, they're really interesting and really different from each other. And that's kind of part of what makes The Grateful Dead interesting is their unpredictability. They're looking for something, and sometimes they find it. And if you're there when they find it, it feels exciting. It's not just following a script. It's like something is really happening. It's a real moment. Something that I aim for in the studio is to create real moments that when you hear them, they don't necessarily sound perfect. They sound like something that really happened, and in that moment, something happened, and it's a special moment. It's really how jazz works as well. Yeah. But this is, I think, an important warning. Yeah. When something works, it's easy to be fooled into believing that's the way to do it or that's the right way. It's just a way, and it's just a way that happened to work that time. This plays into when you get advice from people who have more experience than you. The advice that they're giving you is not based on, you know, your life or your experience. It's based on their life and their experience that have very different data points than yours. So maybe they're giving you good advice, but maybe they're giving you good advice for them and not giving you good advice for you. I think it's hard enough to even figure out what's right for ourselves. And if we do somehow crack the code of what's right for us, be happy we have it, and then still know, I wonder if that's the only way. I think it's hard enough to even figure out what's right for us, be happy we have it, and then still know, I wonder if that's the only way. we'll hear a phrase, we'll trigger a thought, we'll see something unexpected. If someone recommends something to you, maybe it's a coincidence. If three people recommend the same thing to you, maybe it's not. I do believe the universe is on the side of creativity and the universe is supporting things to happen. And they can happen through you or they could happen through someone else. So if you're paying attention, maybe it'll happen through you. The belief part of it is a huge part of the conversation about everything. You know, what we believe has power. If we believe we could make something great, the chances of us making something great are better than if we don't believe it. Believe we can. So I would say any ability to harness your belief on your behalf is a really healthy thing to do. One thing that you make very clear is that while our own abilities may come into question from time to time, you absolutely believe that the elements from which to create are out there. Absolutely. All the elements are here. Everything is here. We get to pick and choose. The conveyor belt's going by with little gifts. First, we have to notice there's a conveyor belt. Then we notice the gifts. And then that's the starting point. And then we may even feel empowered enough to grab one of the gifts and open it up and see what's inside. And then maybe that's the start of something really beautiful. Everything that I make or have made has always been based on something that I see or hear that allows me to see something that I didn't see before. So I was going to ask you whether or not it's important to be happy in order to create. But certainly a lot of people that were unhappy were still able to create. But the more I listen to you, it seems that it's really about an ability to pay attention. So if I'm unhappy or if I'm happy, may not be as relevant as whether or not I'm able to stay undistracted. Yes. I would say being able to stay present in the work is probably the most important part of it. And how you feel is less of an issue, unless how you feel gets in the way of you feeling how the work makes you feel. I do want to ask you about one other aspect of process, which is meditation. How would you define meditation? Well, it's different. There are different types of meditation. Usually we either are engaging in a mantra, which would be a version of almost like creating a trance for ourselves, not unlike listening to something when we go to sleep that would distract our conscious mind from participating. We would be overriding our mind with just a sound that we're generating or a word or a phrase, a series of phrases, or it could be focused on the breath. But the purpose of being focused on the breath is to not hear the self-talk that we normally have. It's a single-pointed focus exercise in those that I described. The other version is an awareness meditation where you're closing your eyes and you're being with whatever is. There's no story, there's no this means this, none of those things. Just like an inventory almost of everything that comes up when it comes up. And you do that for a period of time. But in all of those cases, in the example of doing the awareness meditation or doing a mantra meditation or focusing on the breath, in none of them am I thinking and none of them am I concentrating on. I'm being aware of sense perceptions in the awareness one or in the other meditations I'm doing a practice so that I'm not aware of thinking about anything else. And there's also something called the surgical series from the Monroe Institute which I used when I had a surgery. You listen to this recording and it both allows your body to heal much faster and remove some of the trauma that goes on when getting cut open, it's traumatic. But just through listening to certain things, you can have a really powerful effect, heal much faster. I remember I was about to be put under for a surgery and my eyes were closed and I wasn't communicating with anyone there. Because I was going inside and my wife was with me and they came in and they said, "Oh, so they already gave Rick the sedative because he's ready to wheel in." She's like, "I didn't give him anything." He's like, "But look at his numbers." Like, yeah. I love it. I love that you're so willing to share what you do and your process. And I just want to thank you for being such an incredible portal and also for being an amazing friend. Thank you. I love you. I'm so happy to be here with you. And anytime I get to see you, it's a good day. Likewise.