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 in 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'll remember, 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, 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 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, 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 wanna 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 yourself. Like if …