Just joining the article series? Part one can be read in Culture’s November 23 lineup.

Be curious about your creative process and expect creative rests.

There is a tremendous difference between being creative and simply being productive. For those of you who are used to multi-tasking, learning to release yourself into your natural creative rhythm can feel downright torturous. We have such an emphasis on personal productivity and speed to market for businesses in our culture that our internal processes very often are discounted, if not discouraged outright.

The reality is actual creative output is merely the tip of the iceberg that is the creative self. Each of us carries within ourselves a huge lab where great experiments are under way. Even as you read this, your internal alchemists are busily relating these words to other thoughts, insights and experiences you have had and spinning them into your own unique perspective. Some of you reading this will be quite aware of this process and may be even be making notes in the margins while you read. For others, this process may be happening largely outside your conscious awareness.

Whether you are aware of it or not, you are always taking in information from your environment and fitting it together in a way that tells the story of how you see the world and your place in it. Creativity is the process of turning that story into a dialogue within whatever medium you choose. And, as we should do in any good conversation, sometimes we just need to shut up and listen. And, sometimes, in really close relationships like those between best friends or old married couples in love, silence can be full and rich.

If you befriend your creative process and engage it in a conversation based on trust and respect, it will not disappoint you. Sometimes those internal alchemists simply need time to mull things over a bit but, rest assured, they will mull them over. They can’t help it. It’s what they were built for. And they work without your conscious manipulation and control. That’s the hard part for most of us; trusting that something is going on in there even when you aren’t in control of it and don’t see evidence of it on the outside. But if you have ever had a great thought in a dream, solved a problem while weeding your garden or remembered that forgotten song title while you were in the shower, you have evidence that your mind will give up the goods once you relax a bit.

Once you trust yourself, you can actually program yourself to be ready when you need to be outwardly creative. I do this every time I have a project do. I look at the calendar, tell myself, “Okay, Brain, you have to be ready to write that chapter next Thursday, start working on it. I’m going to go do laundry now.” Because my creative self and I have an open and trusting relationship this process has never failed me. I had to work up to trusting it with really big projects, but it has passed every test.

Pavlov’s Dog… what every pet knows