“If you need inspiring words, don’t do it.” — Elon Musk

Inspiration precedes creation. It is the thread that marries idea to action. It’s the force that moves us to build something from nothing. It keeps us up at night. It lives within all of us, rearing its head at often inopportune times, urging us to express ourselves for no other reason than because we have to.

Until it doesn’t.

There’s nothing worse than wanting to create but being unable to find the inspiration to do so. Undoubtedly, the worst kind of existence for an artist is an uninspired one.

When inspiration dissipates, where does it go? How do we revive it?

Though inspiration precedes creation, it doesn’t precede action. Rather, it comes as a byproduct of doing both: creating and action. When we get our creative wheels turning, more ideas come as a result.

Tim Ferriss explains this order in The 4-Hour Workweek as action, inspiration, and motivation. He explains the order beginning with action because you can’t do something passive unless you start with an active force. Basically, he argues that we find inspiration through doing, not by thinking.

Inspiration comes when we have done/experienced something enough that we form ideas of a new way to do/experience it. Motivation follows as a way to express ourselves creatively in innovative ways.

Read the full article on the Hub.