Creativity starts with noticing. Most people walk past a hundred ideas a day with their heads down.

Ideas do not usually arrive as bolts, they get picked up. The material is in the overheard sentence, the badly designed sign, the way somebody reacts to bad news, and most of it passes by while you are thinking about something else. Attention is the actual skill under creativity, and it is the one people practice least. Looking up is most of it.

Walk one familiar route this week with nothing in your ears and your phone in your pocket. Collect three things you have never noticed before and write them down that day. Do it a few times and you stop worrying about where ideas come from.