1. Get curious.

Ask a question or engage in conversation with someone with whom you might disagree. Challenge yourself to believe you have something to learn from everyone you meet. This takes courage, vulnerability, and humility. The true measure of your understanding is the breadth of your awareness. So pay attention. 

2. Stay in liminality as long as possible.

Ninety-nine percent of creation is preparation. One percent is the final stroke everybody sees. So train yourself to float in a sea of liminality; slow down the process of discovery; absorb the world; aggregate insights; come to love uncertainty as much as knowing. Letting go to get into the flow isn’t linear or sequential but circular and unfolding. The answers you seek are in the process. So get comfortable not knowing and stay creative with the process as long as possible. 

3. Become inefficient and collaborate.

Let’s be honest—it’s easier and quicker to work alone. Collaboration is slow, tedious work. It requires you to surrender your ego and practice empathy. It’s filled with tension and release. But what we make together can be more potent and multi-dimensional than what we make alone. So if you want to make things that last, think less about speed and more about reach. 

4. Accept the sameness of big and small things. 

You’ve probably heard that the message is the medium and the process is the product. Equally true is that big and small are not different. Big things are made of small things, and small things make up big things. This is the fractal nature of reality. The way you make things will become the thing itself. So don’t focus on size; focus on significance. 

5. Practice surrender. 

The master treats letting go as a sacred step in the act of creation. The only way to fail is to stop trying and creating, to abort the process. The best way to move forward is to name your fears, your hopes, and your desires—to be fully alive to your passion. This lets you continue when others stop, lead when others are paralyzed, and sing when others go mute. So treat your work like a gift. If you don’t put it out into the world, it won’t change it.

6. Stay human.

Artificial intelligence is a tool, a resource to use. It’s not called artificial intuition. You are a spirit embodied. So get outside. Go for a walk. Spread papers across the floor and look for the invisible threads between the lines. Your creative spirit is singular. No one will ever paint exactly like Van Gogh or sing just like Carole King. Learn to listen to the voice within and develop the resource that no one will ever be able to control, not even you.