Creativity and fruitful ideas come not from the passive resignation to a muse but from the active application of work ethic — or discipline. This is something legions of creative luminaries have articulated over the ages, alongside the parallel inquiry of where ideas come from.
Unsurprisingly, the most elegant articulation comes from one of the greatest artists of all time, In conversation with Hungarian photographer Brassai, Pablo Picasso himself says -
"I don’t have a clue. Ideas are simply starting points. I can rarely set them down as they come to my mind. As soon as I start to work, others well up in my pen. To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing… When I find myself facing a blank page, that’s always going through my head. What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas."
The best creative work happens when the rational, self-editing mind gets out of the way of the intuitive inclination.