I studied creativity for 365 days & here’s what I learned.

Deya · 26:31 · An entrepreneur’s year studying creativity as the competitive advantage against AI — everyone has the same tools; your way of putting things together is the differentiator. Her viral “cozy entrepreneurship” concept was born this way. Seven books, one takeaway chain.

The Artist’s Way (Julia Cameron) — creativity is a skill

• Not something you’re born with. It’s trained like any skill; “sensible adult” life layers fears/self-doubt over it that need clearing through consistent practice.
• Morning pages: 3 handwritten pages of stream-of-consciousness brain dump every morning (she types ~1 page instead — doing it beats doing it “right”). Purpose: flush surface-level mental junk so the brain can receive ideas.
  • The pattern she observed: surface junk → deeper questions/business worries → then creative ideas flow. Concrete results: her team values deck came out of a morning-page rant; “cozy entrepreneurship” was first written there; pop-culture-business content series started there too.
  • Technique: type as fast as possible, no editing/backspace (“I don’t know what to say” counts). Fast typing surfaces things you didn’t consciously know you thought. ~5–10 min/day.
• Artist dates: weekly solo date with yourself (matcha + park + bookstore in her case) — no guests. “How can you expect a deep trusting creative relationship with someone you never spend time with?” Counter to “what’s the ROI?”: the foundation of your business is you.

Keep Going (Austin Kleon) — clarity comes from action

• Creativity is messy and nonlinear; Type-A desire for steps-one-two-three before starting is a trap. Every attempt teaches your brain something — it’s data.
• Her proof: years of following YouTube “best practice” without traction → forced radical experimentation (thumbnails, titles, formats) before having a plan → only then found the new direction that performed.
• Control what you can (validation, research, skill) and fall in love with the process, because outcomes aren’t controllable. Signature quote: “Make the most beautiful thing you can. Try to do that every day.”

A Whack on the Side of the Head (Roger von Oech) — unlearn “one right answer”

• Schooling trains us that there’s one correct option; brainstorming must re-legitimize wrong answers — that’s where the practice lives.
• Bonus heuristic: the first option is usually the most obvious and least creative — keep generating past it.

The War of Art (Steven Pressfield) — follow the fear

• Resistance (“no I couldn’t possibly…”) showed up before every big thing she did — both businesses, freelancing, bootcamp, YouTube. Ego-based fear (rejection, failure) is an indicator: the more important the work, the bigger the resistance — plot resistance against impact and pick the scary action over scrolling Pinterest for hours (zero resistance, zero impact).
• Sneaky form: “I’ll do it when I’m ready.” Diagnostics if in denial: jealousy when others succeed at what you secretly want = strong emotional reaction = it matters.
• Two working methods: lower the bar until you begin (her “15 minutes daily on the business” while freelancing full-time → product done in 4 months → six figures that year); and build the routine before worrying about quality. Plus her own: gaslighting yourself — outline the video “just for fun,” film it “but we won’t publish,” publish “just to see.”

The Creative Act (Rick Rubin) — create to surprise yourself

• Traps of creating solely for algorithm/market: the magic dies. Start personal — you are creating to surprise yourself; what genuinely excites you usually excites others too (her 1M-view video was made “just for me”).
• “Success occurs in the privacy of the soul… the moment you decide to release the work, before exposure to a single opinion.” Hitting publish is the success; metrics after are out of your control — don’t let them rewrite your judgment of work you were proud of.
• Flaws are essential: the artist isn’t a dictator but an antenna receiving signals already floating around; experiment to uncover what wants to exist. Seeing business as art freed her completely — product ideas, marketing, voice all improved.

The Practice (Seth Godin) — ship

• “Nothing else matters outside of shipping the work.” “We don’t ship because we’re creative; we’re creative because we ship.”
• Ship on a constraint, not on perfection: her team releases at 80% complete — beyond that it’s invisible micro-optimization, and the energy belongs to the next thing (more data points).

Big Magic (Elizabeth Gilbert) — ideas have agency

• An idea is its own entity hunting for someone to birth it; ignore it and it moves to another person (the Prince/Michael Jackson song-race anecdote). Read as both honor and urgency: act fast.
• Drive curiosity, not fear: go after what interests you, not what strategically “should work” — every time she followed the logical-strategic path it flopped; following genuine curiosity produced her biggest hits.

Catching the Big Fish (David Lynch) — still mind catches bigger fish

• Ideas are fish: small ones swim near the surface, big ones deep. A cluttered mind has no space to receive anything; depth requires stillness (Lynch’s vehicle: transcendental meditation).
• Ties back to morning pages — same mechanism, different door.

The through-line

Practice daily (pages) → make room (stillness/dates) → follow fear & curiosity as signal → start absurdly small → experiment messily until clarity appears → create for yourself → ship at 80%. Or as she compresses it: F around and find out.