Listen up, artists, Rick Rubin is speaking.
You may not be familiar with the name Rick Rubin, but you’re certainly familiar with his work.
He’s a producer that has worked with some of the biggest acts in music, like Beastie Boys, Run DMC, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, and, in Country, The Chicks and Johnny Cash’s American series, which includes Johnny’s now iconic final album American IV: The Man Comes Around, which featured his all-time great cover of “Hurt”.
He recently released a book titled The Creative Act: A Way Of Being, a distillation of the wisdom he’s gained over the years and observations about how we can all reach our creative goals.
To promote this book, he’s been doing the new school media tour, visiting various podcasts, including one of my absolute favorites, The Huberman Lab Podcast, hosted by neuroscientist and Stanford professor of Neurobiology and Ophthalmology Andrew Huberman.
Their conversation runs three hours long, but includes some incredible discussions about music, mental functions, focus, and truly a countless number of topics, but the one that is perhaps the most important is creativity, namely Rick’s creative process and advice he has for others best utilize their own.
When asked what his own process is, he had this to say
“When I engage in a particular project, whatever it is, I dedicate all of myself for that period of time, whatever it is, whether it be 20 minutes or 5 hours, total focus and no outside distractions whatsoever.
And when I leave that process, I do my best not to think about it when I’m away from it. I don’t bring any materials with me, I don’t leave the studio with works in progress and spend time listening to them during the day… I stay as far away from it when I’m not directly engaging in it as best as possible, and in the best of situations I have something else to totally engage myself in in-between.
So instead of working on project A for 5 hours and then leaving and doing nothing, I’m hoping to engage in a project B, or B, C, and D with all of myself before going back to project A again.”
At the inquiry of Andrew, he goes on to say that he believes your brain is subconsciously working on the project without you thinking about it and that’s where a lot of insights will come from that you wouldn’t reach if you didn’t let go of it for awhile.
Certainly different that a lot of the “grindset” mentality so many online influencers are pushing these days…
I can’t wait to fully listen to this conversation.
I respect both of these guys so much and the amount of knowledge that is shared is truly outstanding.
