The Lamppost Trick – Futility Closet
In 1916, when Norman Rockwell began his career painting covers for the Saturday Evening Post, he faced a “recurring crisis” in coming up with new ideas. “I’d feel all washed out, blank, nothing in my head but a low buzzing noise,” he wrote in his 1960 autobiography, My Adventures as an Illustrator. “One day, after I’d been aimlessly sketching and crumpling up sheets of paper for hours, I said to myself, This has got to stop; I can’t sit here and muse all day. So I figured out a system and used it for 20 years or so.”