Creativity doesn’t live in routine. It comes alive when you step into the unfamiliar—when you travel, get lost, and start paying attention in new ways.
Stretching Creative Muscles Starts with Leaving Home
You can read all the design blogs in the world, but nothing sharpens your perspective like getting on a plane. For me, travel isn’t a break from work. It’s fuel for it. Every time I leave home, especially when I go somewhere that doesn’t speak my language, where the food is unfamiliar and the pace is different, my brain starts firing in a way that just doesn’t happen when I’m in my routine.
There’s a specific kind of tension that comes from navigating the unknown. Whether it’s figuring out public transit in a new city or sitting quietly in a space where you don’t quite understand the social rules, it pulls you into a different mode of thinking. You become more observant, more tuned into nuance, more willing to let go of control. That mindset shift is exactly what creativity needs.
Some of my favorite ideas have come from being uncomfortable. Not in a dramatic way. Just from the subtle disorientation of being in a place that’s not designed around me. Watching how a street market in Tokyo handles flow better than a million-dollar mall back home. Noticing how furniture is scaled differently in Copenhagen and what that says about daily rituals. Or seeing how people in small towns in Mexico interact with public space in ways that feel more human than most “activated” plazas developers love to pitch. These are the moments that recalibrate your instincts.
Design, in any discipline, is about solving problems. But you only solve the problems you can see. And sometimes you don’t even know what’s broken until you see how it could be different.
So if you’re feeling stuck creatively, I’ll say this: buy the ticket. Take the train. Get off at the wrong stop. Eat the weird thing. Talk to someone who doesn’t speak your language and figure it out with your hands. You don’t need a big budget or a long sabbatical. You just need to get somewhere that makes you pay attention again.
That’s where the good work starts.
