I love John Cleese. Not just for his classic Faulty Towers skits or his views on American football, but I was blown away when I watched this highly insightful video of him talking about creativity and script writing.

In this, John describes how memory, the unconscious, all work in your favor when trying to be more creative.

Before you can really be creative, you need two things:

  1. Boundaries of space
  2. Boundaries of time

Boundaries of space is about killing the one thing that stops your best ideas from ever seeing the like of day: interruptions. You’ve got to go somewhere where you won’t be interrupted.

Boundaries of time are about setting up a start and end time where you and your muses can play.

It’s bang on advice, and it’s how I like to work. I have a wonderful office at home, but I am writing this, on a Saturday morning (boundary of time) at my local Starbucks (boundaries of space).

If you can spare the ten minutes I highly recommend watching the video.
It’s some of the best advice I’ve seen on how to get your best ideas out.

Update: Dec-23-2012 Here is another good video on creativity by John.