What is my favorite AI creativity hack?

I’ve long since learned that my creativity cannot be forced. If I have to bring my mind kicking and screaming to the table to be creatively productive, at best it will produce mediocre work as a gentle reminder of who’s boss.

I absolutely adore the approach from Neil Gaiman about his writing cabin. When he goes there to write, he doesn’t force himself to write. He can either write or do nothing. It’s an ingenious hack to avoid force and kickstart the work.

Another hack I’ve discovered recently is using AI to light up the creativity neurons. I don’t use it to outsource my creativity although sometimes that can be helpful. I get inspired by other humans creating.

I spend time in the midjourney discord looking at other people’s prompts, works in progress and final outputs. People are so freaking creative with this stuff. A recent favorite is AI’s interpretation of every country in the world as a villain. It has absolutely nothing to do with my own creative work, and yet it’s amazing.

I’m not forcing my brain to go into creative mode if it doesn’t want to. I’m slightly nudging it in the direction that I want to go with help from my new AI friends. Sometimes it goes along and sometimes it doesn’t. Either way it produces vastly superior results than force.