Creativity is a muscle that we need to exercise every day. What’s your training setup?

If you want to work out every day, the conditions matter. Some people thrive in group classes, others with a personal coach. Some need a morning session so there are no excuses, others an evening one to shake off the day. Some need fresh sneakers, others the right playlist.

Creative work is the same. My check list looks like this:

I learned these questions from acting coach Jen Waldman and leadership coach Pete Shepherd, via author Seth Godin. I use them to guide every project I work on as a way to get clear on my audience — the people I seek to serve — and the purpose of my work.

Recently in the audition class I'm teaching, I asked my students: Who is it for? and What is it for? in the context of an audition. The answers I received weren't wrong, but they were limiting.

I've been reading When by Daniel Pink, and one thing has become resoundingly clear: the when of creativity matters more than most of us realize.

Have you ever noticed you feel genuinely creative at a certain time of day, and totally flat at another? According to Pink, that’s not mood, that's biology.

It comes down to something called your chronotype — your natural rhythm for when you're alert, when you're sluggish, and when your brain is loose enough to actually make creative leaps. Dr. Michael Breus (known as The Sleep Doctor) puts it simply: some people peak in the morning, others don't hit their stride until later. There are four types — lion, bear, wolf, dolphin — and most of us have never thought to figure out which one we are, let alone how to integrate it into our creative process.

I recently returned from Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I performed a show I wrote and produced for the annual Gala at Sculpture Fields at Montague Park. The piece was a one-hour journey through the impact story of a world-class sculpture park, told through songs and stories shaped from interviews with stakeholders across the community.

The experience was deeply fulfilling because it required the full spectrum of my creative skill set—producing, writing, performing, staging, music directing, integrating interdisciplinary elements, directing a 25-person children’s choir, managing logistics and budgets, interviewing Board and community members, and navigating the mission and politics of nonprofit work.

Creativity walks are what I turn to whenever I feel depleted, stuck, flooded with ideas, or even celebratory. They’re my reset button.

Sometimes I reach a point in my work where the ideas simply stop. I’ve given everything I have and my mind goes blank. Other times it’s the opposite problem: too many ideas. So many possibilities that I can’t tell which one deserves my attention. And sometimes I take a walk before or after an intense creative session, just to process what happened and make space for what might come next.

When any of those moments hit, I stop what I’m doing and go for a walk in nature.

I’ve been working to shift the assumptions around what artistic training looks like. Outside of major hubs like NYC and LA, young singers and actors are usually given two options: private lessons or signing up to put on a show. Both are valuable pieces of training, but they’re not the whole picture.

At TCE, I focus on adding a third path: group process-based training.

Here is why I think this approach matters…