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1. Create anyway. You may think you have nothing to express, but you may be wrong. The problem is you’re “thinking” about it too much. If you’re a writer, for example, just start spewing words onto the page. It doesn’t matter if they’re sucky or even related to your current project. You have to get the gears turning to unstick them. Kinda like running a car every so often so the battery doesn’t die.

None of the work we did on The Haunted World of El Superbeasto or since then would have been possible had we let our brains get in the way. While writing lyrics and throwing music for Superbeasto, we’d say, “This is good for now. We can always change it later!” Remember, your first draft doesn’t have to be your FINAL draft. And if you’re not crazy about something you’re laying down, just call it a placeholder until you get a better idea, which you will have once all of the basic elements are in place. It was more important to get material down and in place rather than kill it by debating with ourselves before we even tried to make anything at all. I recommend NEVER prejudging your work before you start, because you NEVER WILL. Get it down. Start the process.

2. Write something hacky. My friend and manager Alex was a wunderkind who started managing bands when he was in college. He said one trick that some of these bands had to get through The Wall was to abandon all judgment and write the absolute hackiest song they could think of. More often than not, the song didn’t turn out hacky. They had filters and a way of expressing their work such that the end result was usually pretty cool. All they had to do was stop thinking that inspiration had to come from some ethereal plane and get to work.

3. Trust yourself and the work. When Phirm and I are making songs, we put in the basic stuff and say this hippie thing to ourselves: “The song will tell us what it needs.” The work itself takes on a personality of its own and it will tell you what it needs to be finished—a harmony here, a melodica accent there (ALWAYS recommended), lose the second chorus, etc. While writing this book, I didn’t know EXACTLY what I was going to say all at once. I wrote a little each day, and trusted that, tomorrow, or in a week, I’d have other—or even better—stuff to say. Creating anything is a cumulative process and builds on the foundations of the stuff that comes before it. Many times you won’t know what that is until you’re well under way. Don’t worry about what color you want the roof to be before you even put up the walls, friend!

4. Change your environment. Your creative work is an expression of your environment. You are a filter that processes data in a certain way and sometimes, like Short Circuit’s Number 5, you NEED. INPUT. You can either accomplish this by reading a totally random book to kick-start new thoughts or simply by changing your environment temporarily. I wrote this book in hotels, on planes, at home, in other people’s office buildings. If I was writing at the G4 compound in Los Angeles and I hit The Wall (usually ninety minutes in), I would pack up my laptop and go across the street to Starbucks. That location shift was usually enough to get me going again. When I got tired there, I’d go somewhere else.

The key to the invisible door in The Wall is not to think of NOW as your only opportunity. Give yourself the freedom to take multiple passes at things. (BONUS: Working this way is FAR less stressful.) Ignore your brain when it tells you you’ll never get something done. Trust yourself. You’ll make it work.

YOU ARE THE WARDEN

As previously stated, the brain doesn’t just tell you to do things; it also has a nasty habit of telling you what you CAN’T do—whether or not it’s true. As you go through life you gather self-imposed limits here and there until one day you’re unknowingly trapped in a prison of bullshit limitations. But the truth is, it’s a holographic prison manufactured by your mind in a clumsy attempt to protect you from potential pain. Fortunately, you can walk through