Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Power of Taking a Break
In July 2008, Lin-Manuel Miranda took a much-needed vacation. He was coming off a three-year stint of performing his hit Broadway musical, In the Heights.
In the Heights was a big success. A few months after his vacation, it would win Tony and Grammy awards for best musical and musical albums. Needless to say, Miranda was excited but also a little exhausted and deserving of some much-needed time away.
So before catching the plane for his vacation with his now wife, Miranda went to the bookstore looking for something to read. A biography by Ron Chernow about Alexander Hamilton caught his eye. He knew very little about Hamilton at the time. He had done a report on the man in grade school, but about all he could remember was that he died in a duel. So he grabbed the book and took it with him.
He was enthralled by the story. He was inspired. He couldn’t help but think, as he read about Hamilton’s life during that vacation, that this was the perfect story for a musical. It was a story that needed to be a musical — and he was the one to write it.
Take a Break
To be a successful artist takes a lot of work. Once you get an audience that supports you, you have to work hard to serve them. You have to spend a lot of time promoting and performing your art.
Many artists can get so caught up in this hard work and promotion that they forget the importance of taking a break. That break could be all that is needed to take you to the next level as an artist.
Lin-Manuel Miranda was already successful when he went on that vacation, but by taking a break and opening himself up to some unexpected inspiration, he was set on a path towards creating one of the most popular musicals of all time. Hamilton won every possible award and elevated Miranda to household-name status.
The harder you work, the less you open yourself up to be receptive to inspiration. Build in vacations into your workflow. You don’t need to take trips to the beach. Just set aside some time for some pleasure-reading or something else that you do for the sake of itself. Don’t set out on a vacation to get inspired, just open yourself up to doing something enjoyable. That openness may be all that is standing in the way between you and a breakthrough.
Watch or listen to some great interviews with Miranda on 60 Minutes or the WTF podcast.
