Learn to love the void.

There’s a whole lot of nothing standing between you and a more powerful idea.

When you first start working on a problem, you tend to get a rush of ideas.

There’s a wonderful sense of optimism when you’re working on something new, because it hasn’t caused you any pain or heartache yet. It all feels so fresh and full of possibility.

And the ideas keep coming.

Of course some of these ideas aren’t great. Some of them feel a little, well, familiar. Echoes of things you’ve already seen. But the momentum is there, so you keep going.

Until it isn’t.

And suddenly, your brain just looks at you and shrugs. It’s got nothing. No sparks, no thoughts, no insights.

Nothing.

This nothing could be the best thing to ever happen to your work.

Years ago, a copywriter I was working with described this nothingness to me as the void. A bit dramatic maybe, but he was a copywriter, so there’s that. The void is the place where your mind runs out of easy answers to a problem. It’s already used up all the obvious connections. Now all you can hear is something that sounds like a faint wind, rushing between your ears.

And that’s it. Nothing.

This is where your inner critic will likely kick in. Start telling you that you suck, that you can’t think of anything, that you have nothing. That you’re not good enough.

That’s always fun.

But there’s something waiting on the other side of the void. The ideas nobody’s thought of before. The connections nobody has made. The brilliant solutions that only seem obvious in retrospect.

The thing is, to be successful in any sort of creative field, you need to be able to sit comfortably in this space of nothing. To have faith that the ideas will show up. And that when they do, they will make the thoughts you left behind feel small and inconsequential.

In a world where it’s all too easy to get obsessed with the performance of effort, nothing can feel deeply uncomfortable. Embracing it pushes against every instinct we have.

That’s why it’s so important.

Because the only way to get to ideas that have a life of their own, is to go through it.