When do you feel creative?

I've been pondering a lot about what makes me feel inspired and what gets me working. Recently, Trillwing asked the inverse question to her readers: "What are some things that damper your creativity and energy?" I was amazed by the lists that her commenters compiled. I was especially amazed when I came up with my own list:

- Too little exercise
- Eating too much crap
- Too many distractions
- Too little time having actual conversations
- Too little time to reflect
- Too much distance from play [referring to a comment that someone else made, meaning "I don't get to play nearly enough. Age has nothing to do with it."]
- Stress
- Repetitive routine and too much of the same scenery all the time
- Many menial tasks without any sense of a goal

Upon reflecting on this list, I realised that you could take the inverse of this list and that would be a pretty accurate portrait of when I'm at my most creative: when I'm exercising (wow, even running up the library stairs cleared my head a lot), eating properly, and not filling my life with distractions.

But now I'm starting more of a list of those things that get the creative juices flowing, beyond just "take the inverse of what saps my energy":

• The right kind of stress or pressure. Some of my best work has resulted from me fighting my way out of a tight spot. I have an easier time decorating difficult small spaces than I have when I have lots of large, blank walls. If I have a looming deadline near (but not so near that I get frozen by anxiety), I pick up the pace and start making real progress. I think it's because it forces a certain external structure on me, which compensates for a lot of my lack of internal structure. It could also be that I work best when I'm responding to specific challenges. That's why some of my best writing is the result of editing: I have an easier time coming up with a better way of saying something already written than I can fill an empty page.
• Spending time with enthusiastic, positive people. If you're excited about it, I'll feel excited as well. That's why I felt so much better after working with my students on Thursday.
• Working within my own research interests. This one only works right now, while I'm being spread so thin first by coursework and then by comps. Touching base with my own research is enough, right now. (It'll be a different story when I'm working on my dissertation and it's just me and my research. I'm sure that then I'm going to need contacts with the outside world to make my brain work properly.)
• Changing scenery. Sometimes it's as easy as moving from my desk to the kitchen table or the office at the university. Often, when I'm really needing a creative boost, I need to change perspective entirely. Hang upside down on the couch and pretend like the furniture's hanging from the ceiling. Sit on the other side of the bathtub and study the shape of the taps. Work on top of the deep freeze. Set up a lawn chair in the back yard and face a direction that I normally can't see from my windows. Take a walk, but take a route I've never taken before. Get myself lost on purpose, and then use my wits to find my way home. This is my favourite. (I first read about this method in a Reader's Digest when I was a small child, and it was suggested as a good way to problem-solve.)
• Baking or cooking something from scratch.
• Dressing up while I'm working. (I've mentioned this one before.)

How about you?