Ask HN: What do you do to deal with a lack of inspiration?

That's easy enough. Make something every day, 6 days a week. Don't make anything polished or clever, just something quick and dirty. I don't know what it is you want to create specifically; if you want to crite, just commit to cranking out a page a day; if you want to make video games, get comfortable with Unity or some adequate game engine and make some toy; if you like operating systems start building little things in assembler.

You won't necessarily accumulate components that can all be assembled into a larger whole, and some days you'll just be frustrated or demoralized (which is why the requirements are set low). But this is an excellent habit to have in place to recognize ideas that you like.

A lot of times people focus on what they want to be (an artist, a movie director, a billionaire) and see the products as the means to that end. But generally success like this can't be planned, it's the product of obsession. Obsession is something you can cultivate through practice, but you can't plan it in advance, any more than you can design a specific tree to look a certain way in a garden. So you plant seeds and then wait for something interesting to sprout.

Step away from the grind. There's a reason we get our best ideas in the shower, and it's related to the type of brain activity that relaxation enables. Creativity requires two ingredients: 1) raw materials of information and ideas to mash together randomly, and 2) boredom - the ability to let the mind wander.

Most of us in modern life are exposed to plenty of ingredient 1 but have a shortage of down time to devote to ingredient 2.

Me? I'm most creative during a long holiday weekend on those mornings when you wake up at eight and laze around in bed until 11 letting your mind wander and then semi-doze for another couple hours after a shower.

One important thing that works for me is to set aside time to get inspired. You could try it too.

Set aside a few hours, with no distractions, and let your brain wander through the sorts of ideas and projects that are interesting to you. (You could also choose to direct this, e.g. towards things that bother you that you know making something can help solve.) Don't pressure yourself with amazing expectations, just put in the time to try.

Interesting things will often if you try this a few times. (If not I will happily share many many ideas I've dreamt of but haven't pursued ;))

I booked myself a tiny house for a weekend.

In the evening I hit up a brewery with live music. In the morning i biked to delicious breakfast joints. In the middle of the day I journaled and coded to chill music for long stretches. Got inspired on day two late in the evening.

Effectively changed my surroundings to bias my mind.

Do. One key click, turns into one letter, into one word, to one sentence, to one paragraph, to one page, to one set, to one book.

Pick someone else's existing work, try to reproduce it, or decide how you would do it differently and try doing that. You'll probably find this leads to more ideas. If not, start again.

On another tangent, there's some good advice in this video:

How To Design Deep Games with Jonathan Blow (Braid, The Witness) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0m0jIzJfiQ

Not just for games developers, worth watching in spite of the terrible audio.

I like zooming out and taking a birds eye view every now and then.

From there I start to deep dive on things that are interesting to me at that point in time

Based on those interests, i'll start to look for things or experiences around me that I could start to get my hands dirty with.

IE: Months ago I was in a low inspiration vibe. When I zoomed out, I realised I was super interested in cheese. I decided I wanted to jump into a cheese making class. I found a master cheese maker in Vermont headed down for a one day one on one. From there the magic happened

When I got home my inspiration for so many different parts of my life was on fire. Sometimes you just gotta deep dive on the things that your interested in and it will pay dividends in non related areas of your life!

I start by accepting the fact that being derivative is really not a bad thing.

If I want to create things but have no inspiration, I often look up project ideas on the internet that line up with my interests. Once I get started working on something, my brain naturally branches off into new, original ideas to pursue. Naturally these ideas are more interesting to me since I brainstormed them myself.

I do this everytime I want to create things but have no idea where to start.

I'm in the same boat. I desperately want to build something but I'm short on ideas...

By having a firm deadline.