Your Weekly Creative Practice

Stop Waiting. Start Here

Your five-minute practice starts here — every Sunday. Drop in any week — each practice stands on its own.

Each Sunday, we’ll give you one simple creative exercise. Five minutes. No experience required. No pressure to be good.

This is Week 8

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There’s one thing we hear over and over — I want to start, I just don’t know how.

It’s not a lack of interest. Not a lack of time. A stuck feeling at the very beginning — the blank page, the pristine sketchbook, the sense that starting requires having something worth making. Here's the thing: it doesn't. And this week’s practice is designed specifically to dissolve that feeling.

Three things that actually help:

Stop waiting for the right moment. Your brain doesn’t require inspiration to begin, but it can find inspiration by beginning. The dopamine that fuels creative flow isn’t waiting at the finish line. It kicks in when you start moving. Five minutes of doing something simple is enough to shift your whole state.

Don’t use precious materials. Grab an old notebook — the one full of to-do lists, meeting notes and something you might throw out. Open it to any page. Any scrap paper will work, though there's something fun about using an old notebook or agenda because it gradually becomes a cool sketchbook with all of your doodles. Draw colored lines or doodles right over the writing. It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking - try horizontal lines, varying widths, different colors. The words underneath don’t disappear — they become texture. The “ruined” page becomes the point. You literally cannot mess it up.

Keep your markers somewhere visible. Not in a drawer. Not put away. On your desk, your kitchen table, wherever you land during the day. When supplies are already out, the decision to start costs almost nothing. That’s not a small thing — that’s how habits form.

This week’s exercise isn’t about making something beautiful. It’s about making something. Draw a few stripes, notice which color combinations feel alive and which feel calm, and feel good that you showed up. That’s it. Your brain is already in a better place than it was five minutes ago.

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This week’s prompt

Find an old notebook, a scrap of paper, anything you were done with. Put a jar of markers on your desk. Draw parallel lines in varying colors and widths across whatever’s already on the page.

Don’t think. Just draw. Notice what happens.

Show us what you made — especially the messy ones.

xo Mallory & Blythe