How Adulthood Kills Creativity (and How to Get It Back)
Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, something happens to the imagination. We stop playing. We start managing.
Bills, routines, work deadlines, parenting… life becomes a list. The adult brain becomes a well-trained manager: efficient, organised, and practical. But somewhere along the way, it forgets how to wander, to take risks, to play, to experiment, to try new things, to make strange connections. These are the very things that creativity depends on.
It is not that adults are incapable of creativity. It is that our minds get hijacked by responsibility. The mental space that once held curiosity and play becomes jammed with to-do lists. When you are juggling work, family, and survival, there is little room left for wonder.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who coined the concept of flow, said creativity happens when you are so absorbed in what you are doing that you lose track of time. That kind of deep focus, free from self-consciousness or judgment, is rare in adult life. We are often half-distracted, half-rushed, and always responsible.
For parents, the mental load is even heavier. Parenthood is full of tiny creative acts: problem-solving, improvising, nurturing. But it is also relentless. The prefrontal cortex, which organises and plans, stays permanently switched on. Meanwhile, the default mode network, which helps us daydream and imagine, barely gets a chance to come alive.
The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott once said that play is where creativity begins. He called it a “transitional space” between reality and imagination. Yet adults rarely allow themselves to play. We think play is frivolous or childish when it is actually a vital form of thinking. Without it, the mind stiffens. We become practical but dull.
So how do we bring creativity back into adult life? The answer is not waiting for inspiration. It is building a creative process. A rhythm. A ritual. Something that helps us access imagination on demand.
It might sound counterintuitive, but structure brings freedom. Philip Glass found liberation through disciplined repetition. John Cage used random chance to escape his own habits. Agnes Martin painted grids for decades and found transcendence in their quiet order. Their creative systems were not about control. They were about loosening control. They gave the mind a container so that the unconscious could flow freely.
For adults, this kind of process is essential if creativity is to survive. You have to make it part of your life, even in the smallest moments between obligations. Here are a few ways to start rebuilding that muscle:
Daily sketchbook time: Spend ten minutes drawing anything. No expectations.
Morning pages: From Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Write three pages of stream-of-consciousness before the day begins.
Creative constraints: Limit your colours, words, or materials. Paradoxically, rules open new pathways.
Play hours: Schedule one hour each week/day for unproductive exploration. Paint, dance, or experiment with no outcome in mind.
These small rituals reopen the door to imagination. They invite the brain to shift from managing life to experiencing it. Over time, they strengthen the neural pathways that make creative thinking natural again.
Creativity is not just for artists. It is how we solve problems, design our lives, and imagine better futures. Without a practice that keeps it alive, adulthood becomes a cycle of maintenance. We remain efficient, but empty.
To be creative as an adult is to resist that cycle.
It is to protect a space where wonder still belongs.
It is to build a quiet rebellion against the noise of modern life, and in doing so, rediscover what makes us feel alive.