"I'll never get used to the fact that most of the time it looks like you're doing nothing," Sterling quips.

Sterling should take comfort in the fact that our best creative work is done in times of reflection and idleness. Studies have shown that the wandering mind is more likely to have a "Eureka!" moment of clarity and creativity. Taking breaks and zoning out from everyday tasks gives our brains time to do a kind of long-term, big-picture thinking that immediate engagement with bosses and clients and email and meetings does not.

Designer Stefan Sagmeister takes these findings seriously. He works time off into his schedule in a way that will make you green with envy. Every seven years, Sagmeister closes his New York City–based design studio for an entire year of creative rejuvenation. During his sabbatical, Sagmeister "works," but not for clients. (He's serious about that, too. Last year, he turned down an opportunity to design a poster for the Obama campaign while he was on sabbatical.)

Read the rest at HarvardBusiness.org »

I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there's sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I'm slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you're a maker, think of your own case. Don't your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don't. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.

This resonates with me deeply.

As a freelancer, I get lots of requests to "grab coffee" (as Graham describes) with folks who are just interested in seeing if working together is a possibility. Whenever that happens, my heart sinks. If I'm on deadline or deep in a programming project, grabbing coffee midday with someone I don't know and might not have any good business reason to talk to changes the tenor of the entire day. When I can, I usually I turn down these types of speculative meetings because the costs are too high--but I always feel bad about it, and never know how to word my response. (Generally I say, "Sorry I'm just too busy.")

But the fact is that creative types do have to go to meetings. If you can control when those meetings happen, Graham suggests putting aside end-of-day office hours, which don't split the day in half. I'd add that breakfast or early morning coffee meetings are also a good alternative.

Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule [Paul Graham]

It's not a popular idea these days.

In fact, my pal Merlin Mann's been doing a convincing job of arguing that creativity is not a magic trick dependent on some mystic muse, but rather a matter of showing up every day to do your work. So it appears that Gilbert and Mann completely disagree, but if you look deeper at what she's saying, they're really not. Gilbert isn't telling you to literally believe in fairies and muses.

She's actually just proposing a way to frame your notion of the creative process to make it easier on yourself to show up every day. The muse puts distance between you and your work, and that's a good thing, Gilbert argues. If the work's great, you don't get full credit, and if it's terrible, you don't get full blame. That psychological protection makes it easier to focus on the work instead of the reaction to it.

During one particularly despair-filled moment while she was writing her book, she actually addressed her "invisible muse."

I lifted my face up from the manuscript and I directed my comments to an empty corner of the room and I said aloud, "Listen, you thing, you and I both know if this book isn't brilliant that's not entirely my fault because you can see that I'm putting everything I have into this. I don't have any more. So if you want it to be better, you have to show up and do your part of the deal. But if you don't do that, you know what? The hell with it. I'm going to keep writing anyway because that's my job. And I would please like the record to reflect today that I showed up for my part of the job."

In the end, both Mann and Gilbert are saying that showing up is the key to doing creative work. But Gilbert, on the heels of a mega-commercial success, uses this psychological construct of the muse to shield herself from the worry that could keep her from doing just that if she let it.

Here's the full talk. (Thanks, theloveartist.)

Croft: You have notes written on the piano?
Martin: Yeah, look, but this is just the beginning. In six months, this will all be covered.
Croft: And you have to repaint the piano?
Martin: Yeah. When we finish something, we repaint.

While I have mixed feelings about Coldplay, I love that even though Martin is rich and famous, he's a "compulsive worrier and list maker." He's even got band rules posted to the studio wall. (Rule #6: Don't do too many interviews; always keep mystery.)

Here's the whole video; the piano bit is at around minute 7:30. (Thanks, TB.)

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I had a strange realization that time passes whether you’re doing something with it or not. It would be easy to let every day go by easily with no risk and then, at the end of the day (my life), I would look back and realize that fear ruled me: At that point there would be nothing I could do about it. So, I got off my butt! It wasn’t easy and I had a lot of lapses (I still do) but the experience of being ruthless with myself was an amazing lesson to learn.

The Guild is in season 2 right now, and a new episode comes out every Tuesday on Xbox Live, and then on MSN Video. Even though the webisodes are only around 10 minutes or less, I look forward to them as much as I look forward to a new episode of 30 Rock. See also my starstruck interview with Felicia over at Lifehacker published a few months back, or her full blog post: How I Started Writing.