Andrew Huberman interviews music producer Rick Rubin on creativity, process, and presence
Andrew Huberman speaks with legendary music producer Rick Rubin about the nature of creativity, how to access and sustain it, and the mental practices that support the creative process.
Summary
Andrew Huberman sits down with Rick Rubin, whose book on creativity serves as the launching point for a wide-ranging conversation about how creative ideas emerge, how to recognize and follow them, and what gets in the way. Rubin argues that creativity is closer to magic than science, that children are naturally more creative because they carry no baggage or preconceptions, and that the single most important skill an artist can develop is knowing how they feel and trusting that feeling over external voices. He describes a four-phase model of creative work — seed collecting, experimentation, crafting, and completion — and explains why deadlines are harmful in early phases but can actually help in the final one. Rubin also discusses self-doubt as a useful balancing tool rather than an obstacle, the role of meditation in quieting the analytical mind, and his belief that the universe actively supports creativity and that the raw material for great work is always available to those paying attention.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The Nature of Creativity
Andrew Huberman: Of all the topics in science, and in particular in neuroscience, I confess that creativity is the most difficult one to capture. As I went into your book, the example you give — this idea that ideas and creativity are a little bit like a cloud — if you look at it at one moment, you might think it looks like one thing, but then you look at it a moment later and it could be quite a bit different. And if you look an hour later, it very well could be gone. How did that come to you? And how does it serve you in trying to — I don't want to say extract, but — trying to access creativity?
Rick Rubin: I think the best way to think about it is like a dream. If you think about your dreams, they don't necessarily make sense. When you wake up, you might remember part but not the whole thing. Then if you start writing them down, they'll come back, and they may not make sense to you. Maybe someday in the future you'll be able to look back and understand what they mean — and maybe not. That's sort of how the art-making process works. We're making things and we're looking for a feeling in ourselves. It could be a feeling of excitement or enthusiasm, a feeling of interest, a feeling of curiosity — I want to know more. It's not an intellectual process. It's a different thing. I think language is insufficient to drill down on creativity. It's closer to magic than it is to science.
Children and the Purity of Creative Instinct
Andrew Huberman: Do you think kids are, just by definition and by design, more creative than adults?
Rick Rubin: Yes. Kids are open and they have no baggage. They don't have any belief system. They don't know how things are supposed to work. They just see what is. Most of us select from an endless number of data points available to us — as a species, to make sure that we don't die, to procreate, to feed ourselves — those are probably the primary functions first. And then we learn things about what's right and what's wrong. We learn things about how to do certain things, or we're inspired by someone who makes something we love and we want to do it the way they do it. All of those things undermine the purity of the creative process.
They can be tools to build your skill set. If you're a singer, you might imitate a singer you really like for a while to get good at it, and then eventually come to find your own voice. But if you're three years old or five years old and you try singing, you're not singing like anyone else. You're singing with your own voice. And when you make something, you're making it based on not knowing. I had the advantage early in my career of starting to make music without any experience, which was helpful because I didn't know what rules I was breaking. I was doing things that other people wouldn't do.
Recognizing and Reinforcing Creative Instinct
Andrew Huberman: When something feels creatively right — let's say in the studio, or maybe you're listening to something somebody sent you — and again, this could be about writing or comedy or science or podcasting — how do you say "keep going that way" when they might not even recognize that they did it? And I'm guessing a lot of times they don't.
Rick Rubin: I'll try to be in a setting where, as we're talking about it, we can engage with it in that moment. Let's say I was producing your new record and you played me something and I had some thoughts about it. It wouldn't be so helpful for me to tell you what those were. It'd be better for us to wait until we're in a place where we could try things and see where it goes. I wouldn't rely on language to do it. It would be more about making a suggestion that's actionable. We try it and then we have more data. It's that simple.
So much of what we learn in school is to get us to follow the rules. And in art, it's different, because the rules are there as a scaffolding to be chipped away as need be. Sometimes they're helpful, sometimes they're not. Understanding how you feel in the face of other voices, without second-guessing yourself, is probably the single most important thing to practice as an artist — the skill set to develop is to know how you feel and own your feelings. If I'm undermining my taste for some commercial idea, it defeats the whole purpose of doing this. This process is: I'm doing me, and I'm showing you who I am, and you can like it or not. But either way, this is still how I see it.
Vision, Focus, and the Creative Aperture
Andrew Huberman: In your book, you describe the creative process as a cloud — for me it serves as such a powerful anchor. And then I think about the neurobiology of strategy formation or strategy implementation. Almost by sheer luck, I turn a few pages later into the book and there's a description of how animals that are trying to accomplish something — eat, mate, find water, the requirements of living — require a narrow visual focus. This is something my lab has been obsessed with. In that more narrow visual focus, we know that the playbook becomes more narrow. At some point, in order to come up with a new creative idea, that means broadening vision is essential in some way — or broadening thinking.
Rick Rubin: It could either be a broadening or a narrowing, but it's changing the aperture from the standard to present something new — something that maybe you already knew but didn't know you knew. It's not unlike what a comedian does. A comedian makes you laugh. Usually what they're saying is outrageous, but you know that it's right. No one says it that way, or no one has said it that way before. But it's always the truth in it that makes it funny. Recognizing something that seems really obvious once you see it, but seems like nobody else sees it or no one else points it out.
External Feedback and the Creative Process
Andrew Huberman: Do you think nowadays the fact that one can create something and release it quickly — I can put something out on Twitter or Instagram and get immediate feedback, which is external feedback, and then iterate on the basis of that feedback — do you think that's problematic for the larger opportunity for creativity?
Rick Rubin: I don't think it's wrong or right. It's just more information that you can use or not use. You can make something and put it out and people can not like it and you're like, "They still don't get it — I'm going to go harder." There could be different stories happening at the same time where you're making something and you have an idea of what it is, and then other people engage with it and they have a different idea of what it is. They like it for a different reason than you did, or dislike it for a reason different from the reason you like it. We can't control any of those things. The only part we can control is how we relate to the thing that we make. And any external information that undermines the clarity of that connection is probably bad for the art, is my guess. All I've ever tried to make was something I like, or something that I felt was missing as a fan — something I wanted and nobody was making. So I'll make it.
Finishing and the Satisfaction of Completion
Andrew Huberman: When I listen to an album or a song, I have to assume that at some point it becomes not strategy development or creativity, but strategy implementation — songs are going to come in this order. At what point does one decide, "Okay, now's the time to get into that more narrow focus of effort — we've got it, let's run with this"? Because there is a component of the creative process that involves packaging and finishing. Is that part less satisfying to you, or is it just all part of the same larger arc?
Rick Rubin: It's all part of the same thing. There's usually a good feeling when something is done. It's a commitment, because up until the time that you say it's done, you can keep experimenting and changing it. If you think, "Well, maybe tomorrow I can make it better," then it's not finished. And if you keep thinking that for a long time, you can do that forever and never put out anything. Getting to the point where you're ready to sign off is a good feeling.
One of the things I talk about in the book is that, because it is a difficult thing to do — because it's fun to play, and maybe it's not the best it could be yet — you can use whatever the next project is going to be as motivation to finish the one you're working on.
Clearing the Static Between Projects
Andrew Huberman: I'm very interested in your process when it comes to going from project to project. You're going to be doing work with somebody — do you have a process for removing the functions of the day, what you were doing last week, what's going on? How do you clear the static? What are some of the operational steps that you think might be more generalizable?
Rick Rubin: When I engage in a particular project, whatever it is, I dedicate all of myself for that period of time — whether it be 20 minutes or 5 hours — total focus and no outside distraction whatsoever. And when I leave that process, I do my best not to think about it when I'm away from it. I don't bring any materials with me. I don't leave the studio with works in progress and spend time listening to them during the day or looking for ideas. I stay as far away from it when I'm not directly engaging in it as possible. And in the best of situations, I have something else to totally engage myself in between. So instead of working on project A for five hours and then leaving and doing nothing, I'm hoping to engage in projects B, C, and D with all of myself before going back to project A again.
Andrew Huberman: Even though you're disengaged, do you believe that your subconscious is working it through?
Rick Rubin: I believe so. And I think in general, to stew over a problem is not the way to solve a problem. I think to hold problems lightly is better. When we're starting a project, there's a question mark at the beginning of every project. I'm always anxious when I start a new project because I have no idea what's going to happen. There's always a sense of anxiety because I know whatever's going to happen is completely out of my control. Something either interesting or not will appear, and then we're going to follow that wherever it goes. Until something appears for us to follow, I have a lot of anxiety — even though it has never not come. It has come every time. But there's something about it, because I also feel like there might be expectation on me that I'm going to make it happen. And I know that's not how it works.
The Four Phases of Creative Work
Andrew Huberman: What I keep coming back to is that I'm imagining two ends of a continuum — one that is about fairly narrow focus, training, strategy implementation, cultivating craft, building craft — and then the other side is this cloud, and we're deciding what things are.
Rick Rubin: We go through our lives doing this all day with everything we see. If it's something we don't know and something we're not familiar with, the first thing is: this doesn't make sense. Then what we do is, without thinking, we create a story that explains what just happened — a hypothetical. "Oh, maybe he's running because his dog ran away and he's chasing his dog. Maybe that's why he's running." And as soon as we have that thought of what it might be, we relax, because now it's not just a guy running and this is weird — it's a guy running, oh, he's probably running after his dog. And now we register that story that we just made up, without even knowing we were making it up, as what happened. Then later in the day if someone says, "Did you see that guy running out of the box?" you say, "Yeah, he was chasing his dog, I saw that." And you won't even realize that it was the maybe-hypothetical story — the first possible explanation — that allowed you to continue walking.
Our whole lives are reacting to things, making up a story of what we think may have happened without realizing that's what we're doing, and then living the rest of our lives as if that thing we made up really happened. And we never know. Our resolution is so low on everything. We're grasping at straws. We have no idea. And there's great power in knowing that, because if you think you know what's going on, chances are you're being deceived — not because somebody's deceiving you, but because they're telling you what they see, and they don't know.
Everything we know is made up. Maybe it's true. This brings us to pro wrestling. Pro wrestling is closer to reality than anything else we can watch or any other content. We know it's made up. We know it's a performance. It's storytelling. And that's how everything is — except we think wrestling's fake and the world is real. Wrestling's real and the world's fake.
Wrestling, Energy, and Honest Performance
Andrew Huberman: I do want to ask you about wrestling. What is the deal with your relationship to wrestling?
Rick Rubin: I think it maintains a kind of playfulness. Anything is possible. We expect the unexpected all the time in wrestling. And it's a way to have a feeling of the energy of a sport with no competition. Everyone is working together to put on the best show they can. So it's more like a ballet than it is like a sporting event.
Andrew Huberman: The way you describe wrestling — it's the energy of the sport. It's not whether it's this move or that move, or who wins or who loses. It's the energy, and I'm guessing it's the energy that it creates in you as an observer.
Rick Rubin: Yes. It's the energy it creates in me, and the reality that it's honest in what it is — in a world where seemingly nothing is honest at what it is. In some ways it's comforting. And there's still this mystery of, "Wow, I wonder if that's true or not," because we never really know. Someone gets hurt — did they really break their back, or are they just going on vacation? We don't know. We'll never know. It's fascinating.
Morning Routines and the Transition Into Work
Andrew Huberman: When you wake up in the morning, are your thoughts immediately structured, or do you enjoy the kind of clearing of the clouds?
Rick Rubin: It's a slow process for me to wake up, and I like that. I like not engaging too much too soon.
Andrew Huberman: Does your thinking become more structured as the day goes on — more structured around projects and plans?
Rick Rubin: I try to deal with things that need dealing with after that, in preparation for going to work. And then when I go to work, it's more like this free thing where I'm again hoping something good comes — welcoming something good, paying attention, and maybe trying to will it to happen, but knowing I don't have the ability to make it happen. I can just be present for it and be ready if it does arrive.
Andrew Huberman: Have you ever found yourself in that mode where you're kind of grinding — like, "Okay, I'm not coming home for dinner tonight, we're going to push, put on the coffee pot"?
Rick Rubin: A lot, over the course of my life — a lot. Not as much now. And one of the things I discovered through working on the book was that we're not required to treat the different phases of work in the same way. Before, everything was in a state of play. Everything had a wide-open time schedule — it happens when it happens. If it takes two years or three years, it doesn't matter. It's only about: this thing has to be great.
What I came to realize in working on the book is that there are different phases. The first phase is the seed-collecting phase, which is kind of an ongoing part of life in general. I do that always, whether I'm working on something or not. I'm always in the seed-collecting phase. There's no deadline. Anything that interests me, that I think I want to learn more about or has potential to be something — anything I hear where I think, "Hmm, I'd like to read more about that," or "I wonder if there's a movie about that — is there a movie about that? If not, maybe there's a movie to be made." Again, I want this in my life. Let's see if it exists. If it doesn't exist, then maybe that's something interesting to pursue. I know that the desire is there because I have it. So in the seed phase, there are no deadlines. It's just a wide-open part.
The next phase is the experimentation phase, where you start experimenting to see what the seeds want to do. You're involved, but you're not really dictating the action. You're setting the stage for something to happen, but it's not about you yet. It'd be like the equivalent of planting the seed, watering it, making sure it's in the sun, and waiting. You're involved, but you can't make it grow. And then when it sprouts and grows — or if it turns into a plant — you can look at it and ask, "What's the potential of this plant?"
Then the third phase is the crafting phase, where it's like, "Okay, I have this plant — maybe I'm going to trim it, or maybe I'm going to combine it with these other plants to make something else with it." Now it's material that you have. And then finally there's the completion or finishing phase, which is the final edit — getting to the version that you can share with the world, if that's something you're going to do.
I've come to realize that by the time you're going into the completion phase, you can have a deadline and it won't hurt the project. In fact, it might help the project. I didn't know that before. I've worked on projects that went longer than they necessarily needed to, and maybe not in the best interest of the project, because I didn't understand that — because I am so aware of the necessity in the experimental phase to not have a deadline that I assumed that held through the whole project.
It's not a clear phase one finishes and then you start phase two. You move back and forth between them. I'm collecting seeds all the time. I'm always in phase one. And then probably to some degree there's always some version of experimentation going on. If something's on a list of things I want to look at, hopefully I'll get to the list and give them some experimentation and see what they can turn into. And then if they do turn into something, they get to the crafting phase — now I have this thing. What do I know about this kind of thing? What can I match this with? What can I use this for? How can I be involved as a craftsman?
By the end of the crafting phase, or deep into it, you can start seeing an end. You can even dictate an end. But I recommend if you do, just dictate it for yourself, not for anyone else. Because if you set a public deadline and then a new discovery happens along the way and you realize, "Oh, this could actually be much better than I thought, but I need more time" — it's harder to do that if you've already set the deadline publicly.
Self-Doubt as a Creative Tool
Andrew Huberman: The chapter on self-doubt was really interesting to me. I'll read the first sentence: "Self-doubt lives in all of us, and while we may wish it was gone, it is there to serve us." It goes on to describe how to dance with self-doubt. As one gets better at their craft, you can imagine self-doubt goes down — that's the perception of a lot of people. You get better at what you're doing, self-confidence goes up, self-doubt goes down. But I think you and I both know a number of people who are successful enough to know that often there's a mirror image to that, where people feel pressure because they did it once and now they've got to do it again.
Rick Rubin: Self-doubt is like a check on yourself. It can either be really helpful or it can undermine you. So it's something we all have, and if we let it undermine us, then we don't make anything — and that's not good. But when used as a balancing tool in our lives, it serves a great function. I think the phrase in the book is: you can doubt your way to a great work — to a masterpiece.
Live Performance Versus the Recording Studio
Andrew Huberman: Have you ever encountered music that really works well live but just does not work in a recording?
Rick Rubin: I feel like maybe there are some artists who are great live who've never captured it well on record. The Grateful Dead is a good example of a band where I feel like their albums are not their strong point, but if you hear live recordings, they're really interesting and really different from each other. That's kind of part of what makes the Grateful Dead interesting — their unpredictability. They're looking for something, and sometimes they find it. And if you're there when they find it, it feels exciting. It's not just following a script. Something is really happening. It's a real moment.
Something that I aim for in the studio is to create real moments — moments that, when you hear them, don't necessarily sound perfect. They sound like something that really happened, and in that moment something happened, and it's a special moment. That's really how jazz works as well.
Beware of Assuming Your Way Is the Best Way
Andrew Huberman: The way you describe experiences going by in time, or things emerging in time, and the creative process being a way of capturing those moments — it was beautifully captured in the analogy you gave about a conveyor belt going by. I'll just read it: "Beware of the assumption that the way you work is the best way simply because it's the way you've done it before." Maybe you could elaborate on this a little bit. We want to have mechanisms and routines we can trust — but this is, I think, an important warning.
Rick Rubin: When something works, it's easy to be fooled into believing that's the way to do it, or that's the right way. It's just a way, and it's just a way that happened to work that time. This plays into when you get advice from people who have more experience than you. The advice they're giving you is not based on your life or your experience. It's based on their life and their experience, which have very different data points than yours. So maybe they're giving you good advice, but maybe they're giving you good advice for them and not good advice for you. I think it's hard enough to even figure out what's right for ourselves. And if we do somehow crack the code of what's right for us, be happy we have it — and then still wonder: maybe there's an even better way that we're not considering.
Clues Are Everywhere
Andrew Huberman: There's a chapter about being on the lookout for clues. Do you think there are clues everywhere?
Rick Rubin: Yes, I think there are clues everywhere. If we pay attention, we'll hear a phrase that triggers a thought, we'll see something unexpected. If someone recommends something to you, maybe it's a coincidence. If three people recommend the same thing to you, maybe it's not. I do believe the universe is on the side of creativity and is supporting things to happen — and they can happen through you or they could happen through someone else. So if you're paying attention, maybe it'll happen through you.
The belief part of it is a huge part of the conversation about everything. What we believe has power. If we believe we can make something great, the chances of us making something great are better than if we don't believe we can. Any ability to harness your belief on your behalf is a really healthy thing to do.
Andrew Huberman: One thing that you make very clear is that while our own abilities may come into question from time to time, you absolutely believe that the elements from which to create are out there.
Rick Rubin: Absolutely. All the elements are here. Everything is here. We get to pick and choose. The conveyor belt is going by with little gifts. First, we have to notice there's a conveyor belt. Then we notice the gifts — and that's the starting point. Then we may even feel empowered enough to grab one of the gifts and open it up and see what's inside. And then maybe that's the start of something really beautiful. Everything that I make or have made has always been based on something that I see or hear that allows me to see something I didn't see before.
Andrew Huberman: I was going to ask you whether or not it's important to be happy in order to create — but certainly a lot of people who were unhappy were still able to create. But the more I listen to you, it seems that it's really about an ability to pay attention.
Rick Rubin: Yes.
Andrew Huberman: So if I'm unhappy or if I'm happy may not be as relevant as whether or not I'm able to stay undistracted.
Rick Rubin: Yes. Being able to stay present in the work is probably the most important part of it. How you feel is less of an issue, unless how you feel gets in the way of you feeling how the work makes you feel.
Meditation and Quieting the Analytical Mind
Andrew Huberman: I do want to ask you about one other aspect of process, which is meditation. How would you define meditation?
Rick Rubin: There are different types of meditation. Usually we're either engaging in a mantra — which would be a version of almost creating a trance for ourselves, not unlike listening to something when we go to sleep that would distract our conscious mind from participating. We would be overriding the talking mind with just a sound that we're generating, or a word, or a phrase, or a series of phrases. Or it could be focused on the breath — but the purpose of being focused on the breath is to not hear the self-talk that we normally have. It's a single-pointed focus exercise in those forms.
The other version is an awareness meditation, where you're closing your eyes and being with whatever is. There's no story. There's no "this means this." Just an inventory, almost, of everything that comes up when it comes up. You do that for a period of time. In all of those cases — whether the awareness meditation, the mantra meditation, or focusing on the breath — in none of them am I thinking, and in none of them am I concentrating. In the awareness one, I'm being aware of sense perceptions. In the other meditations, I'm doing a practice so that I'm not aware of thinking about anything else.
There's also something called the surgical series from the Monroe Institute, which I used when I had a surgery. You listen to this recording and it both allows your body to heal much faster and removes some of the trauma that goes along with getting cut open — it's traumatic. But just through listening to certain things, you can have a really powerful effect and heal much faster. I remember I was about to be put under for a surgery and my eyes were closed and I wasn't communicating with anyone there because I was going inside. My wife was with me and they came in and said, "Oh, they already gave Rick the sedative because he's ready to wheel in." She said, "I didn't give him anything." They said, "But look at his numbers."
Andrew Huberman: I love that you're so willing to share what you do and your process. I just want to thank you for being such an incredible portal and also for being an amazing friend.
Rick Rubin: Thank you. I love you. I'm so happy to be here with you. Anytime I get to see you, it's a good day.
Andrew Huberman: Likewise.