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Where does your best work happen?
Every Tuesday, The Productive Disruptive delivers storytelling science, message makeovers, cultural commentary, and a little rebellious hope for anyone still stubborn enough to believe communication can change the world.
Dorian Johnson
September 08, 2026
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Your Best Work Leaves Clues
Lately, my creative process has been getting interrupted.
All I’ll say is that it is 1000% confirmed I am a cat person rather than a dog person🤷🏾♂️
Enough little disruptions to make me now hyperaware about something I usually take for granted:
I know some very specific things about how I work best.
For example, I love having music on while I write.
But there’s a catch.
It needs to be music I already know incredibly well.
Give me an album I’ve heard a thousand times, and we’re golden. At some point, it almost disappears into the room, and I am in the zooooooone.
Give me a brand-new album?
Absolutely not.
Cause now I’m listening to the album.
I've learned a bunch of these little conditions about myself over the years.
I used to go to my local library and absolutely go bananas.
Some people love working in coffee shops. Some need complete silence. Some get their best ideas while walking. Others swear ideas magically appear to them in the shower.
Hey, it could be all of these.
Which raises a question I think is worth asking:
Do you know the conditions that help you create?
Because your creative process isn’t only what you do.
It’s also the conditions that make doing it easier.
Your environment isn’t merely decoration or an extension of personality
At my work cubicle. In my adult years, I’ve become Squidward.
A whole body of creativity research examines the relationship between physical environments and creative work.
A 2023 review identified things like light, windows, privacy, sound, visual stimulation, proximity to other people, spatial variety, and even a sense of control over your surroundings as environmental features associated with creativity.
What was a biiig mic drop to me?
Different parts of the creative process may benefit from different kinds of spaces.
So maybe the useful question isn’t:
“What’s the best place to work?”
Maybe it’s:
“What conditions help me do this kind of work?”
So build that toolkit.
Because storytelling is creative work too.
If you’re trying to find the opening line, untangle the point, make a metaphor work, or figure out what the hell the story is actually about, think about the conditions.
Maybe the idea comes while you’re walking, but the writing happens at the library.
Maybe you need music to draft but silence to edit(me).
The better you understand what helps your brain generate, shape, and refine ideas, the more intentionally you can create the conditions for better stories.
🧠 Story Science Side Note:
Creativity researchers sometimes describe four Ps: person, process, product, and press.
Creative press is the relationship between people and the environments where creative work happens.
It’s the surrounding climate that can shape how creative processes unfold and what gets produced.
So ask yourself: What does your environment seem to bring out of you?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1871187123000469?via%3Dihub
📝 Message Makeover:
Before:
“I work better at the library.”
After:
“What is it about the library that helps me work better?”
That small shift turns a preference into something usable.
Maybe it’s the quiet. Maybe it’s being around other people who are also working. Maybe it’s simply being out of the house.
🛠️ The PHacilitator’s Corner: Run a conditions experiment
Pick one creative task you need to do this week.
Then change one condition on purpose.
Maybe you:
work somewhere different
add or remove music
take a walk before brainstorming
work around people instead of alone
change the time of day
give yourself more privacy
Then ask:
Did that make the work easier, harder, or just different?
Run your own little experiment!
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