Michael Lewis's Tips for a Creative Space

The space where you create matters. The office or coffee shops where you write. The studio where you produce music or paintings. Your editing suite.

Create an environment that summons your best work.

Michael Lewis, bestselling author of Moneyball, The Blind Side, and over a dozen others, ​recently shared​ the two main factors that he covets in his writing space.

First, he says to fill your space with love. For him, this comes from the pictures of family he has hung up around his writing room.

Author Michael Lewis in his writing room, with pictures of family.

“I think my environment actually helps me to put words on the page. I mean, in my office I’m surrounded by photos of my family. You know, I think, at the bottom of the best of me is love. It’s love of what I do, it’s love of the characters, for better or worse. It’s a love of telling stories, it’s a love of interaction with the reader. It’s the very best of me.

“So when I walk into that office, I see love. That’s what it is.”

Look around you. What do you see on the walls of your creative space? Does it fill you with love? Confidence? What could you add to those walls today that would help you tap into love, and support the feeling of love?

The second thing Lewis needs in his creative space is “the impossibility of interruption.”

“The other thing that’s going on in that place—and it’s the opposite of love—It’s the only place where no one can get to me. I isolate myself in there. I put headphones on. I’m in my own little private space. And the key to it all is the feeling of the impossibility of interruption. When there’s the beginning of the possibility of interruption—when there is a cell phone on the table—it’s just a matter of time before it buzzes or rings.”

It feels like it’s getting harder and harder every day to escape interruption.

But in reality, it’s not that hard. Leave your phone in another room. Turn on “do not disturb.”

If you have a meeting you can’t miss later, set a timer.

The real problem is not that we can’t escape interruption, but that if we leave open the possibility of interruption, we leave ourselves an excuse to avoid creating. To procrastinate.

Instead, adopt Lewis’s view: “There’s something about sitting down to write that I need to feel like, this might go on forever. I’ve walked into this tunnel, and maybe I won’t walk out.”

All of this comes down to the true reason Lewis can create. “It’s the feeling of being safe.”

By surrounding himself with reminders of those who love him, coupled with the impossibility of interruption, he is able to do ​deep creative work​.

I invite you to do the same.