Learn How to Be in Your Head

Because of phones, we always have the ability to jump out of ourselves. But unless you learn how to be in your head, you'll never learn how to create. I remember when I was a kid, I was in a three-hour car ride with my best friend, Danny. Before we got in the car, he grabbed a stick from his front yard, and the entire drive home he made up games with this…stick. Sometimes the stick was a man, sometimes a piece in a larger game, or he'd give it voices, pretend the stick was a telephone. I remember sitting there next to him with my Donkey Kong thinking, Dude, you just entertained yourself for three hours…with a fucking twig! And I thought to myself, Wow, I have to raise my imagination game.

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA