Can 5-Minute 'Daily Creative' Exercises Really Help Rewire Your Brain? This Mom Tried It to See

When I was a kid, some of my favorite rainy-day activities were simple, creative, tactile, and meditative, involving pens and colored pencils. First was Spirograph, that dizzying collection of clear plastic rings and circles and ovals that made magical shapes and swirls when you put your pen in one of the shape’s holes and drew loops within a fixed frame. I loved the colored pens, the mechanics involved, and the fireworks-like shapes I wound up with.

Then there were Fashion Plates. (Hey Gen Xers, who’s with me?) Oh, how I loved the blend of structure and creativity that came with the predetermined outlines and the ability to mix and match elements and color in the outfits as you saw fit.

So, my interest was piqued recently when the new bright yellow activity journal Daily Creative landed on my desk. Subtitled “The 5-Minute Habit to Rewire Your Brain,” this was simply a book — no connected app or website or electronic element at all. What a sweet analog relief.

The first pages of the book (now a USA Today best-seller), by artist and entrepreneur Blythe Harris and artist Mallory May, were welcoming. “Whether you think of yourself as creative or not, you belong here,” it reads. “Everyone has creativity within them … Along your journey, your connection with your creativity may have wavered. Maybe a teacher frowned at your drawing or you got a mediocre grade on a short story and you started telling yourself you were ‘not creative.’ We are here to change that narrative.”

I decided to try sitting down with the journal and trying an exercise or two every morning, first thing, before even looking at my phone. As a mom who always puts my teen first (happily, but still), these few minutes to myself, to do a workbook, felt like a luxury. It felt mentally good, too — and there are scientifically backed benefits to engaging with creative activities, as Harris and May point out, which stimulate the brain’s reward system, boost dopamine, and promote neuroplasticity. “In other words, creativity doesn’t just feel good—it actively strengthens and reshapes your brain,” they write.

First came the journal’s “clearing” section, with activities that felt like they were doing just that — downloading the noise in my brain in ways that were almost guiltily fun, no formal meditation (something I’ve failed at repeatedly) required. But, I have to say, activities like bilateral doodling with my eyes closed, listing sounds I can remember from childhood, and word associations were pretty meditative indeed.

Other sections focused on letting go of perfectionism — by connecting dots to make cool shapes, naming colors, and drawing contours, spirals, and single-line drawings — and on opening your senses by having you list the sounds you hear and noticing colors in myriad ways.

Launched last month at Oprah Daily with a panel discussion between editorial director Pilar Guzmán, Harris, and psychiatrist and author Dr. Judith Joseph, Joseph discussed how creativity is often overlooked in happiness research but that “using your senses, engaging in an activity and finding flow are all a part of the creative process that makes us feel overall happier and more joyful.”

I have to say, it did that for me over the course of several weeks. I even started looking forward to sitting down with an exercise when I woke up each morning.

Next up: Getting my teen to try it, as Harris suggests, to keep her off her phone, even for just a few minutes a day.

Some of the ideas for the book’s exercises actually came out of the pandemic shutdown era, she told me, when she saw her own kids (now teens) turn into “zombies” from being on screens for virtual school all day. She’s carried the habit of having them do something creative before picking up their phones on weekends into the post-COVID era (sometimes bribing them by doing “watercolors and waffles” or “daily creative and donuts” — whatever works!). And she’s noticed that doing so puts her kids in a good mood and brings them “a sense of calm.”   

Kind of like a modern-day Spirograph. Which is to say, I’m all in. And hope my kid will be, too.