Prime the brain before you open a blank page.
Three short warm-ups, in the order that works best: remember something real, settle your attention into the right mode, then look at your problem from a new angle before you start.
Episodic recall
Spend two minutes on the details of one real moment — what you saw, heard, what was in front of you. People who do this before brainstorming come up with more ideas, and more varied ones. The trick is being specific: one occasion, real details, not a general memory of "how things usually go".
Attention mode
There are two useful ways to pay attention, and they suit different jobs. Broad and floaty works better before you generate ideas; narrow and repetitive works better before you choose between them. Pick the one that matches what you're about to do.
Before generating
Sit still. Let attention rest on whatever arrives — a sound, a sensation, a thought — and let each one go without following it. When you notice you have chased a thought, that noticing is the exercise. Do not evaluate anything that shows up.
Before choosing
Pick one anchor: the breath at the nostrils, or counting each exhale from one to ten and starting again. When attention wanders, bring it back to the anchor. Narrow, repetitive, and deliberately uncreative — this is the settling step before you commit to one idea.
Perspective shifter
Push the problem away from yourself — ten years into the future, a few thousand miles away, or into someone else's shoes — and you start thinking about the point of it rather than the fiddly details. That's where the more original ideas come from. Write your problem as you'd say it out loud, then edit the reframed version the studio will work from.
Frames:
None of these is a treatment for anything, and the effect of a two-minute warm-up is temporary — it puts you in a better frame for the next half hour, nothing more. If a step isn't helping, skip it.