Fall is a season of change and a great time to start some new creative habits to support creativity and well-being. Discover 15 Fall activities and habits to boost creativity.
Each season has its benefits and its challenges. To get the most out of every season, one should build supportive habits and immerse oneself in seasonal activities that ignite creative and health benefits. When it comes to the fall, there are a lot of fun and inspiring things to do, but it’s also important to build habits that can counteract seasonal affective disorder (SAD) or the winter blues.
Get the most out of Autumn with these activities and habits built around boosting creativity and well-being to create a happy and balanced creative lifestyle.
Fall Foliage
Get Inspired – Travel to See the Fall Color Changes
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
― Albert Camus
Fall is a season of change. Change can seem scary, but it has many benefits for the creative mind. Support and appreciate this change by soaking in the natural changes in nature with a relaxing and inspiring trip to view the fall colors.
Just like the changing colors in Spring, fall colors trigger dramatic changes as a signal of a unique and meaningful stimulus. This builds new connections in the brain, reduces stress, releases dopamine, supports mindfulness, and more.
If there’s one fall activity you don’t want to miss, it’s this one. Stack this creative trip with other fall habits and activities that you find below.
Best Fall Foliage Places (U.S.)
- Rocky Mountains, Colorado
- Blue Ridge Mountains, Georgia
- Route 6, Pennsylvania
- Blue Ridge Parkway, Virginia and North Carolina
- Covered Bridges Loop, Connecticut
- Coastal Maine
- Southern Pacific Coast, California
- The Olympic Peninsula, Washington
- Northern Pacific Coast, Oregon
- Michigan’s Gold Coast
Tips
- Boost creativity and your fall colors experience with a hike, bike ride, or other activities in nature.
- Capture your experience with creative expressions like photography, drawing, painting, etc.
- Try to go early on a weekday to avoid crowds as much as possible.
- Take a DIY souvenir by flattening/preserving leaves in your creative journal.
- Write a Fall Bucket List
Better Sleep
Realign Your Circadian Rhythm With the Changing Season for Better Rest, Creative Thinking, and Health
Quality sleep is an important habit year-round, but with the shifting daylight hours in fall, you can take advantage of building a better sleep routine to realign with your natural circadian rhythm and support a healthier lifestyle.
After a busy and active summer, fall is a time for slowing down, embracing Hygge, and building habits to survive the winter, especially if you are affected by SAD or winter blues. A big part of that is building healthier sleep habits that support creativity.
Tips
- Stay Hydrated – As tasty as pumpkin spice lattes, hot cider, and other fall drinks are, you need more water to support better sleep.
- Be Mindful of Screen Time at Night – Set time limits on your screens and create a habit of no screens before going to bed.
- Sleep on Problem Solving – Studies have found colder weather and sleeping on problems can improve memory and divergent thinking for better problem-solving.
- Take Cozy Fall Naps – Researchers have famous creative minds like Salvador Dalí has found small naps can significantly boost creativity.
- Meditate Before Bed – Meditation practices like progressive muscle relaxation can help you relax and fall asleep better.
- Read Fiction Before Bed – Fall is a great time to get cozy and read. Research has found reading fiction at night is better for falling asleep as non-fiction causes more thinking to keep the mind awake.
Fall Home Decorations
Decorate Your Creative Home for Autumn With Cozy, Warm, and Inspiring Vibes
Fall is a wonderful time of changing colors. Just like the changes in nature, it’s a great time to update your creative workspace and home. Choosing vibrant colors and textures to give your creative spaces a warm and cozy feeling can help you fight back against any winter blues and build new connections in the brain to inspire creative thinking.
Change has many benefits for the creative mind, which is why travel has so many creative benefits. Using the same principles have changing environment and self-expression through decorating your home, you can spark creativity in your creative life.
Tips
- Make a Fall Display – Collect items from fall nature and create your own autumn displays like decorated pumpkins, wreaths, table decorations, and more.
- Find Inspiration From Creative Interior Design Books:
- Learn From Other Cultures – Learn decorating and lifestyle tips from other cultures to inspire your creative home.
- Spark Creative Thinking with Autumn Scents – Smell is a powerful tool for memory and creativity. Switch out your candles and scents to get in the autumn mood and spark creative thinking.
Pumpkin Carving and Decorating
Get Your Hands Dirty and Create Something That Embodies the Fall Season
Pumpkin carving and decorating is a long tradition of fall creativity.
Every year artists and families find new and interesting ways to decorate their pumpkins and showcase them for passing tricker-treaters. With seemingly endless ways to decorate and get creative with pumpkins, you can challenge yourself in new ways to boost creativity.
Pumpkin carving and decorating is a creative fall activity for all ages and can support many areas of creative habits and well-being. This activity can support play, collaboration with others, self-expression, and more, depending on the challenges and constraints you add.
Tips
- Reuse materials for sustainability
- Roast or plant pumpkin seeds
- Cook pumpkin recipes
- Compost your pumpkin after the season ends
- Make a pumpkin feeder for birds
- Make pumpkin serving bowls for soups and dips to decorate a dinner
- Buy a pumpkin carving/decorating kit.
- Host a contest among friends and family.
- You don’t have to carve a pumpkin to be creative, paint it, decorate it with cloth, or find other creative ways to express yourself.
Dress Up in Costumes
Express Your Creativity Through Fall Fashion and Costumes
By far, the most celebrated fall habit for creativity is dressing up.
Halloween is a great time to show off your creativity. Especially by dressing up or building your own costumes from your favorite creative worlds. Dressing up has become so popular that it’s now year-round in the cosplay community, which has been thriving more and more in the last few years. People are constantly pushing the limits of costume building and creativity. Tap into your self-expression and creativity with this fall activity.
Even if you don’t like dressing up in costumes, with the changing weather, you can find new ways of expressing yourself with fashion or get new clothes to support other cozy habits and creative work. Upgrade your closet and start a fall habit of expressing yourself through fashion.
Tips
- Participate in a Halloween Costume Contest
- Create your own costume or fall fashion
- Host a creative mystery dinner where everyone dresses up
- If you already have a lot of clothes, consider sustainable methods to reuse them for costumes, donations, and other recycling methods before upgrading your closet.
- Use lifestyle principles like Hygge to guide your fashion and inspire cozy living this fall.
- Collaborate with others to build a costume or dress up together.
Host a Board Game Night
Fall Is a Time to Connect With Friends and Family by Playing Games Inside
Even if you like the cold weather and have healthy habits to get outside, chances are you are still going to be spending more time inside with friends and family. And what better way to support each other’s creativity and have some fun than playing board games and even video games in the cozy environment of your creative home?
Playing games with others is the perfect fall activity to ignite creativity with others when you’re stuck inside. Board games and video games have a long list of creative and health benefits, and the fall is a great time to play. With games for every age and every genre, there are endless options for finding one that everyone likes.
Creative Benefits of Board Games:
- Board games bring people together and can even build and strengthen relationships
- Board games increase brain functions like memory and cognitive skills
- They trigger the release of endorphins to boost happiness and help reduce stress
- They help improve social skills and self-confidence
- Board games help speed up response time
Tips
- Host a Murder Mystery Dinner
- Get into the spirit of the spooky season by gathering friends together to solve a murder mystery. There are many kits and guides online and other types of roleplay dinners as well.
- Make Your Own Board Games – Put your creative skills and mind to the test to create and test your own board game. Also, a great way to collaborate with others.
- Make a Regular Game Night – Add prizes, potluck, and other benefits to bring people together and support each other.
- Discover new board games to play to boost creativity
- How Video Games Can Improve Your Creativity
- 10 Fun and Inspiring Video Games About Creative Living
- 26 Best Video Games To Boost Creativity
Creative Fall Cooking
Fill Your Belly and Your Mind With Recipes and Foods That Boost Creativity
Fall is a harvest season full of unique foods and spices with healthy nutrients that are hard to find at other times of the year. With the creative and health benefits of cooking, you can find many recipes to help support your transition into the colder months with heartier, cozy, and comfort foods to warm your body and soul.
Seasonal Fall Foods and Spices (USDA Seasonal Produce Guide)
- Pumpkins
- Apples
- Cinnamon
- Brussels sprouts
- Nutmeg
- Pears
- Squash
Although many cooking styles are practiced year-round, some are unique to the season, like grilling in the spring. Besides using unique seasonal ingredients, practice creative cooking techniques that pair with Autumn.
Creative Fall Cooking
- Try new ways of cooking (roasting, soups, baking, dutch oven, braising)
- Eat/cook more warming foods – What brings you joy?
- Bring people together (Pot lucks, theme dinners, etc.)
- Experiment with flavors and try new things
- Eat the rainbow – Cook like a painter, and make your plate colorful and enticing
Best Creative Fall Recipes
- Roasted Veggies
- Slow Cooked Hearty Soups
- Chili
- Pumpkin Bread
- Butternut Squash
- Pies (Pumpkin, Apple, Pecan)
- Mulled Wine
- Ginger Tea
- Pumpkin Spice Latte
- Apple Cider
Tips
- Visit a farmer’s market
- Try the Blindfolded Baker challenge to have fun and collaborate with loved ones
- Use creative boosting ingredients
- Visit creative food and drink festivals in the fall
- Get inspired with the perfect recipe from these creative fall cookbooks
- Find creative recipes from unique cookbooks
- Find creative healthy recipes from health cookbooks
Embrace Hygge
Learn the Danish Way to Make Your Creative Lifestyle Cozy, Comfortable, and Full of Joy
Hygge is the Danish lifestyle concept of coziness, and there’s no better time to start embracing it than in the Fall. With colder weather and the negative effects of the winter blues, you can support your creative well-being with warm feelings of wellness and contentment.
Hygge comes from a Danish word meaning “to give courage, comfort, joy” and is used in Danish and Norwegian as “a form of everyday togetherness,” “a pleasant and highly valued everyday experience of safety, equality, personal wholeness, and a spontaneous social flow.”
Hygge Tips for Creativity
- Build relationships and spend quality time with friends and family
- Get comfy and be present in the moment
- Take breaks and relax
- Keep things simple
- Cook warm hearty foods
- Ignite the senses and inspire comfort with calming scented candles
- Decorate your creative home with nature
- Surround yourself with things you love
- Indulge in the good things in life
- Get outside
- Spend more time reading and learning
- Put down the phone
Learn More
- Read more about hygge and other lifestyle concepts from around the world from these 10 inspiring lifestyle books from creative cultures
- Learn How to Make a Creative Space
- 10 Interior Design Books to Inspire a Creative Home
- 20 Inspiring Quotes About Home From Creative Minds
Creative Fall Festivals
Immerse Yourself in Communities With Fun Fall Activities and Cultural Exchange to Boost Creative Thinking
Best Fall Festivals
- Oktoberfest – Held internationally (Sep 17 – Oct 3)
- Chalk Festival – Florida (Oct 28-31)
- Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta – New Mexico (Oct 7 – 15)
- Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze – New York (Sep 16 – Nov 20)
- Día de los Muertos – Held internationally (Nov 1-2)
- Diwali – Held internationally (Oct 24)
- Concurs de Castells – Spain (Oct 1-2)
- Naga Fireball Festival – Thailand (Mid to Late Oct)
- Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival – Held internationally (Sep 29)
Tips
- Experience how other cultures celebrate fall by attending some of the fall festivals mentioned in this list – 10 Creative Food and Drink Festivals to Experience
- See what other creative bucket list items are near the fall festivals you attend.
- Visit fall festivals nearby and ignite creativity with 19 Creative Ways to Feel Like You’re on Vacation at Home
- Plan a creative retreat around a fall festival
Scary Movie Marathon
Get Into the Spooky Fall Season and Learn the Creative and Health Benefits of Controlled Fear
If you can bare the scare, scary horror movies can provide surprising creative and health benefits. That’s right. Studies have found that horror movies can help relieve stress and anxiety, help people face their fears, and support problem-solving.
Feeling fear in a safe place can help build resilience and perspective so that when you face anxiety and stress in real life, you can recognize the feelings and reframe your thinking.
The other part of watching horror movies to boost creativity is problem-solving. How often do you watch a movie and think about how you would act if you were in the protagonist’s shoes? Horror movies are some of the best movies to watch to spark creative thinking and problem-solving as they are often driven by solving a mystery or survival.
Tips
- Watch with friends and family to remember you’re safe even if you’re scared.
- Make your horror movie marathon an event with other creative fall habits like cooking, hygge, decorations, board games, etc.
- Not a fan of horror movies? Just dip your toes in with family-friendly options like The Addams Family, Hocus Pocus, Coraline, Monster House, and other fun Halloween movies.
- Start a movie club with friends to strengthen relationships and see other people’s perspectives on movies.
Gratitude Journal
Observe Your Creative Life and Find Things to Be Thankful for This Fall
Gratitude is a powerful force of physical, psychological, and relational health. Although this is a year-round habit for creative well-being, fall embodies gratitude in ways to enrich the season and your creative lifestyle. Fall is a time of harvest when we show gratitude for what was planted in the spring. Festivals and holidays are celebrated to show gratitude for those in our life. Gratitude is everywhere in the fall.
To support your well-being and build a habit that supports your creative life and health, start gratitude habits. Perhaps the best gratitude habit is keeping a gratitude journal. Journaling has many benefits for creativity and health, from gaining a perspective to reducing stress and anxiety.
How to Start a Gratitude Journal
- Find a Journaling Style That Works for You – There’s no wrong way to keep a gratitude journal. Try bullet writing, drawing, freewriting, etc.
- Clear Your Mind Before Starting – Meditate, drink some tea, or relax in other ways to be present and calm.
- Get Comfy and Create an Environment of Gratitude – Consider elements of hygge and comfort to inspire gratitude.
- Start With Gratitude Journal Prompts – If you have trouble finding what to be grateful for or don’t want to repeat the same things use prompts to get ideas flowing.
- Stay Consistent – Good habits need consistency. Pick a time that supports your lifestyle and stick to it.
Tips
- Stuck thinking of things to be grateful for? Find something you enjoy and break down what it took for you to enjoy it.
- i.e., coffee. Visualize everything it took for that coffee to end up in your cup, everyone that helped, and show gratitude for each step.
- Pair with other journaling habits to get the ball rolling.
- 9 Amazing Notebooks for Creative Productivity
- 30 Travel Journal Prompts to Inspire Creativity
- Best Travel Journals for Creative Adventures
Simple Living
Simplify Your Creative Life This Fall With Habits That Reduce Clutter and Promote Minimalism
Tips
- Feeling stuck? Get started with The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondō.
- Clear your creative space and home with new scents like seasonal candles, incense, and essential oils.
- Declutter Paperwork – Throw away, transfer to digital, or improve your storage organization.
- Consider Habits You Want to Stop Doing – What habits bring you joy and support healthy/creative living, and what don’t?
- Get your mind in a simplifying mindset by practicing letting go in exercises like meditation.
- Simplify Your Schedule – Commit carefully and choose how you spend your time wisely.
Read Books
Get Cozy With a Good Book to Inspire Your Creative Mind and Learn New Things
After a busy summer, everyone slows down in the fall, creating more time to read. Reading is one of the most popular habits associated with fall. Colder weather, cozier clothes, and atmosphere are the foundation for an inspiring setting to read.
Choosing what to read this fall is the hardest part. Get started with these reading lists for creatives.
Choosing What to Read This Fall
- Discover the latest creative books from this fall reading list 2022
- Read scary stories and mysteries about famous creative minds
- Read stories and biographies from the lives of famous creative minds
- Create your own reading list
- Follow curiosity
- Set a reading goal for learning something new
- Join or create a book club to collaborate with others
- Read what inspired and influenced other creative minds
Tips
- Separate Your Fiction and Nonfiction Reading – Studies show fiction reading is better for nighttime and can aid in better sleep.
- Set the Mood – Decorate your space with candles, tea, and other elements to relax into your reading.
- Start a Book Journal – Track what you read, how it made you feel, and what you learned from it to inspire creative thinking.
- Immersive Yourself in the Book – Put your phone on silent, use smells associated with the book, and play atmospheric music associated with the book.
Solve Corn Mazes
Challenge Your Creative Mind and Practice Problem-Solving With the Fun and Unique Fall Activity of Corn Maze
Fall is full of harvesting activities for the whole family. One creative fall activity you can often find at festivals and pumpkin patch farms are the challenging and fun corn mazes.
Corn mazes can keep you entertained for hours, especially if you visit the large ones like the Cool Patch Pumpkins in Dixon, Ca, which currently holds the Guinness World Record for the largest corn maze, covering 63 acres.
Challenge your mind and collaborate with friends and family to solve corn mazes to keep the mind fresh and enjoy the creative benefits of play and time in nature.
Tips
- Make It a Game – Challenge yourself and others to see who can solve it the fastest.
- Wear appropriate shoes and use the restroom beforehand.
- Bring a map just in case you get lost, but remember it’s all in good fun, and getting lost can even support your creative mind further.
- Landmarks are key. Take notes and build a mental map in your mind.
Fall Running
Stay Healthy and Support Your Creative Mind by Starting a Fall Running Habit and Join a Fall 5K or Marathon
Running has a long list of benefits for the creative mind, and there are many ways to add creativity to your runs to get even more benefits. One way to get the most out of the inspiring fall foliage and support a healthy lifestyle is to join a fall 5k or marathon.
No matter where you live, there’s a race going on, and you can always run on your own if you don’t want to join an official race. Fall is a wonderful time to run with lower temperatures but not freezing, which is great for running. It’s also easier to run without the added stress on the body from heat and humidity.
Tips
- Start a Running Habit Focused On Creativity – Add brainstorming, challenges, photography, and other creative practices to get more out of your runs.
- Use Fall Color Changes to Inspire You to Run New Trails – Besides the inspiring benefits of nature, running new trails has been shown to boost motivation.
- Gear Up – with the appropriate layers but don’t overheat yourself.
- Look For Different Creative Races in Your Area – Most cities host seasonal runs that are playful, creative, and unique.
- Make sure you have the right gear, from good shoes to reflective clothing, to stay safe and healthy.
- Support your healthy running habit by running with friends and family to stay motivated and have fun.
Zach is an international writer, photographer, filmmaker, martial artist, and creator of Creative Enso, the Zen art of creative living. His goal is to empower and inspire creatives to live healthier, happier, and more creative lifestyles.
