The Oatmeal has a great comic about being making things for the web.  It resonated with me, a lot of it applies to user experience too.

Inspiration isn’t something you can schedule, harness, or control.  It arrives when it arrives.  For designers, this means that you have to be prepared for inspiration to strike at any time; for researchers, this means that inspiration from design analysis arrives when it arrives.

The seeds of inspiration arrive from unexpected sources, and these seeds might not come to fruition for quite some time.  You have to experience things, and this experience informs what you do in the future.

Ideas from others can spark new ideas in you.  Others will tell you what you should design or research.  Their ideas are worth listening to.  You might not follow through with their suggestion, but their idea can lead to you seeing something else more clearly, and thus doing an awesome design or completing some awesome research.

Idea generation is like a river.  New stuff comes in, old stuff flows out.  You’ve got to keep up-to-date on new user experiences and new research to keep your river flowing.

There is such a thing as destructive feedback.  Not all feedback about user experience is created equal.  If you take it at face value, it can just be destructive.  In user experience, it’s your job to tease out useful feedback from destructive feedback.