Drip, drip, drip and then the final drop that makes the water in the bucket overflow.

It’s a useful metaphor, both on behaviour and creativity. Let me start with the first.

Imagine the bucket stands for bulging emotions.
When you’re not actively dealing with emotion, through time, only little water will evaporate, so at any time it doesn’t need a lot of drips to overflow. It’s better to actively empty the bucket now and then to get rid of old (pointless) emotions.

On creativity.
When the bucket is a representation of old ideas and ancient knowledge, any new piece of information becomes too much to handle, so we tend to ignore them and will get stuck in re-using old ideas and what used to be inspiring and interesting, is now out of time and irrelevant.

Stagnant water becomes cloudy, so throw the buck half way empty and fill her up with fresh water, i.e. new ideas, insights and pieces of information that can come from anywhere. It’s all in the mix. The old ideas that are still valuable will pop-up again anyway, but can form new connections that lead to inspiring, new, sexy ideas.

Of course there’s an alternative: Get a bigger bucket, and keep stirring.