I use to draw a comic strip in college and studied his strips to learn to do my own.  His Tenth Anniversary book for C&#38;H was really helpful for insights into his creativity, as he captions his comic strips and what he was thinking at the time.  <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=xtiMQXCLdJEC&#38;pg=PA19&#38;lpg=PA19&#38;dq=watterson+looks+remarkably+like+goofing+off&#38;source=bl&#38;ots=UWf5kLlEaO&#38;sig=uDx-bl3Y7e31OhyWQBa0zUGdZrs&#38;hl=en&#38;ei=CyhnS4T-E43etgOUmq2dAw&#38;sa=X&#38;oi=book_result&#38;ct=result&#38;resnum=1&#38;ved=0CAcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&#38;q=&#38;f=false" rel="nofollow">http://books.google.com/books?id=xtiMQXCLdJEC&#38;pg=PA19&#3...</a><p>Mainly, he values being mentally curious.  In the link I put above, he basically let his mind wander.  He daydreams, and managed to cultivate that into a skill.<p>When I was doing a strip, you just kinda get into a habit of noticing things in our world that don't fit quite right.  And then you just kinda amuse yourself by letting your mind wander.  At the end, you might end up with something.<p>By comparison, it like how entrepreneurs notice business opportunities all around them by habit.