There are few athletic feats I am really good at. My involvement in sports teams was the, "get in there. there's no way you can screw it up now," type of thing. I was decent at karate but gave that up long ago. My single athletic skill is juggling.
Thing is, juggling isn't really athletic. If I had someone three balls I can tell in two throws whether they can actually juggle, or they're just coordinated. It's all in the eyes. Someone who can juggle can look through the pattern at you. The person who can't will chase the balls with their eyes.
This is because juggling has everything to do with muscle memory and very little to do with seeing. I once met Steve Mills, inventor of the famous Mill's Mess trick. He could toss balls over his back and catch them with his eyes closed. He's THAT good. And has trained enough to know exactly where his hands need to be.
My old juggling instructor used to tell us that if we can see the top of the arc we will always catch the ball. To teach us he made us progress through one, two, and then three balls until we could do 100 patterns without dropping. And his instruction still rings true for me today. If I can see the top of the arc my hands know where to be.
Muscle memory.
What we do in advertising is the exact opposite of juggling. Mental muscle memory is just about the quickest way to become a hack. (Man Men's joke on "Cure for the common ____" comes to mind). What I try to do is forget what an ad is supposed to be. It's common advice that trying to make an ad is the surest way your ad will fail.
What works is trying to solve a problem and letting the advertising come out of that. You can even invent the problem (see: halitosis) but the ads should be offering the fix to something. Every product is different so having a process really doesn't work. At least not for me.
Assuredly someone will disagree with this. But I know the advertising I like and try to model my own after is often devoid of process.
What it doesn't lack is solid thinking and hard work.