The Mysterious World of Creatives: 13 Characteristics Worth Admiring

Creativity is an enigmatic phenomenon that often baffles us. The sudden pop-up of great ideas and inspiration can leave us spellbound. Although science gives us a complex picture of creativity, there are telltale characteristics that creative people possess that make them unusually attractive, odd, and worth admiring at the same time. Here are the top 13 characteristics that define the mysterious world of creatives:

1. Daydreaming a Lot
As strange as it may sound, creative people daydream a lot. While they are present during your conversation, their minds often wander miles away. Interestingly, despite what teachers may have always told you, daydreaming is not a waste of time. Recent research indicates that letting your mind wander can boost the process of “creative incubation,” or idea generation. Many of our best ideas come seemingly out of the blue when our minds are hovering in the clouds. Daydreaming involves the same brain processes associated with creativity and imagination.

2. Choosing Odd Work Hours
Many great creatives are known for working during odd hours. For instance, the renowned Haruki Murakami and Sylvia Plath preferred to get up at 4 a.m. and focus on writing for 5-6 hours during the day, so did Nabokov, who also preferred to start writing once he got out of bed. Conversely, Feodor Dostoyevsky was a night owl and wrote when it was dark and quiet. Frank Lloyd Wright woke up at 3-4 a.m. and worked for a few hours before returning to sleep for a couple more hours. The creative type figures out the times when creativity strikes most and structures the rest of the day accordingly. Don’t expect them to fit into a standard 9-to-5 grind.

3. Having Special Rituals
Creative people often have unusual rituals that help them spark creativity, focus on work or get into the mood. For instance, Nabokov liked to soak for 20 minutes in a hot bath, with a sponge on his head when he needed to restore his mojo. James Joyce had a signature white coat he preferred to wear during work and mainly wrote lying on his stomach in bed with a blue pencil. Dali invented his own power nap technique. He would clutch a key in his hand, sit down in a chair, and place his hand over a metal dish. Once he was falling asleep, the key would slip from his fingers and bang noisily on the plate, waking him from the brief moments when he had barely lost consciousness. Igor Stravinsky, the composer, began his day by standing on his head for 10 minutes to “clear the brains.” If you live with a creative type, you’ll soon discover their quirky habits and fascinating rituals that help them stay inspired.

4. Easily Losing Track of Time
Once a creative gets “into the zone” or what’s defined as the flow state – a mental state when a person transcends conscious thought to reach a heightened state of effortless concentration and calmness – they become immune to any external distractions and can stay focused on crafting for hours without keeping an eye on the time. Have you ever noticed how baffled they look when you tell them it’s already late evening, and they spent the whole day at work?

5. Surrounding Themselves with Beauty
Creative folks usually have excellent taste and prefer to surround themselves with aesthetically appealing things. Studies show that musicians express a particularly strong response to visually appealing objects and goodness.

6. Always Curious
Creatives are not afraid to challenge the status quo and ask big questions typically starting with “What if….” They are immensely curious about different things surrounding them, always eager to know how things work and why they work this and not the other way.

7. Taking Advantage of Life’s Hardships
When life gives them lemons, creatives squeeze out the juice, drink it, and in the process, create a new art piece about their painful experience. Countless songs, books, and paintings were created as a result of some strong emotional pain like heartbreak, grief, or other serious trauma. Scientists proved that overcoming wrenching emotional pain and stressful life experiences if tackled correctly can boost personal growth, interpersonal relationships, spirituality, and creativity, as one starts to see new possibilities in life and treasure them more. Today, there’s a whole new field of psychology called post-traumatic growth helping people turn their past emotional traumas into creative energy and subsequent growth.

8. No Fear of Being Alone
Embracing solitude and appreciating it helps creatives free their mind and let it wander – just like when daydreaming. Many creatives are often labeled as loners, yet they just need some alone time to think and listen to their inner creative voice, whispering the new powerful idea. The best works of art are often visual representations of the internal dialog the artist has been cherishing inside.

9. Very Observant
People-watching is one of their favorite pastimes. Nothing escapes the eye of the artists. They love taking notes, making sketches, and always commenting on random things like the color of someone’s hat in the crowd or the shape of the shadow that reminds them of something. They pick up and gather those tiny observations to weave into their next artwork.

10. Cannot Stand Routine
They need strong stimulation to stay active and often neglect tasks they find uninspiring or repetitive. The thing is, creatives devote all their energy to focusing on their inner universe and don’t have enough strength to carry on effectively with the daily tasks.

11. Combine Playfulness and Discipline
The light playful attitude is what we typically see or expect from the creative type. Yet, for one quick moment, think how many razor-sharp pencil strokes were made before you could see this painting? How many hours did the sculptor spend trembling over the stone, methodically cutting down piece after piece until it transformed into a beautiful statue? Despite their free-spirited attitude, creatives devote long hours and tremendous efforts to work, stubbornly aiming for no less than perfection.

12. Their Own Worst Critics
Each writer loves each paragraph she writes, yet at the same time, she’s objective and knows which sentence doesn’t sound good enough. A painter will never be 100% satisfied with the final product, and neither will the composer. It’s a huge struggle for the creative type to find a balance between adequate self-criticism and self-worshipping.

13. Smart and Naïve at the Same Time
The paradox is that most well-known creative contributors had a high level of general intelligence and got high scores on IQ tests. According to a study conducted at Stanford, children with very high IQs do well in life, but after a certain point, IQ no longer correlates with superior performance in real life. The cutoff point is around 120. It might be challenging to do creative work with a lower IQ, but an IQ beyond 120 does not imply higher creativity. At the same time, creatives often show immaturity and inability to deal with “adult” problems and important decisions. Often, they never grow up and live with childlike reactions and attitudes towards various life difficulties.

Overall, the paradoxical, unpredictable, and fascinating world of creatives is full of surprises, oddities, and wonders. They have unique character traits that make them stand out from the rest, and we should all embrace and admire the way they see and experience the world.