19 Qualities of Creative People, and What Research Says About Them

Creative Habits: Personal Observations Beyond Fixed Traits

Creative people are not a separate species, but research does point to a handful of habits and traits that show up again and again: curiosity and openness to new experience, comfort with problems that have no obvious answer, deep absorption in work, and the stubbornness to keep going after many failures. Below are 19 qualities often seen in creative people, grouped by theme, with notes on what psychology actually supports and where popular belief goes wrong.

Treat the list as a mirror, not a test. Creativity is something people do, in a kitchen, a lab, a garage or a spreadsheet, and most of these qualities can be practised.

What research says creative people share

The trait most consistently linked to creativity is what psychologists call openness to experience, one of the five broad personality dimensions in the Big Five model. It covers a taste for ideas, art, feelings, fantasy and new activities, and a willingness to question familiar values. People who score high on it tend to do better on tests of divergent thinking, the kind of thinking that produces many possible answers instead of one correct one. Professional artists, musicians and scientists score higher on openness, on average, than the general population.

Openness is partly inherited (twin studies put its heritability at a little over half) and tends to decline slowly with age. That does not make creativity fixed. Personality describes tendencies; habits decide what you do with them.

How creative people tend to think

1. They treat problems as puzzles

Where others see an obstacle, a creative mind often sees an interesting question. A hard situation becomes raw material.

2. They look at things from several angles

They can step back from a situation and try other points of view, including ones they disagree with. The psychologist J. P. Guilford called this flexibility and made it part of his early tests of creative thinking in the 1950s and 1960s.

3. They notice small details

Writers, painters and designers are often keen observers of people and places, because ordinary details are where many of their ideas come from.

4. They change their minds about their own work

A draft that felt brilliant at midnight can look weak the next morning. Swinging between pride and doubt is common, and it is part of the editing instinct: you cannot improve work you never question.

How they work: absorption, odd hours and sudden ideas

5. They lose track of time

When an idea takes hold, meals and sleep can slip. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi named this state flow in 1975: complete absorption in a task whose difficulty matches your skill, with clear goals and quick feedback. Flow is enjoyable, but sleeping and eating regularly still matter for doing good work over years.

6. They daydream

Letting the mind wander is not wasted time. It can help with what researchers call incubation, the period when you step away from a problem before an answer arrives. The evidence on incubation is mixed, but one explanation is that a break helps you forget the wrong approach you were stuck on.

7. Ideas arrive at strange moments

Insight often strikes in the shower, on a walk or halfway through a conversation, which is why so many creative people carry a notebook. Graham Wallas, writing in 1926, described a creative process of preparation, incubation, illumination and verification; the sudden flash usually comes only after a lot of quiet preparation.

8. They keep unusual hours

Some work late and sleep in. A body clock that runs late is common in many people, creative or not, so the useful lesson is simply to find and protect the hours when your mind is sharpest.

9. They get restless with boring tasks

Staying focused on work that feels pointless is hard for them. Building variety into the day, or pairing dull tasks with interesting ones, helps.

10. They often procrastinate

Many creative people leave work until the deadline is close. A short delay can leave room for incubation, but chronic last-minute work raises stress and lowers quality. The honest takeaway is to start early and give ideas time to ripen, rather than to treat procrastination as a creative gift.

How they deal with rules, routine and failure

11. They question rules

Creative people often push against conventions that seem arbitrary. That is different from ignoring every rule: most great work in music, science or design comes from mastering the conventions first and then bending them on purpose.

12. They dislike routine for its own sake

They look for new experiences, places and people to keep the mind fed. Interestingly, many productive artists also keep a firm daily routine for the work itself, which frees their energy for the ideas.

13. They keep looking for new ways to express themselves

A painter takes up photography, a programmer starts writing songs. Trying another medium often brings fresh ideas back to the first one.

14. They persist through failure

Rejection is normal in creative fields, and the people who succeed are often simply the ones who kept going. Persistence matters more than talent in many careers that look glamorous from outside.

15. They stay motivated when others doubt them

Being told that art or invention is no way to earn a living is a common experience. Intrinsic motivation, doing the work because it matters to you, is one of the best predictors of sticking with it.

16. They share their work and keep learning

Showing work to others takes courage. The healthiest creative people are proud of what they make yet humble enough to accept criticism and keep learning.

Common myths about creative people

17. The myth that creative people are bad at maths

Some artists dislike numbers, but there is no evidence that creativity and mathematical ability are opposites. Mathematics and science are deeply creative fields, and scientists, like artists, score higher on openness than average. The related idea that people are either logical left-brained or creative right-brained types is a myth: a 2013 University of Utah study of brain scans found no sign of people using one hemisphere more than the other overall.

Two other beliefs need care. Studies do find higher rates of some mood disorders among writers, but large Swedish data show that creative professions as a whole are not more likely to have mental illness. And intelligence helps creativity only up to a point; above an IQ of about 120, the link between the two becomes weak. Suffering is not a requirement for good work, and if you are struggling, talk to a doctor.

Playfulness and warmth

18. They keep a childlike curiosity

Creative adults often keep the playfulness that most people lose. Play lowers the fear of looking foolish, and fear of looking foolish kills more ideas than lack of talent.

19. They love beauty and share it

Many creative people are generous with their enthusiasm. They notice beauty, want others to see it, and turn that impulse into something others can enjoy.

How to build creative habits yourself

You do not need a particular temperament to work more creatively. Try this for one project: write down how you gather ideas, how you begin, where you get stuck and what gets you moving again. After a few weeks you will have a picture of your own process, which is far more useful than any list of traits.

A few habits help almost everyone: protect a regular block of time for creative work, keep a notebook for ideas that arrive at odd moments, take real breaks when stuck, try something in a new medium, and show your work to people who will give honest feedback.

Sources: Wikipedia: Creativity; Wikipedia: Openness to experience; Wikipedia: Flow (psychology); Wikipedia: Lateralization of brain function. Original list: I Heart Intelligence.

Further archive links: Mind-Bending 3D Beach Art By NZ Artist Jamie Harkins · The Only Thing More Beautiful Than This Iceberg Is What You See Upon A Closer Look. Amazing!

For a specific example of turning an ordinary object into a visual idea, see Helga Stentzel’s Art Finds Characters in Everyday Objects.

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