Creative Personality - Psychology Today [http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199607/the-creative-personality]

1. Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest.

• They work long hours, with great concentration, while projecting an aura of freshness and enthusiasm. This suggests a superior physical endowment, a genetic advantage.
• F O C U S E D M I N D S > superior genes
• When necessary, they focus like a laser beam; when not, they immediately start recharging
• Rhythm of activity followed by idleness or reflection are very important for the success of their work

2. Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time.

• High IQ cut off point for creative people is 120, but beyond 120 an increment in IQ doesn't necessarily imply higher creativity.
• There's a contrasting poles of wisdom & childishness, ie., Mozart
• Convergent thinking is measured by IQ tests, and involves solving well-defined, rational problems that have one correct answer.
• Divergent thinking leads to no agreed-upon solution. It involves fluency, or the ability to generate a great quantity of ideas; flexibility, or the ability to switch from one perspective to another; and originality in picking unusual associations of ideas. Although Divergent Thinking is not much use without the ability to tell a good idea from a bad one. There should be good judgment in recognizing viable problem from the other.

3. Creative individuals has a combination of playfulness (irresponsibility) and discipline (responsibility)

• Detached Attachment like an astute observer of the social scene
• Playfulness doesn't go very far without its antithesis, a quality of doggedness, endurance, perseverance.
• Next stage (after play) of course, is HARD WORK (Endurance > Intuition)
• Example was Jacob Rabinow engineer and inventor, who pretends he's in jail. "If I'm in jail, time is of no consequence. If I say I'll do this within a week, I'll do this within a week."
• Despite the carefree air that many creative people affect, most of them work late into the night and persist when less driven individuals would not.

4. Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end; and a rooted sense of reality at the other.

• Both are needed to break away from the present without losing touch with the past.
• The whole point of art and science is to go beyond what we now consider real, and create a new reality.
• With the Rorschach / Thematic Apperception Test, creative artists gave responses that were definitely more original, with unusual, colorful, detailed elements. But they were never "bizarre" responses. --- Creative people it seems, are original without being bizarre (a novelty they see rooted in reality.
• When a person begins to work creatively, all bets are off--the artist may be as much a realist as the physicist, and the physicist as imaginative as the artist.
• Good example, Former Citicorp CEO John Reed, the financial analyst. Take note, he's always having meetings all over the world to discuss the state of the economies of different countries vis-a-vis his own.
  • "I'm always tuning that model and trying to get different insights as I look at things, & I try to relate it back to what it means to our business, to how one behaves, if you will. __Evolutionary Success__"
  • "I don't think there's such a thing as reality. There are widely varying descriptions of reality, & you've got to be alert to when they change & what's really going on. No one is going to truly grasp it, but you have to stay truly active on that end. That implies you have to have a multifaceted perspective."
  • Nothing's changed but the perception [of the market]."
  • __It is an evolutionary process, where Current Reality becomes rapidly obsolete, and one must be on the alert for the shape of things to come. At the same time, the emerging reality is not a fanciful conceit but something inherent in the here and now.

5. Creative people seem to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum between extroversion and introversion.

• Only those teens who can tolerate being alone are able to master the symbolic content of a domain BUT...
• ...over and over again, the importance of seeing people, hearing people, exchanging ideas, and getting to know another person's work and mind are stressed by creative people
• ie., Physicist Freeman Dyson, he opens his door when he's working in Science; when he writes a paper, he closes the door.
• You need to have a whole network

6. Creative individuals are also remarkably humble and proud at the same time.

• a. Their respect for the domain in which they work makes them aware of the long line of previous contributions to it, which puts their own into perspective.
• b. They're also aware of the role that luck played in their own achievements (You can prolly insert Malcolm Gladwell's Luck = opportunity + preparation.
• Creative individuals are usually focused on future projects and current challenges that their past accomplishments, no matter how outstanding, are no longer very interesting to them.
• Medical Physicist Rosalyn Yalow, "There;s one other thing that you do when you invent, and that's Existence Proof ". This means that __you have to assume that it can be done. If you don't assume that, you won't even try. And I always assume not only can it be done, but I can do it."
• There's also a __contrast between ambition (competition) and selflessness (cooperation). Creative individuals are often willing to subordinate their own personal comfort and advancement to the success of whatever project they are working on.
• Being a part of something bigger than you.

7. Creative individuals to a certain extent escape the rigid gender role stereotyping.

• Creative and talented girls are more dominant and tough than other girls, and creative boys are more sensitive and less aggressive than their male peers.

8. Generally, creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent. Yet it is impossible to be creative without first internalized a domain of culture. A person must believe in the importance of such a domain in order to learn its rules.

• Dichotomy between rebellious/iconoclastic and traditional and conservative
• "Wanting to be different can't be a motive of your work.
• Merlee Jayme, "Think inside the box"
• Willingness to take risks, to break with the safety of tradition, is also necessary.
• Innovation doesn't happen if you play a safe game.

9. Most creative persons are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.

• Attachment and detachment. Important to find a way to be detached from what you do.
• 10. Openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to suffering and pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment.
  • Brooding artist is just stereotypical.
  • Creative individuals have the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake.
  • Margaret Butler, computer scientist, stresses an element of fun & enjoyment.
  • Creative people usually enjoy their own work but also many other activities in their lives.

The 10 pairs of contrasting personality traits might be the most telling characteristic of creative people. But what is important to keep in mind is that the conflicting traits are usually difficult to find in the same person. Yet without the 2nd pole, new ideas will not be recognized. And without the first, they will not be developed to the point of acceptance. Therefore, the novelty that survives to change a domain is usually the work of someone who can operate at both ends of these polarities.