Filed under: creativity Reading time: 1 mins

→ Ten Pairs of Opposite Traits That Creative People Exhibit

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi sadly died last month. Among his many contributions to popular ideas around creativity (such as the idea of “flow”) is this excellent list of ten strangely paradoxical opposing traits that particularly creative individuals seem to possess:

  1. Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest.
  2. Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time.
  3. A third paradoxical trait refers to the related combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.
  4. Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end, and a rooted sense of reality at the other.
  5. Creative people seem to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum between extroversion and introversion.
  6. Creative individuals are also remarkably humble and proud at the same time.
  7. Creative individuals to a certain extent escape this rigid gender role stereotyping [of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’].
  8. Creative people are both traditional and conservative and at the same time rebellious and iconoclastic.
  9. Creative persons are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.
  10. The openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to suffering and pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment.