5 Habits You Can Steal From Introverts to Boost Your Creativity

#2 — Engage in meaningful conversations

Our extroverted culture has labeled introverts as boring and unsuccessful people. Introverts are categorized as quiet, lonesome, shy, and anti-social persons.

Let me ask you an important question. What is common between Albert Einstein, Emma Watson, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett? They all are introverts. Can anyone doubt their creative capacities or their success?

Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, argues that “the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist.”

Thus introversion does not necessarily mean loneliness or unproductivity.

The following are the key habits of introverted people that you can use to improve your creativity.

Practice Critical Thinking

Introverts are deep thinkers. They think about every possible event around them and try to understand it in their own way. They enjoy the individual exploration.

A deep understanding of any idea or a subject needs critical thinking.

Critical thinking is a process of objective analysis of the available information to form a logical judgment. The process involves skillful observation, questioning, reasoning, rational thinking, and communication with the subject itself.

In simple words, thinking all aspects of an idea or subject to fully understand it.

Critical thinking is the oldest form of the thought process, dating back to the times of Ancient Greece. Socrates was considered a great critical thinker in ancient Greece.

Critical thinking involves Observing, analyzing, questioning, reasoning, etc. these processes makes critical thinking more productive than any other creative exercises.

Critical thinking improves logical reasoning, thinking capacity as well as intellectual power.

It also helps you form unbiased and rational opinions, which are hard to attain in this time of manipulation.

Engage in Meaningful Conversations

Introverts don’t like to spend time in a pointless discussion. Introverts love a meaningful conversation that gives them information and invoke their curiosity.

Social media and social reciprocity have been wasting our time for years and we are grappled in its web.

There are many ways to waste your time. We waste our time on videos like “How to make $1000 in a day”. We waste our time watching iPhone 12 Pro Max’s incredible specifications. We waste our time on celebrities that won’t be celebrities in the next five years. We waste our time on an inept President and his idiocracy.

A good conversation is a productive way to engage your mind and thought processes. It makes you better understand things thus making you more confident.

Good conversation is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Creative thinking combined with better engagement with the right people will make your vague ideas more practical and sellable.

Everyone has their own views and perspectives. Their opinions and suggestions might help improve your creative thinking.

However, you also need to avoid certain people with negative vibes that may influence your thoughts and creative process.

Avoid Negativity

Negativity is the enemy of creativity — David Lynch

To have a good conversation, you need the right person to engage with, the one who resonates with your thoughts. If the person is negative about something your thoughts and opinions will also become the same.

These people harm your creativity as they not only impact your beliefs but they can also make you crippled not to think out of the box.

Introverts are quick to identify and avoid such people spreading negative energy. They don’t want to be influenced by these people. This is the reason why they choose to be quiet rather than engaging in a futile conversation.

Your thoughts, your ideas may be vague but in the influence of such toxic people, you may doubt your thinking capacity.

People who practice Critical Thinking can identify such people and they efficiently avoid getting into such conversations.

Daydream Your Imagination

Albert Einstein daydreamed about running beside a sunbeam to the edge of the universe. This thought experiment became the basis of his famous Theory of Relativity.

Daydreaming is considered a lazy habit. People who daydream often looked down on as impractical and unproductive.

However, a study by the Georgia Institute of Technology shows that people who daydream are smart and creative. The study noted that daydreaming is a sign of a healthy brain with higher intellectual and creative abilities.

Introverts are dreamers. Daydreaming is an important part of their way of life. It helps them in a lot of ways like talking with friends, prepare for public meetings, and improve creativity.

Daydreaming is not just letting your mind wander directionless. Skillful daydreamers can use this technique to see their ideas working in a practical world.

Daydreaming is the most efficient way your brain can comprehend things clearly. It can test your ideas before trying them practically. It makes your thought process more accurate and practical.

For daydreaming, you need to be alone and in a distraction-free environment, Solitude.

Spend Some Time in Solitude

Introverts like to spend time alone. Introverts differ from extroverts as they draw their energy from inner space. Solitude is the source of their creativity.

If you have read articles about being a successful writer or a content creator, you’ll find most experts giving one advice— avoid distractions.

An addiction to distraction is the death of creative production. — Robin S Sharma

Spending time in silence and in an isolated environment can improve your focus and productivity thus boosting creativity. Solitude gives you more power to control your thoughts and emotions.

One of the firm believers of solitude was Albert Einstein. He used to practice his thought process alone and some of the greatest theories have come out of his solitude.

Not just Einstein, but Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh worked alone and excelled in their expertise and craft.

A study shows that solitude can help improve mental health. It concludes that Solitude correlates to positivity and well-being.

The study also concludes that people who choose solitude are mentally stronger than those who impose solitude as a punishment.

Solitude gives you control over your imaginations and gives you space to critically think, daydream, and hone your creative thinking.

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulate the creative mind. — Albert Einstein

Creative capacities are developed with good habits. Creative people cherish and maintain the habits that help them produce creative content regularly.

These habits of introverts make them think out of the box. The reason why introverts are successful is their profound belief in themselves and their abilities to change the world.

Thank you.