Why do creative people often prefer solitude?

Creative people often enjoy that freedom to indulge in the spiritual world .

Psychologists at the Universities of Arizona, Arkansas and Ninnesota in the US surveyed more than 2,000 volunteers to better understand how creativity works when we have nothing better to do.

Based on brain activity tests, researchers found that individuals who are able to think differently and creatively are less likely to feel bored when alone.

While this is not a huge finding, it does highlight the difference between our minds in an inactive state.

Creative people are less likely to feel bored when alone. (Illustration: Getty Images).

The findings also suggest better ways to encourage people to appreciate their free time without feeling the need to fill it with chores or tedious work.

'Understanding why people think the way they do could help identify interventions to improve health and well-being,' said lead study author Jessica Andrews-Hanna, a neuroscientist at the University of Arizona.

The recent global Covid-19 pandemic has made us realize that prolonged periods of solitude can actually be an opportunity for some people to live happily and healthily. There are many ways people can cope with the pressures of loneliness, some of which turn out to be good.

For some, social distancing is a precious opportunity to take regular trips to the deepest corners of our minds and souls.

They filled these long hours with imaginative stories, bold speculations, and tightly connected thoughts that were loosely connected.

'In today's busy and technologically connected society, time alone with your own thoughts without distraction can be a rare commodity,' says neuroscientist Andrews-Hanna.

To see more clearly how this plays out in practice, the researchers invited 90 volunteers to sit alone in a room without any distractions from digital devices for 10 minutes straight and freely blurt out whatever came to mind.

Volunteers also underwent a thinking test that measured their exploratory tendencies in response to open-ended questions, such as 'How would you make money with 100 rubber bands?'

Analyzing the sequences of ideas as volunteers spoke them aloud helped researchers better understand the process by which some people think outside the box.

While many people have thoughts that jump from one unrelated issue to another, creative people have more connected thoughts.

These differentiators also talked more, reflecting a fluid and rich flow of ideas, and they also reported feeling less depressed during that time of solitude.

In the second study, the team assessed 2,612 participants' responses to a survey related to creativity.

The results of this study were also very similar to the findings from the first study, showing that creative people felt less bored during the isolation period due to Covid-19.

Learn to tap into the creativity that lies within us by remembering that we have the capacity to think creatively to fill that seemingly dead time, making our seemingly idle, unfocused thinking more productive.

Neuroscientist Andrews-Hanna says that as we become increasingly overworked, overscheduled and digitally addicted, perhaps we need quiet, thought-provoking moments that can be relaxing and boost creativity .

That contributes to making the main activities of the day more effective.