What is this essential character trait all the geniuses shared? Nope, not an exceptionally high IQ, but instead an openness to all the contradictory weirdness life has to offer. “The common traits that people across all creative fields seemed to have in common were an openness to one’s inner life; a preference for complexity and ambiguity; an unusually high tolerance for disorder and disarray; the ability to extract order from chaos; independence; unconventionality; and a willingness to take risks,” write Gregoire and Kaufman.