Tradition is a transmission of beliefs and activities. When those beliefs help move creative people toward exploration, they’ll benefit creativity.

Tradition hurts creativity only when they are presupposing what can and cannot be done. Often, traditions do hurt creativity because they unconsciously carry with it presuppositions about what could work and what will never work. Exploration is limited because you “already have the answers.”

But traditions can also benefit creativity. Creativity is the most cognitively challenging activity for your brain. It requires tons of mental energy to overcome past thought patterns and search for new connections. Because creativity requires so much mental energy, creative people often use traditions to systemize non-creative areas of their life.

When non-creative activities are systemized, it allows the brain to refuel for the next creativity session. A good example is how Einstein only kept one style of pants. When he woke up in the morning, there was no mental effort expended on “what to wear.” Steve Jobs did the same thing with jeans and a black turtleneck. Simple choices like these delete a decision from your daily life. While what you’ll wear might seem such a small decision that it wouldn’t warrant systemizing, the accumulation of these pre-made choices can have a huge impact.

Creative people tend to have a lot of these traditions pieced together. It’s one of the primary reasons creative people are often seen as weird or socially awkward. They have many mechanisms to protect their mental energy.