CREATIVE ARCHETYPES: THE MENTAL SPACIOUSNESS TO SPATIAL SYNESTHESIA SCALE
Are you a Mental Spaciousness high scorer, or do you show signs of Spatial Synesthesia?
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On our endless quest to inculcate more people into the cult of creativity, we created 16 creative archetypes based on four different scales of material, psychic, and existential measurement. Each scale is a sort of fluid spectrum — honestly, almost a circle by the time you get to either pole. In this series, we explain each scale and how it contributes to creative practice. You can read about the three previous scales here.
THE MENTAL SPACIOUSNESS TO SPATIAL SYNESTHESIA SCALE
As my vision closed in, the computer screen vibrated with agitation in front of me. Shapes morphed and twisted, becoming a maddening blur.
I was a few months pregnant, violently nauseated, on my third hour of virtual meetings. My puffy face stared back at me in the pixelated Zoom screen — lower jaw hanging open like an extra from The Walking Dead, glassy eyes straining to focus, brain on SOS buffering mode.
You could practically hear the laptop fan of my brain kick into high gear: 🚨SYSTEM OVERLOAD!🚨
The more I tried to re-engage my mind, the more disconnected I felt. Toggling between my desktop monitor, my laptop screen, my note taking app, my Slack, my Zoom, I attempted to refocus my attention. Get my bearings.
Even with two screens, I couldn’t SEE everything I needed to. And without seeing all the information, I couldn’t think.
I fought every urge to Prostitution Whore table-flip my desk, and ended up annoyedly scribbling on a notebook that just felt too small to contain my ideas.
Somehow, everyone survived the meeting (apologies for my rancid vibes, folks!) but I immediately took to the internet to find what I needed: a gigantic pad of paper.
No, a bigger one than that.
Oh, it doesn’t exist? Amidst the vomit-punctuated chaos, an epiphany struck like lightning.
*And then God reached down and said, LET THERE BE SPACIES, and it was done.*
Even though the Mental Spaciousness to Spatial Synesthesia Scale is our last feature, let the record show that it was the FIRST, the Original, the *that girl* of our Creative Archetype Spectrums.
The scale that started it all.
People with Mental Spaciousness have infinite brain cloud storage.
Memories, ideas, daydreams, processing, planning, organization — it all gets done in the Duomo, for better or worse.
A high Mental Spaciousness score doesn’t automatically equate to someone who gets lost in their own thoughts.
Think of this scale more of as an indicator of where the Work gets done: In the mental or virtual plane? Or through the physical plane?
Sure, a high MSQ (mental spaciousness quotient) could belong to a person:
who daydreams away while Brad from accounting drones on about EBIDTA and profit margins
who’s got a reputation for being introverted, shy, or as aloof as Lana Del Rey (our queen, every tongue that rises against her shall fall!)
who doesn’t perform well when put on the spot; who requires time to wrap their mind around a concept
who feels reinvigorated by meditative tranqui time
But if you have a high MSQ you could just as easily:
be a chatterbox who processes thoughts verbally
be a dream manager who has incredible recall when it comes to the to-do lists and needs of the individuals on your team
leapfrog from idea to idea, project to project all day long without feeling the pain of switching too deeply
Mental Spaciousness is Big Brain energy.
It’s a baby with a perpetually furrowed brow. It’s the person at the table who can calculate what every person owes AND the gratuity in their head. [Editor’s Note: I don’t do public math, these people shock and astound me.]
At their best, those with Mental Spaciousness create ... space for themselves to think. They push aside the stacks of papers and rows of bookshelves in their mind to clear room for new thoughts and connections to bloom.
Breakthroughs happen when high MSQs clear the dancefloor of their minds.
It can be exhausting and heavy to live inside your mind 24/7. Sometimes MSQs just want to hit Smooth Brain mode and get a lil’ break. The tendency to disassociate — to turn off your thinking — is strong in you.
Disassociation isn’t always a dirty word, despite what that TikTok therapist might say. For MSQs, it might look like a rigid meditation practice, a podcast addiction, a reliance on illicit substances, or distracting themselves with superficial drama the prevents one from diving deep into the well of their own thoughts.
Hey, we all love a Scandoval hyper-fixation momo. But does that require listening to the entire back catalogue of Shenanigans? Probs no.
Be honest with yourself, Mental Spaciousness high scorers: You know when you’re avoiding your beautiful mind, killing time by backstroking through the shallow end instead of diving deep into the pools of your consciousness.
Mental Spaciousness-leaning Creative Archetypes: Creatrix, Architect, Intellectual, Trailblazer, Engineer, Inventor, Channel, Innovator
If the Mentally Spacious process their thoughts in their Big Brain iMac, Spatial Synesthetes are more aligned with the philosophy of reknowned thought leader Harold (of and the Purple Crayon fame): Physically externalize ideas to shape them!
Spatial subscribers must dump the contents of their minds out on the table to begin making sense of what’s inside.
If you try to read the instructions to the new Settlers of Catan expansion pack to a Spatial Synesthete, you’ll see the light leave their eyes and the soul slowly drain from their body.
Spatial Synesthetes are deeply affected by matter:
turning on the Big Light in front of a Spatial Synesthete is like exposing a werewolf to a full moon — they twitch, snarl, and transform into the angriest bitey-iest versions of themselves
they maintain a fierce allegiance to a specific notebook, a particular ballpoint pen, that just-the-right-width Japanese highlighter, the planner brand they’ve used since college
“I can’t THINK with this stuff all around me” they wail as they vigorously knoll their desk
It’s not that they can’t process in their heads — they can.
But they can get to a faster, better answer when they’re able to literally organize their thoughts in space.
Digital tools like Miro Boards or Trello or even Notion can help, but when deep processing needs to happen products like these prove to be a pale imitation of tactile implements like paper, notecards, a whiteboard, even post-it notes.
People with spatial synesthesia perceive time and space differently than their mental spaciousness counterparts. It has a variety of manifestations:
While you might not picture the calendar as a circle, you can still orient more towards spatial processing than mental processing.
At their best, Spatial Synesthetes make discoveries through the physical.
They need to exorcise the ghosts of their mind, and in the process send them into the light. Corporeal action is the key to unlocking creative genius for these types. Their body becomes the channel. Even something as simple as shuffling cards or flipping through the pages of a notebook can have a powerful cognitive effect on Spatial Synesthetes.
They understand that space is intelligent. It holds memories. Guidance. Stories. Secret knowledge.
Beware, though, the spatially inclined who cosplay Mental Spaciousness. Spatial people who see themselves as “dumb jocks” or label their obsession with physical space as vapid close themselves off to their boundless potential. Sad!
Spatial Synesthesia-leaning Creative Archetypes: Magician, Quicksilver, Producer, Reflector, Dancer, Author, Shapeshifter, Star
This spectrum is somewhat singular.
With the three other Creative Scales, we recommend trying a small dose of the opposite end of the spectrum to cure your creative woes. But for the Mental to Spatial Scale, it’s not always useful to dip into the other side to uncork your personal creative genie.
Rather, we might do better to simply... acknowledge our needs? Stop trying to do mental math when you know you need to physically carry the one on pen and paper? Abstain from your fourth hour of podcast listening if you know that your mind library had mandatory quiet hours?
I fear that despite knowing I score a 5 out of 5 on the Spatial Synesthesia Scale, I reject thinking in the physical until I’m dripping in frustration and about to torch my computer in the middle of a coffee shop. (Some people just like to watch the world burn.)
Right before I spark the match, an angel lands on my shoulder and is all, HiiIiIiIiiiiiiiii just wonderin’ have you thought of maybe like journaling for a little second? Or, uhm, I know this is cuckoo bananas, maybe writing all your thoughts on little notecards and then organizing them into cute piles? Oh, or like... going on a walk?
With all four scales, self-knowledge is power. How does understanding your natural creative inclinations help you wrap your brain around your process?
Curious about where you fall on the Ordinary World to Special World spectrum? Take the SPACIES Creative Archetype quiz.
this exploded my mind in the best way
you’re a genius. also a hilarious writer. as a spatial person this dragged me in the best way.