Silence

To think, there needs to be silence, or something akin to it that creates silence in the mind, such as a chore that allows us to daydream, or a kind of white noise that is going on in the background, such as the sound of wind and leaves rustling when we take a stroll through the park, or when we listen to music that creates a mood in our thoughts.

The same could be said of creativity, since it requires the active use of our imagination in which sights and sounds and space and time appear to us as natural products of a dream. Any audible distractions can disrupt the flow of their output, disengage us from the mental experience.

When there is so much noise around us that it draws our attention, then thinking and imagining cannot occur. Of course there are things that can inspire us from without, such as a movie or a conversation, and we can think as a result of their influence (the same goes for imagining as well). But to think in terms of meditating on an idea, or imagining worlds or scenes and characters from a story, then silence is the key ingredient for which we can employ the full power of our mind.