Interesting you mention how it makes you "think". I've found modular a bit analogous to film photography in a way. I got back into film a few years back when I, on a whim, bought a film SLR to bring with my DSLR on a trip to Alaska. Turns out my favorite photos were essentially all on film, but I digress. Point is, I was hooked, and one thing it does is make you think differently and more into concepts. Partly because you can't see the immediate results, partly the real per shot cost of film, partly the look, etc. etc.
Full disclosure, I don't have a modular rig yet but even with doing research, reading manuals, watching videos, listening to samples, playing with VCVRack, etc., I'm starting to understand and appreciate more of what goes into integrated synths. It's already made me more creative and focused and has led to some really creative "AHA!" moments. A silly example, I've always been frustrated with doing automation of the volume/pan of channels in Ableton. You can't offset these easily so when I'm doing mixing/mastering work, it's always been a frustration. I mean since I started using Ableton. Well, getting into modular got my out of my rut here and the answer has been in front of me the whole time. Just add a Utility module to the channel and automate THAT. Then the global channel volume/pan I can freely adjust without worry. So simple! I feel silly I hadn't figured it out but honestly if I wasn't thinking more about modular, I might've never connected those dots.
Another example is I realized I could stack CC effects in Renoise (that's what I'm currently using to run my MIDI synths - a sort of experiment over using Ableton). So if I want to control a filter manually, I can do that. But literally yesterday I realized, "oh! I can add an LFO and mix it in to my automation! Oh and I can then modulate the LFO speed!". Then just making patches on the synths themselves - I dunno I just am starting to think a little differently now that I sort of know a bit more about how these all can fit together (and how I can fit them together differently).
It's all been very enlightening and I don't even yet have a eurorack yet! I'm working on that. I'll start simple, perhaps even just the bare minimum to do some effect routing (I really want to use some SSM2044 modules, long story that and I've already rambled on enough). Excited to see how I, hopefully, break out of my creative shell even more once I can mess about with the real thing.