Creativity and Constraints - Why You Need Your Limitations
Posted by Steve Munroe | Under Life, problemsolving Sunday Aug 17, 2008
Do you want to be free? To live without constraints? Have enough money so that money doesn’t matter anymore? To be free of your work or the demands of others on your time? Do you want to be able to do anything whatsoever whenever it pleases you? Fine aims indeed. And there are thousands of people out there willing to tell you how you can do it (for a price). However, it appears to me that having a life without limits or constraints would be a very uninteresting life indeed. In fact, constraints are essential for all of us, and are what makes life interesting. For example, anyone who ever became really good at something did so because they knew about the constraints of whatever it was they were trying to excel at. Ask anyone who is at the top of their game, be it sport, music, business, art, or acting and I bet they all have intimate knowledge of the constraints that they work under. It is the masterly manipulation of these constraints that makes what these people do so much fun for them (and lucrative too).
Look at it from another angle, anything we do that’s creative is defined as such because its a creative use of materials, musical notes, shapes and/or colours - but within some form of limiting set of rules or physical realities. We recognise music when the sounds we hear conform to strict sets of rules that determine which notes can follow previous notes; the artist must work within the constraints of the materials she uses, and the businessman must try to make his profit within the rules of commerce as defined by his society. Even people who attempt to break the rules do so in full knowledge of the rules they are trying to break - their behaviour is still defined by the rules they are resisting.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that in fact, limitations and constraints provide the framework within which we can be creative and innovative. Without them we would have nothing to work with - imagine Nureyev in zero-G, or Callas in a vacuum, or Branson in Cuba! Sure, I’d love to have enormous sums of money and no demands on my time, but I suspect if I really did ever manage to get myself into such a situation, I’d either be bored rigid or, more likely, find a whole new set of limitations and constraints I’d have to work within.
I think there’s a lesson here. Instead of looking at constraints as bad things or even necessary evils, we should see them as opportunities for creativity. I don’t have much money, I’m not the best looking person in the world (though my Mother assures me that I am), and I’m not born with any god given talents that will make my fortune (notwithstanding my world class ability to procrastinate), but when I look around, I see many little ways that I can tweak things to do better at what I do. Yes, I’m surrounded by limits but, like the musician faced with just 8 notes and a handful of chords, perhaps I too can create my own personal Sgt Peppers. I bet you can too!
Here’s someone who knows all about constraints…
