How Constraints Can Breed Creativity
Add limitations to unleash your creativity.
--
It sounds counter-intuitive right? How can placing limitations on yourself help to make you more creative?
A Recent Example
This week, I wrote an atomic essay called The LMNOP Framework for Finding Writing Ideas. Why LMNOP? It was arbitrary. I chose 5 letters that sounded good (ellem-enno-pee) then found words that started with each letter.
The truth about that essay? It wasn’t particularly hard for me to come up with. Naming, alliteration, puns, play on words, it’s a gift curse I have. It’s fun for me. It was an hour or less from concept to completion.
Constraints As a Forcing Function
This is a term that we’re taught in Ship 30 for 30.
A forcing function is any task, activity or event that forces one to take action and produce a result. Source: Wikipedia.
The 3 Ps. The HIJK Technique. The 24/7 Approach. The JASON System (July, August, September, October, November). The 25/50/100 Strategy. The HAHA Joke-Writing Format.
Just make it up using artificial constraints. That’s all anyone is doing when they create frameworks/systems. Heck, take one of the examples above and run with it (but just know that I may also).
Atomic Essays As a Constraint
We’re encouraged to limit atomic essays to 250–300 words, a constraint that can lead to creativity. It forces conciseness, and changes how you structure ideas in order to make them complete, yet easily digestible.
I could easily have droned on and on about this topic, in the hopes of making it long enough that it seemed like a worthwhile read. But honestly, this right here is the perfect time to stop writing.
