How Creative Limitations Help You Do

Better Work coschedule.com by Julie Neidlinger May 8, 2014

Going in for the creative kill is easier if you have boundaries. (See #2 below)

This is the story of creative limitations and an M&M dispenser.

I was a K-12 art teacher at a public school, and it was the end of the year. The

middle school students werent interested in doing much other than plan for

summer vacation. I had a cupboard full of partially used art supplies, lots of

scraps of materials and items from the years art projects, and restless kids on

my hands. Id finished up my lesson plans, and had a week left before school was

over.

We are going to do an exercise in limitation, I said.

I had a table in the center of the classroom piled with bits of paper, popsicle

sticks, string, plastic, mat board, glue, paints, cloth, and a mish-mash of items.

Id basically cleaned out the cupboard and found quite a collection of seemingly

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useless garbage. Your final project will be made out of just what you see here.

Nothing else.

I gave them the specifics: they had to create something that had the potential to

make noise, include movement of some sort, and had good design qualitites (this

was an art class, after all). On the final day of class, they would demonstrate their

machine. It didnt matter how they approached this project; I had no

limitations on size or complexity or even simplicity. The only rule was that they

had to make it here, in the classroom, with nothing but what was on that table,

and they could not use more than five types of items. They could not bring in

anything from home or outside the classroom.

There were groans and thats impossible! and I waved my hand and told them

to get started. And then a voice called out from the back. Miss Neidlinger, you

have to do it to. Its only fair.

I immediately regretted the arbitrary limitations I had created.

1. Creative Limitations Give You More Time

For content creators, the main limitation you face with your content is that of

time. You have deadlines, and feel the pain that comes from struggling within

the boundary of time. In fact, if time is such an onerous boundary, why would I

suggest you should have more boundaries?

This is why: creating arbitrary limitations will give you more time.

I watched as the students worked on their projects. We only had a few days, and

I saw how, once they got past the horror of limitation, they actually worked

much faster than they had on other projects. There was no distraction: this was

all they had to work with, there was a specific outcome expected.

Without limitations, there is too much too choose from. You waste time trying to

figure out what to use and where to go. Boundaries give you that time back by

doing that for you and letting you get down to the business of creating.

Its like having a niche blog: you put stringent restrictions on what youll blog

about and maybe it isnt as much fun all of the time, but you dont have to waste

time finding focus. You know what youll be writing about, you know what to

think about, you know what kinds of ideas you should focus on. Instead of the

whole universe of ideas to consider, you have a few in your hand.

Are you lacking in boundaries for your content creation? Set up some limitations

on yourself. Editorial calendars, with their advance planning, are a kind of

limitation. Go even further. Maybe youll want to:

Set up content limitations. Only write how-to posts on Mondays, or

base a post around a photo you took this week. Open a random book, like

George Harrison, and use a random phrase to build a piece of content on.

Set up work-time limitations. Restrict the amount of time you work

on specific projects. Our bodies work in ultradian rhythms, and after 90

minutes of work on the same thing, we max out on doing our best work.

2. Creative Limitations Give You More Freedom

Watching the students work on the project was a great deal of fun as a teacher.

Id already experienced enough this is dumb commentary throughout the

years previous art projects, but this restrictive project seemed to have really

gotten them excited.

Though theyd never admit it, it was clear they were having much more fun with

this project that had a specifically defined outcome than they did facing a blank

piece of paper with endless possibilities.

While studying art history in college, I was much less interested in extremely

modern art than I was in older art. When all the boundaries and rules were

removed and anything goes was the name of the game, I felt that the art

suffered. The older art, still working in the constructs of even a vague sense of

realism, space, color, etc. was much more intriguing. The artists used the rules

and boundaries and were able toif you took the time to really dig into a painting

http://coschedule.com/blog/start-a-niche-blog/http://coschedule.com/blog/forbes-editorial-calendar/http://coschedule.com/blog/copyright-free-images/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/While_My_Guitar_Gently_Weepshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/While_My_Guitar_Gently_Weepshttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-schwartz/work-life-balance-the-90_b_578671.html

or sculptureachieve something quite complex and multi-layered. They pushed

those boundaries to the limit and came out with a polished diamond.

How is it that having a boundary makes you freer, creatively? I often think of it

as a pasture at the edge of a dangerous cliff.

When there is a fence in place, you can freely explore the pasture, not having to

think about falling off the edge. You know that the fence will keep you from

going over, and you are more free with that boundary in place. Without the

fence, you would huddle towards the middle of the pasture, always making sure

you didnt get too close to the edge. You might explore a little bit, but you keep it

close and safe.

You will explore closer to the edge creatively and push the limits if you have a

boundary in place than you would if you had no boundaries at all.

3. Limitations Force You To Create

One of the biggest disappointments Id seen that year in my art classes was

students who turned in lackluster work when I knew they had so much more

ability. The broader and bigger and more wide-open the project, the more often

they seemed to leave it to the last or never really put in an effort. When I finally

gave them a very restrictive project, they jumped on it. I was extremely

impressed with what I was seeing the students create.

The fewer resources or options you have, the more you are forced to actually be

creative. You have to come up with something that isnt the first and most

obvious solution. You have to be creative to solve the problem; you cant fall

back on laziness or whatever is easiest.

The most terrifying day in college? When it was my turn to give an impromptu

speech in speech class. Biggest feeling of satisfaction and intellectual rush in

college? Same day.

There is something incredibly invigorating in facing down the challenge of a

complex problem, extreme limitations, and finding that your creative pump can,

indeed, be primed into action.

It strengthens your creative muscles. You learned you can do it and

how to get the creativity flowing. Each time you do it, it isnt as hard.

You learn how to do it again. Once youve solved an impossible

problem with limited options, you start to learn the process to get things

going again. Its not as scary, because you know you did it before, and

know how you got going. You create a system.

Those catchy and endearing Dr. Seuss books? They were written with

restrictions.

Green Eggs And Ham was written on a bet that Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

couldnt write a book using no more than 50 words. The result? He won the bet,

of course, and wrote a fun book that children still love to read.

Creative Limitations Have So Many Benefits

Limitations, though they may feel unpleasant in their restriction, have so many

valuable benefits beyond what they can do for your creativity.

1. Limitations reveal true solutions. Without a clear boundary to define

the problem, we cant be sure our solution is actually a solution.

2. Limitations prevent stagnation. With clearly defined boundaries, you

dont waste your time and effort on peripheral content and ideas that you

are going to cut later. While its hard to hit that 2,000+ word mark in

yourlong-form blog post, and it might be easier to stretch the boundaries to

get more words, sticking to the boundary of what your blog post is

supposed to be about makes for a tight bit of writing instead of a sloppy,

wandering tome.

3. Limitations give actionable items. While brainstorming might not

always be the best idea, setting boundaries during such sessions isnt a bad

idea. One of the weaknesses of brainstorming is the lack of boundaries, but

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what if the group had to collaborate on an idea with in a strict set of

guidelines? Re-watch that Apollo 13 video again. With boundaries, you get

less fluff and peripheral, and more ideas that you could actually take action

on.

So. Are you feeling stuck? Stuck in your writing, your job, your life?

Reduce the options you place before yourself. Get rid of some of the resources

you have. Narrow down your choices. Now solve that problem with whats left.

Perhaps, with creativity on the decline, introducing limitations and providing fewer

options is something we all ought to be considering. Less is more. Having fewer

options is better.

Epilogue: The Art Project

You may be wondering how that art project worked out.

The students amazed me. We had a fun final class period with each student

demonstrating their machine. They were so proud and excited with what theyd

made, more than any other project. Theyd surmounted a tough challenge.

Of course, for my machine, I broke the rules a wee tiny bit.

http://www.newsweek.com/creativity-crisis-74665

I had made an M&M dispenser.

The candy would sit in a well in the top, and there was a handle you pulled to

release the candy into a sloped chute. In the chute, Id glued down wooden beads

so that the candy would ping back and forth as they flowed down. The candies

created the movement and noise as they traveled down the chute.

After I presented my machine and explained how the noise and movement

would work, I pulled out two large bags of M&M candies (a material that was not

from the resources table), poured some in the top, and let each student take a

handful from the bottom as the candies bounced and pinged their way down the

chute.

That was a pretty decent payoff.