Expand Your Philosophy: Creatively Constrain Yourself
Short principles for long-term clarity—and occasional epiphanies.
How do constraints, keywords, and shifting goals fuel creativity, flow, and innovation while embracing imperfection?
“Without boundaries, everything is possible—yet within that vast space, it's easy to create nothing.”
When you sit down to create something, it is easy to get swept away in the infinite abyss that is your creative mind. So many possibilities make it nearly impossible to crystalise an idea. For a crystal to form, there must first be a seed from which each facet can culminate and grow further tendrils. To this end, putting ourselves in box – either tightly or loosely constrained – can allow us greater ease to place the initial seed for our creation and make it easier for further ideas to latch on. Ironically, this can be done in nearly infinite ways. So, I will share just a few techniques that I have found helpful.
Tool 1: Define the scope - The first thing is to figure out what you want to make in the vaguest way possible. Is it a poem, novel, short video, game concept, piece of music, painting etc? Or is it more specific like a character for a novel? The idea here is that it is the vaguest idea of an end point so you have a rough goal to aim for. You can further constrain yourself here in two ways: (1) Build everything within a pre-existing structure or framework that exists for that output (i.e. 3 Act structure) or (2) Do the opposite and ignore the structure entirely. I like way 2, but sometimes way 1 can ensure you do not reinvent the wheel, they exist for a reason.
Tool 2: Constrain Time with a creation timer – Set a timer for 5 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1 hour (shorter is better) and create the best possible thing by the end of the timer, sort of like a race. The purpose of this is to get your shitty first draft onto a page, not stopping for judgement, and letting your ideas just fall out of you. Subsequent refinement passes can also be timed to ensure you don’t sit there stewing. You can use much longer timers as well, if you want a doom clock, but these can sometimes be counterproductive. Timers can also trick you into a state of flow and you may find that after the timer you just want to keep creating, if so, keep going and don’t make it weird.
Tool 3: Constrain Design Space – Keywords – This tool’s purpose is to create generative pseudo-seeds for your idea, force you to operate within a specific paradigm, and engage with ideas in novel ways. Set yourself 3-5 Keywords which must be used in all ideas. By doing this you are forced to explore both concrete and tenuous connections and links between the keywords and your ideas. These keywords could also be features that must be included in the final product or rules or techniques that must be followed or applied as part of the process. The more keywords you add the more you are constraining your design space, so be careful not to set too many. If you are stuck, start at a random word and play the word association game. Once you are 3-10 words deep, discard any that don’t make sense, and use 3-5 as your constraints. (e.g. Book - Read – Reeves – Superman – Villain – Joker. I might take Book, Superman, Villain, Joker).
Tool 4: Constrain Decision space and expand as necessary – “If not 10 then 20” – This is both parallel and perpendicular to Tool 3. When we ideate it can be easy for us to set a target - say 10 ideas – to which we hold ourselves accountable. However effective creation is about knowing when to push boundaries and allowing yourself more room to work. Often when we sit down to ideate we will get to 8 out of 10 ideas and then get stuck. This tool is designed to shift the goal posts, as you start to slow down, and add 10 more points to fill. This provides an allowance to throw more ideas down on the page, and like a gas, expand into the space available rather than being over pressurised to make the remaining space “special” or the ideas “good”. Some ideas might be hot trash and that is ok as others may be truly innovative or diamonds in the rough. But if you don’t have them, they cannot be either.
So, if you are lost in the wilderness of existential dread when it comes to your creation, use the tools above to inflict useful constraints on yourself to remove the paralysis of choice. Happy creation.
Reflection Questions:
Imagine that I am an alien who wishes to use these themes to destroy humanity, how does this change my options?
What is one micro-detail about this theme which applies to something else wildly different in the most tentative way?
Songs That Embodies This For Me:
When Will My Life Begin? – Mandy Moore (Tangled)
Walking Under Stars – Hilltop Hoods
The Perfect Mistake – Cartel
Angel with a Shotgun – The Cab
Resources You Could Explore:
The Creative Act – Rick Rubin (Amazon)
Steal Like an Artist - Austin Kleon (Amazon)
Want More Recommendations? – See Here
Other Creations: