Hence the title of this post, that con­straints lead to creativity.

Per­haps the best way to describe this (that I can think of) is to think of your­self lost in the woods. You need to build a shel­ter to stay in that night, and all you have with you is your clothes and a knife. Now I am sure that more than a few of you have seen the sur­vival shows, or built a fort when you were a kid. For those of you who have not, when it comes down to it you start to take branches and what­ever else lies around you to make some­thing that will work as a shelter.

In this exam­ple then, the con­straints are the mate­ri­als at hand to build a shel­ter. It is that very con­straint that caused you to be very cre­ative in how you came up with the solu­tion to build­ing your shel­ter. This does not always guar­an­tee a good shel­ter, or the best cre­ative thoughts in gen­eral, but it does get the cre­ative juices flowing.

I like to look at this as mak­ing do with the tools at hand. It has become appar­ent to me that a lot of peo­ple (myself included at times) push you to buy new things that will make you work better/faster/smarter. I can attest to the fact that often times mak­ing do with what you have will yield far bet­ter results than try­ing to get every­thing you want.

How are con­straints help­ing you to be more creative?

Related posts:

• Two Mon­i­tors for Productivity’s Sake
• Try­ing to Remem­ber Wastes Energy
• 2 Mobile Must Haves
• Clut­ter Dis­tracts. A Blank Page Inspires.
• Daily Rou­tines & Peak Pro­duc­tive Times