I crave freedom! I want the freedom to be who I am without judgement, and I want creative freedom.

At the same time, I’m intimidated by the wide open expanse of absolute freedom. I find that it’s much easier to achieve a goal—creative or personal, big or small—if there are a few constraints to reconcile. I see constraints as creative catalysts rather than barriers.

Think about a simple task like planning dinner. If you walk into a grocery store hungry and tired, the options can seem overwhelming and shapeless. Compare that to when you have a few ingredients you know you want to use. The ideas start to flow when you’ve narrowed down the possibilities and focused your attention.

Design is all about having a set of clearly defined constraints, and then trying to make the most within those boundaries.

I’ve trained myself to thrive on this rhythm in all aspects of my life: define a problem, consider the requirements and then GO! Without this jumping off point, it’s easy to flounder. To never start that creative project. To dabble. To freak out. To waste time. To fail.

Limitations can be opportunities. They help focus your energy on the meat of the goal.

Here are some limitations that often get a bad rap. These don’t have to hold you back. In fact, they can set you free.

Limits on your time
I hate deadlines as much as the next person, but I absolutely need them. If I had limitless time to complete a project, I would start by executing a few decent ideas, and then I would second guess and rework. I would scrap my halfway decent ideas in favor of something that’s more muddled, and then I would overthink some more.

Most deadlines don’t allow for infinite noodling, so they save you from the self-doubt vortex. Just get the damn thing out the door, get feedback, and then move on. Time crunches help you to make decisions faster, and they force you to be more efficient.

Limited resources
Some of my favorite design projects are pulled off on a very small budget. Budget constraints often evolve into interesting creative challenges. For instance, if you can only afford to print a brochure in one color, you’re forced to push the boundaries of contrast, value and layout in new ways.

In a larger sense, the need to make money can be a huge burden on our creative spirits. However, needing to get a day job can also help focus your career. I knew that I wanted to run my own business, but coming out of grad school, I had no idea where to begin. If money were no object, I might have attempted to start my own business straight out of school, and that surely would have become a dark period of aimlessness and anxiety. I needed the structure of a day job to teach me the practical aspects of designing for clients, working with other people and all sorts of other practical skills. Necessity drove me to my day job, but it ultimately empowered me to build what I truly wanted.

Limited attention from people
Most people don’t have the attention span to casually process complicated messages. This can be frustrating when you’re trying to engage people on a deeper level. But again, this doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

Knowing that you need to limit your communication to one or two simple ideas means you don’t have to spend time trying to write or visualize everything that’s in your head. Figure out the one thing you want to say and use that as your starting point as well as your guiding constraint throughout the process. Don’t kill yourself trying to generate a work of unique genius. Just start. Once you get cooking, the work will naturally build up into a more layered and nuanced communication. But since you’ll have already hooked people with your one clearly defined thought, people will be more receptive to supporting details and added complexity. In other words, people’s distractedness is your opportunity for artful brevity.

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Next time you’re feeling bogged down by a deadline, breathe a sigh of relief that the pressure won’t last forever. At least you don’t have time to overthink. Or, if you’re feeling stressed about your busy schedule, identify how the limitations of each day motivate you to truly focus.

Ask yourself, if I didn’t have this constraint, would the outcome really be any better?
Just remember that a few limitations are sometimes the real thing we need to actually get stuff done.

xo
Rebecca

Photo: Sonja Langford