along the same lines, i discovered this great little zine (http://www.littleelegy.com) that specializes in “tiny lit” - short stories in 100 words or less.

I love quotes (good ones, of course, present wisdom in few words). This one both embodies the sentiment in this post and follows the character limit rule:

“If you can’t write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don’t have a clear idea.” - David Belasco

When he was creating the default sound effects for some version of Windows or other, he was enthralled by the constraints of trying to produce interesting music in sub 10 second bites.

As the other commenters have noted, there are a lot of great examples of how creative folks use constraints to enhance rather than hinder creativity. The mainly French writing group Oulipo takes this writing with constraints thing to outlandish extremes. A famous example is George Perec’s A Void, a 300 page novel that’s written entirely without the letter E. You can look them up on the wikipedia for more info of course, but I would like to point out one quote:

The group defines the term ‘littérature potentielle’ as (rough translation): “the seeking of new structures and patterns which may be used by writers in any way they enjoy”.

What I love about this is the idea of constraints as enjoyable tools.

JA famously described her novels as: “the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour.”

Nuff said.

Constraints on your physical surroundings works wonders also. I once moved from Seattle to Aberdeen, Washington (a depressed logging town on the Washington coast) for this exact reason. I needed to clear some headspace, so I moved to Aberdeen without a vehicle (almost unheard of - this is logger country) and rented a basement apartment. Other events in my life at the time made it not such a good decision, but creatively the results were astounding. I felt so much more free - to write, create, everything. Everything felt new in that new context. I found Seattle (and other cities with large amounts of creative people) creatively stifling.

Since the Aberdeen days, I moved back to Seattle and got married. After a year in the city, my wife and I escaped again - this time to Vashon Island - a little island a 20 minute ferry ride from Seattle and Tacoma in the Puget Sound. Having the physical constraints of a ferry schedule have been great for me. My money, time and attention are now more focused, without all the glittery distraction-filled lights of the city. It’s helped me focus inward and on my marriage and goals.

So the idea of constraints can be used in my contexts.

a whole universe of whisdom in 3 pictures and a few words.

Back in the days of mainframes & line printers, I had to write copy for the donation receipts for a nonprofit. Each week I had to come up with a new way to say thanks in a fixed space: a maximum of 9 lines of 54 characters each. I hated that task at the time, but I realize now that it forced me to be very creative and succinct.

For me, if I have a presentation due or some sort of quarterly report I force myself to use the simplest tool I can find. That usually is the app Textedit. It forces me to strip away all the fancy document options and focus on what matters. The message.

I’ve used twitter to help constrain thesis sentences, requests, and “short emails” to both professors and friends. Albeit the twoosh was with editing, it really is a great way to help you be more concise. Also for emails the “five sentences” rule (think I saw it here on 43F?) really helped me. Got to be a five sentence ninja!!! Check it out here: http://five.sentenc.es/

A kind of life-hackerish constraint is to use the computer with only the keyboard, no mouse. I did this on windows many years ago and learned learned a lot about application design and the tab key. Haven’t tried it in OS X yet, but I’m sure it’d be a fun experiment.

I love…

…forcing myself to hammer out my 750-word acting columns in an hour. Good exercise for me, the wordy procrastinator, and makes me feel better about doing it for such a ridiculously low sum.

…doing speeches at Toastmasters b/c they’re total time nerds. Great practice.

…the audio version of Twitter constraints, Jott. Plus the amazing transcriptions that come back, no matter how slowly I speak into the phone.

…coming up with the sidebar items for my newsletter, my media recos of the month. It’s fun trying to be pithy and persuasive.

I did not much like writing TV and radio commercials, but I have to say, it was great training, learning to write in :30 and :60 (or even :10 and :15) increments.

I thrive on time constraints. If I’m bogged at work, I’ll set a time widget for 12 minutes and see how much I can get done in that time. Knowing my time is finite (even if self-imposed) makes me work very efficiently for some reason.

I infected myself with a desire to write 50 posts of exactly 100 words in 50 (consecutive) days. My source was Blue Girl, and there are a couple of us out here now doing this thing. Nobody is forcing us. I like that.

I edit video commercials all day. Talk about a creative constraint… If you have to tell the whole story or evoke an action in :15 seconds - that’s a challenge. I am always amazed how effective it can sometimes be, and how often it fails.

With web video, my clients are going back to the days of the Shell Oil and Palm Olive long-form video ads. When airtime is cheep, things tend to go VERY long.

It’s the age-old argument of whether a long form sales pitch is better than a short-form one. The answer? The people who will buy are the people who will read (watch) as much as you give them.

It seems like a lot of posts focus on using time as a creative constraint. I’m not trying to get down on the lot of you, but I thought it relevant to point out that time is a constraint for practically everybody: it is the universal constraint. While I don’t doubt the utility of forcibly increasing the constraint of time to cause efficiency, I do wonder whether the ubiquity of time constraint lessens its ability to boost creativity. After all, we all deal with this issue all of the time.

While Merlin writes “As Paul shows, constraints get you thinking about the creative process in a whole new way”, I’m now wondering whether time, as a constraint, really is a tool for creativity; perhaps it is just a tool for efficiency. Sorry, I was trying to avoid the semantic debate - but there it is: is efficiency a medium for displaying creativity? What new can we glean from dealing with time constraints?

Here’s my revised question for this topic, then: what are the most novel constraints that you use to boost creativity? Which constraints (like writing without the letter “e”) do you do on a whim, for no logical reason at all? These seem (to me) like more useful tools for increasing “creative” output.

I think it depends on how well you use time. As Communicatrix said, when you have 1 minute to deliver 5 minutes worth of speech, you’re going to get creative. Whether or not it’s internally or externally imposed, a distinct time frame will force a person to do things he might not even have thought possible. That’s the way I use it, and I’ve found it especially helpful with creative projects that don’t seem to be going anywhere. “All right. You’ve got 12 minutes. Go!” Then whatever happens, happens. Often, though, I’m not displeased with the results.

I’m talking here mostly as a writer. As a design professional, I think other constraints work well. Size is a great restraint—canvas size, for example. If you have to paint on 6” * 6” canvases, that’s going to force you to do things. Or let’s say you decide to give yourself a constraint in photography and spend the next week photographing only things that primarily yellow (I’ve done it, with mixed results). These are good constraints for the visual artist. But writing? Be it nonfiction, fiction, or even code—that deadline can do amazing things to the mind.

When I wrote copy for an online electronics retailer, we had to provide the copy to the Webmasters in Excel spreadsheets with specs like "Between 70-80 characters" or "40 characters with spaces". So we got good at writing things like...

Sound you can Feel.* 180w of power, 5-band EQ and MP3 input jacks let you take your tunes anywhere. $199.95 after rebates.

I constrain my photography as such: One rangefinder camera. One lens, 50mm prime. Black and White 35mm film. No flash. No cropping. Besides photographing socially, I constrain myself to street photography.

Sometimes I use color film. Rarely, I crop. That’s about it.

If you can be funny within the constraints of SMS, ladies will find you charming. It’s a proven fact. With that said, they may be disappointed with your non-brief (or briefless, for that matter) encounters.