We often assume that creativity requires freedom. Remove the rules, open up the possibilities, and let students run with their ideas. But sometimes the opposite is true. The right constraints can give us a starting point, push us beyond the obvious, and lead to possibilities we might never have considered on our own. In this article, we’ll explore why constraints can fuel creativity and how we can use them intentionally in the classroom.

Listen to the Podcast

If you enjoy this blog but you’d like to listen to it on the go, just click on the audio below or subscribe via iTunes/Apple Podcasts (ideal for iOS users) or Spotify.

 

Think Inside the Box

We gather together for our team meeting. Though collectively we love our jobs, we aren’t feeling it on a Thursday morning that feels like should be a Friday. We’ve already learned that we won’t have a prep period and so our meeting is now compressed into less than half an hour. 

We ditch the agenda and I ask, “What do you want to talk about? 

Our language arts teacher chimes in, “What are you guys planning to do the week before winter break?” 

“Finals are pulled back a week and we can’t really teach new content,” our math teacher mentions. “I get it. Lots of the kids will be gone but that week is going to be rough. I was thinking maybe some review games. I don’t want to watch holiday movies.”

I nod. “I might do like a mini-project. Maybe a Wonder Day project. Some maker challenges. Or maybe a debate.” 

Our language arts teacher chimes in. “I had an idea. But I’m not sure if it will even work. What if we did an interdisciplinary project? We could combine standards we already covered and do something for a full week.” 

Our science teacher nods. “It would be a mini-project but we’d be expanding it over all the grade levels so it would really be like a full project.” 

We do a rapid-fire brainstorm. It will be a global collaborative project where our students interact with students in Hong Kong and Colombia. They will engage in a service learning element where they explore an issue in their community, find a potential solution, do some service, and ultimately pitch their ideas in a Shark Tank style pitch at the end. 

The project shouldn’t work. We have two weeks to plan this one week project (which we actually extend to six school days). Our students will be doing global collaboration in different time zones with students who have significant cultural differences. We don’t know which students will be traveling. We have limited resources and, as hard as we tried to get the Community Needs Assessment component to be during the school day, we can’t get the permission to leave the confines of the school. This project should be a disaster. 

But it’s not. 

The cultural differences are significant but they actually allow for new perspectives and many of our students (who are English Learners) bond with the students in Hong Kong and Colombia around learning a new language. The timezone differences push us to explore asynchronous tools. Our lack of resources combined with the time crunch push our students to solve problems on the fly and engage in rapid prototyping. Our final Shark Tank style pitches aren’t fancy. Many of their videos have editing mistakes. However, at the end of the year, this turns out to be the overwhelmingly most popular project. It is deeply creative and relevant to our students’ lives. 

That same year, I did a Genius Hour project modeled after Google’s 20% time concept. My students would have a blank canvas. They could pursue their own learning every Friday. They’d choose the topics, the learning outcomes, the resources, and the ultimate final mode of expression. I’d give a loose timeline but they would own every aspect of the project management process. My students loved this project on week one. They grew more distracted and frustrated on week two. By week three, most of the class spent the period chattering about sports and fashion and who was dating while a small minority finished their homework from another class. 

So what happened? Why was the first project a success while the second project was an epic failure? 

The Challenge of the Blank Canvas

Remove the rules. Eliminate the restrictions. Give people unlimited choices and see what they create. But total freedom rarely results in big creative breakthroughs. 

Imagine telling students, “Write anything you want.” That sounds incredibly freeing. You would think students would jump at the opportunity of a free write. But it’s not so simple. Students now have to decide on a genre, topic, audience, purpose, length, tone, structure, and starting point. Every possibility remains available, which means nothing is directing their attention toward one possibility rather than another.

This is the challenge of the blank canvas. Too many possibilities create choice fatigue. When students have complete freedom on a creative work, they often spend their energy choosing among possibilities rather than developing one truly creative idea.  “Make something” is actually a much more complicated task than “Build the tallest structure you can using twenty straws and a foot of tape.”

We often get frozen when faced with too many choices. Case in point. The other day, my son forgot his deodorant and asked me to buy him a new stick of Old Spice. No problem, right? Well . . . it turns out that there are four rows of Old Spice in varying levels of deodorant and antiperspirant. None of them tell you the scent, either. They’re all named after abstract ideas. Apparently, you’re supposed to just go by vibes. I stood there overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices they provided. Similarly, my Genius Hour project failed because my students were stuck in this initial phase of wading through an insurmountable number of options. 

But let’s imagine that they get past the initial choice phase. Here, they face a new challenge. Without constraints, they’ll tend to choose the familiar routes.  When the easiest solution remains available, why wouldn’t we take it? If I tell students to “make a presentation,” many will make the presentation they’ve made twenty times before. A constraint can remove the obvious route. Now they have to search farther for a solution.

Don’t get me wrong. Constraints create their own set of challenges. Too many constraints can push people to give up. They are often initially frustrating. I’ve never faced a road closure and thought, “Thanks for this constraint. I get the chance to learn a new route.” And yet, constraints give us something to push against. 

Contraints guide push us into unfamiliar routes by their very specificity. “Design a chair” is abstract. “Design a chair for a kindergarten classroom that can be stored in a space six inches wide and will accommodate the needs of Autistic students” immediately generates questions. Could it fold? Stack? Hang? Collapse? Could it be something other than a conventional chair? Narrowing the problem can actually expand the number of interesting solutions we notice.

 

Why Constraints Work

1. Constraints give us a starting point. The blank canvas becomes less intimidating when we have a set of guardrails that function as a starting place.  They remove the obvious solutions and give us something specific to work with. 

2. Constraints push us past the obvious. When the easiest solution isn’t available, we have to search for alternatives. We tend to go with the easiest route as our default. When faced with limited materials or options, constraints push us to think more divergently about our creative approaches.

3. Constraints focus our attention. We spend less cognitive energy deciding what kind of problem we’re solving and more energy actually solving it. As we engage in problem-solving, we also slow down. We second-guess ourselves and find approaches we hadn’t considered before.

 

Working Within the Limits

Constraints aren’t all the same. Sometimes we lack money. Sometimes time. Sometimes choices. Other times, we are stuck with contextual factors like physical space. Each type of constraint changes the initial creative challenge but it also creates hidden opportunities that allow for deeper creative breakthroughs. 

 

Material Constraints

Material constraints show up when we lack the resources (money, tools, supplies) to create what we originally imagined. Consider filmmaking. When the mechanical shark in Jaws repeatedly broke down, Steven Spielberg couldn’t show the main antagonist as often as he had hoped. But this detour from the obvious meant he had to rely on music, point-of-view shots, and the suspenseful suggestion of something beneath the water. 

Halloween had such a limited budget that the crew relied on simple locations, minimal effects, and a cheap modified mask to create Michael Myers based on a Captain Kirk mask. It’s no surprise that the horror genre has been able to explore controversial topics with thought-provoking visual formats. The smaller budget allows and limited resources and reduce the pressure (which can lead to risk aversion) while also pushing divergent thinking with the decision making. 

But we see this process at work in other genres as well. Rocky and Mad Max similarly turned tiny budgets into stripped-down visual styles that became part of their realistic vibe. Kevin Smith took this even further with Clerks. He filmed almost all of the movie at the convenience store where he actually worked by shooting at night when the store was closed. Because the shutters had to remain down, he simply created an ongoing gag about broken shutters. In each case, the creators couldn’t simply buy their way out of the problem. They had to ask a more creative question: What can we make with what we actually have?

I noticed a similar trend when I taught middle school. Some of our best projects involved upcycled materials. Even when we had a studio, I often wanted shots filmed with a smart phone because it pushed divergent thinking. Similarly, the lack of options inherent in most low-tech tools pushed my students to be more creative in their prototyping (see this blog post for more). And yet, I felt the pressure to make sure we were actually using our most expensive technology tools. 

We can incorporate material constraints in small ways. Instead of giving students access to an entire supply closet for a design challenge, we might give each group cardboard, tape, string, and five craft sticks. Instead of letting students choose from every digital tool available, we might ask them to create something using only paper and markers. 

These limitations force students to look more closely at what they already have and imagine new possibilities for ordinary materials. The goal isn’t to make the task unnecessarily difficult or to withhold resources students genuinely need. It’s to create just enough scarcity that students have to improvise, adapt, and ask, “What else could I do with this?”

 

Time Constraints 

Google Ventures uses Design Sprints, where teams deliberately compress the early creative process into just five days. Instead of spending weeks debating possibilities, they define the problem in a rapid-fire process, generate multiple ideas, choose a direction, then build a rough prototype at breakneck speed. They then test it with actual users and make quick revisions. The goal isn’t to create a finished product in five days. It’s to make something quickly enough that you can see what works and what doesn’t. From there, the process slows down. Teams gather feedback, make revisions, and continue testing new iterations. In other words, the tight deadline isn’t about finishing faster. It’s about learning faster.

We see this deliberate use of time constraints in all kinds of industries. Coders do this with hackathons. Writers have done this with first draft time constraints including the popular NaNoWriMo where they write an entire novel in the month of November. Indie filmmakers have done projects where they create an entire movie in twenty-four hours and musicians have done single day sessions where they record an entire album in essentially one take. 

Time constraints force us to move beyond our first idea. When the clock is ticking, we don’t have the luxury of spending twenty minutes perfecting a single possibility. We have to generate options quickly, try different directions, and see what sticks. This is why a ten-minute brainstorm can sometimes produce more interesting possibilities than an open-ended assignment to “come up with your best idea.” The deadline creates urgency, and that urgency shifts the goal from finding the right idea to generating many possible ideas. This urgency leads to action and the action can create momentum. The goal isn’t quality so much as quantity (something we’ll explore in our next blog post). 

Time constraints can also quiet the inner critic that so often gets in the way of creativity. When we have unlimited time, it’s easy to second-guess our ideas. We start editing while we’re still creating. And even though we have all the time in the world, we actually abandon great ideas before we’ve had a chance to see where it might lead. A short deadline forces us to keep moving. We make quicker decisions, take more creative risks, and put imperfect ideas out into the world.  

As educators, we can use these same time constraints when doing short design sprints before larger PBL units. So, if students are going to be designing an inclusive playground, you can give them the chance to do a one or two day rapid prototyping activity to build the playground and get tons of ideas out from the outset before moving a slower, more methodical approach. We can also do quick writes where students don’t plan or edit their writing. We can do rapid problem-solving where students have to find multiple ways to solve a math problem in a limited time.

These sprint activities work best when the assignment is either ungraded or when students have the opportunity to revise it later. I’ve had students do rapid sketching for sketch notes with the reminder that “nobody will see this.” 

 

Format Constraints

I recently visited a LEGO store and felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of sets I wanted to buy. But if we go one layer lower, we’ll notice that underneath all of the variety is a tight format constraint. LEGO bricks are actually fairly limited. They come in specific sizes and shapes that have to work within a tight ecosystem. And yet, those limitations have led to an almost endless variety of creations. 

This became even more important once LEGO’s original patent on its stud-and-tube brick system expired and competitors could make compatible bricks. LEGO could no longer depend on the brick itself to set the company apart. Instead, they pivoted to more elaborate sets and storytelling (eventually tying in to licensed products). The basic format remained remarkably constrained, but what they could create within that format kept expanding.

LEGO takes advantage of what we call a format constraint. The internet runs on similar constraints but so do sonnets and haikus. Old video game designers had to find creative ways to add sounds and pixelated characters given the memory and video constraints at the time. 

Some of the most successful Broadway shows incorporated format constraints into their creative design as well. A Chorus Line stripped away elaborate sets and scenery, relying on a mostly bare stage where the dancers and their stories became the spectacle. Hamilton used the lyrical density of rap to pack an enormous amount of history and backstory into a relatively short runtime. Come From Away kept a small cast that openly switched between dozens of characters using simple changes in posture, accent, and costume rather than trying to hide the transitions. In each case, these format constraints led to new innovations that felt fresh at the time. 

Most of us incorporate elements of formatting constraints into our teaching on a regular basis. Follow the structure of a story (such as Freytag’s pyramid) when writing a narrative. Use the constraints of a topic sentence, details, and transition words linking them.

But we can also use these constraints in surprising ways. We might have students write a story using only dialogue, or revise a paragraph without adding any new words. We might ask students to do a summary of a plot but then explain how the book changes if we move the setting to an arctic tundra. In history, we might have students make an argument about a historical event using only four primary sources provided by the teacher. In math, you might require students to solve a problem using an approach they haven’t used before or ask them to see if they can solve a two step equation in a limited number of steps. 

 

The Goldilocks Problem

I love watching the Food Network show Chopped! Okay, I don’t actually love it in the moment. It often makes my pulse pound as the expert chefs race through the insurmountable challenge of crafting a main dish in a matter of minutes all while being forced to incorporate ingredients like pig bladder or caramelized seaweed. Still, I love this show because the constraints push the contestants to craft recipes they would never even fathom on their own. 

However, if you watch the show enough, you’ll notice a trend. These expert chefs make ridiculous mistakes. The time pressure and lack of incubation period means they generate great ideas but they forget to season a steak. They leave a tray of veggies in the broiler. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a chef accidentally cut themselves. In other words, the constraints become too much and the net result is that these expert chefs make some boneheaded mistakes in the moment. 

If I could redesign Chopped! I would add a new layer much closer to what you see in a show like America’s Test Kitchen. On that show, they engage in tons of tiny experiments as a collaborative group. Through multiple iterations, they land on a nearly perfect dish that they share with the audience.

So, you go with a rapid prototype full of constraints that pushes divergent thinking but then you could take a full week as a team and let the chefs develop ideal recipes. They could still compete against one another but they would prepare their new dishes for a different set of judges and essentially have two winners per episode. 

This fast and then slow approach might not make for exciting Food Network tv but it’s actually more accurate for how creative constraints work. This is where we run into what I think of as the Goldilocks Principle of creative constraints. Too few constraints and we face the blank canvas. Too many constraints can overwhelm us and we make dumb mistakes.

The goal isn’t maximum freedom or maximum constraint. It’s finding that space where the constraints are tight enough to push us beyond the obvious but loose enough to leave room for experimentation.

But there’s another layer to the Goldilocks Principle. The ideal level of constraint can change throughout the creative process. Sometimes we need a tight constraint for a short burst of divergent thinking. Give me twenty minutes. Give me five materials. Make me incorporate pig bladder and caramelized seaweed. The pressure forces me to stop overthinking and start making. 

But that doesn’t mean the entire creative process should happen at that pace. Often, the rapid burst is preceded by a slower period of incubation. We step away. We let ideas sit. Then we run with it. Or we might have a short, intense burst of creativity followed by the longer work of testing, revising, breaking things apart, and putting them back together.

In other words, creativity is often a dance between tight and loose constraints. We might generate an idea quickly and revise it slowly. We might work intensely and then walk away. We might impose a strict deadline on a first draft and give ourselves weeks to make that draft better. 

We see this same pattern in many of the creative breakthroughs that seem remarkably fast. Jack Kerouac famously produced the scroll draft of On the Road in about three weeks, but those weeks were preceded by years of travel, note-taking, experimentation, and earlier attempts at the novel. The draft itself would then go through years of revision before publication. 

The Beatles did something similar with the Get Back sessions. They gave themselves a matter of weeks to write, rehearse, and perform new music. The result was the famous rooftop concert delivered in less than ideal London weather. But that creative sprint rested on years of playing together. Besides, the songs continued to evolve afterward.

We even see this pattern built intentionally into processes like Google’s rapid prototyping design sprints. The initial sprint is fast and cheap. Limited resources and one week to create their design. But the prototype isn’t the finished product. It creates something they can test and revise. If it’s working, they’ll devote millions of dollars into slower, more calculated research and development. 

 

Why This Matters

As a volunteer Mock Trial coach, I have seen how apprehensive students feel about the future. Will AI replace my job? Will my degree still be useful? They are entering a world with huge challenges and so many constraints. This is why I’m skeptical with anyone who labels this generation as coddled, entitled, or overly anxious. They are stepping into a complex world filled with limitations. 

But that’s also why we need to use creative constraints in our everyday practice as a small form of routine creativity.