Limitations Foster Creativity
Friction is not always a foe. It can also be a friend so much that many creators create artificial boundaries for themselves as productivity hacks.
Quotes like “limitations foster creativity” are leitmotifs among those who have to deal with the fear of a blank canvas. Friction is not always a foe. It can also be a friend so much that many creators create artificial boundaries for themselves as productivity hacks.
, the author of “Antinet Zettelkasten: A Knowledge System That Will Turn You Into a Prolific Reader, Researcher and Writer”1, works exclusively in a classic, analogue, pen and paper-based Zettelkasten-powered office and swears by it. He loves slowing down, cutting out his paper slips, writing bibliography references in a proper Chicago Manual of Style with a ruler, flipping through the slip-box, and accidentally stumbling upon something relevant while looking for another specific note. “Books simply write themselves. The system just works.” His words.Neil Gaiman always writes his first book drafts by hand with a fountain pen and a satisfying exotic notebook that has a history to it. This roundabout “slows down” the process by a significant margin. It forces him to think twice before committing exclusive bottled ink to luxury paper with his trusty Pilot Custom 823 like people used to do in the era of typewriters. It also seems to be flavouring his novels with a distinct twentieth-century tone he’s after—his second draft results from transferring this manuscript while transforming it.
The prolific Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami also wrote a few memoirs in which he mentions his debut, where the first thing he did was to invest in high-quality paper and a beautiful Sailor fountain pen. He wanted to feel like a writer. Although guitars do not make Jimmy Hendrix sound like one, owning a white Stratocaster will have a psychological effect whose power shouldn’t be underestimated.
Cal Newport’s expensive lab notebook is another example of a creativity boost you can achieve by raising the stakes. The story goes that, one day, Cal bought a lab notebook worth between 50 and 70 dollars. The relatively high price point is mainly justified by the fact that those are built like tanks because they’re to be stored and consulted for decades. Cal attests that higher stakes made his writing uncharacteristically legible and calligraphic. He would think twice before committing ink to this notebook’s high-quality paper, much like Neil Gaiman with his rare exotic ones. However, the most important part of Professor Newport’s effort of keeping this lab notebook like an ancient monk would be that, years later, he decided to revisit this notebook to find out how many of its notes resulted in books or published academic papers. He counted a whooping 7 or 8 entries. In academia, such a ratio of innovative ideas worth publishing to notebook pages is more than respectful.
Many radio hosts started their podcasts when they became a trend. However, their performance in those would differ significantly from the one on the official radio. The effect of a studio full of professional audio gear, an air-tight script and a crew of sound engineers makes you behave very differently. Some will find it paralysing, and some will redouble their effort, working much harder under pressure. Have you ever noticed how your personality would sometimes change when you’re around a person you find attractive and would want to get intimate with? Guys become noticeably more stupid, and girls start laughing at substandard jokes that’d make them raise the palm of their hand if the guy wasn’t hot.
Cal’s book “Slow Productivity”2 is a tribute to the idea of doing fewer things and doing them slower. It’s truffled with examples of famous thinkers’ successful applications of this approach. Although this is easier said than done in a modern productivity-obsessed world, I’ve always resonated with the idea of getting fewer things done but being proud of them for their completion without turning into a never-delivering perfectionist. It’s tough, but it proved to be worth it repeatedly.
Another way to limit yourself in fostering creativity is to maintain the so-called one-idea-notebook. Unlike your catch-all notebook, which you’d carry everywhere, one-idea-notebooks are meant to be dedicated to a single object of thought. As a result, these are primarily field notes, small pocket-size notebooks you’ll grab with you on a long thinking journey and will discard once you’ve shaped this idea in its final destination, such as a book chapter in your word editor. Some argue that delimiting the scope of the information that can find its way into such a notebook is what they need to get the creative juices flowing.
Scope-narrowing is a frequent topic when creatives give productivity advice. After initially succeeding in forcing himself to think about only one particular subject for a dedicated period and capturing these thoughts in the one-idea notebook, the abovementioned Cal Newport said he’d invest in a pile of field notes mini-notebooks dedicated exclusively to this kind of scope-narrowing exercise from now on.
Similarly, Neil Gaiman’s hack to overcoming writer’s block is showing up at his writing spot, desk, or coffee shop and allowing himself to do nothing or write. His way of lowering the stakes is to make a deal with himself of not allowing himself to sit and not write completely unpunished. However, when he says “nothing”, he means it. You’re not allowed to read, doomscroll, listen to music, call or do anything that requires consumption of brain power. In other words, the most intellectually stimulating thing you can do is stare at a blank wall. This emptiness and absence of external stimulation is often what our brains need to start thinking of something. That something turns out to be worth committing to paper more often than not. And, as Neil says, at some point, you just can’t help but start writing, either because an interesting idea sparked or because you’re plain bored. Most of us feel unease in a total absence of intellectual stimulation, so writing almost always proves to be more attractive than remaining brain-dead.
So, narrowing the scope of your work’s focus and raising the stakes appear to be potent creativity-inducing hacks.
Since investing in high-grade gear is more about motivation that sparks joy to create rather than impacting creativity directly, it applies to non-creative aspects of life just as well.
In one of “Real Men Real Style” show episodes, the host, Antonio Centeno, explains how investing in high-quality athletic apparel motivates his son to train like a genuine athlete. This mindset, obviously, positively impacts his athletic performance. I’ve read a story in a book on mastery and sportsmanship (I wouldn’t be able to dig out the citation anymore) that some coaches were taking their teams on regular shopping sprees at Nike. They wanted team members to immerse themselves fully in that performance mindset. Nike certainly knows how to set up the necessary decor in their shops.
Besides the good ol’ pen and paper, countless distraction-free writing devices are available on specialised markets. They imitate old-school typewriters and feature small or e-ink screens and bulky and loud mechanical keys. Although it might appear gimmicky to some, their very existence proves the presence of a niche market for such objects and validates the demand.
Can you relate to feeling the extra motivation to hit the gym after splurging on new athletic apparel? Do you want to sit down and write simply using that favourite fountain pen loaded with exotic bottled ink to write on silky-smooth Midori paper? Does it become a full-fledged writing session as you start moving the nib just for the sake of it?
Scheper, S. (2022). Antinet Zettelkasten: Uncovering the True Nature of the Notebox System That Will Turn You Into Research and Writing Machine.
Newport, C. (2024). Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. Random House.