In Praise Of Constraints
Some love for limitations + what I'm into this week
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Limitations Create Possibility
When I narrowed the scope of what is possible, I found more possibility.
A paradox perhaps, but true. Trying to keep all paths open, to never choose, to have it all is what prevents growth, creativity, and clarity.
When I work with founders and teams on sales strategy, we often have a little tussle about audience focus. The founder believes that their widget can help anyone. This widget is the best widget, and everyone needs this widget. That may be true, but the Anyone Widget is much less clear and compelling than the Very Specific Widget. The widget is not Amazon, which is is worth noting started as a Very Specific Widget itself.1 This is some business 101 stuff: speak to a specific audience, solve their specific problem, offer them a specific solution.
And the pushback from the widget-maker is usually rooted in fear: what if I lose a potential customer because I’m talking to Very Specific Widget Users rather than Any Widget Users?
And sure, that’s a risk. The FOMO of the path not taken.
Just like choosing to marry one person generally means you’re going to miss out on marrying another—at least for the moment.
Or focusing on a particular idea means you won’t be able to focus on another idea for a while.
Or moving to one place means you won’t move somewhere else.
There is an alternative: never choose. Keep it open, vague. Don’t marry,2 don’t focus on a specific career, don’t put down roots in a specific place, don’t narrow your customer target.
That’s fine. But it won’t inherently lead to freedom.
Freedom comes not from keeping options open, but from making a choice and knowing you can choose again.
I find myself deeply in love with limitations these days, especially when the whole world is available at the swipe of my thumb. How can one brain make sense of so much without some checks on the expansiveness of modernity? How can I possibly do anything when everything is available to me?
Not choosing and not limiting leads to overwhelm. Much like the founder trying to appeal to everyone—a strategy that puts you on the path of vague or overwrought marketing that has to hit every possible permutation of the human experience—trying to leave all options open prevents clear action.
You cannot make progress without limits as each step forward necessarily narrows the potential outcomes.
In Lydia Sandgren’s great book Collected Works, she writes:
After the next round, he admitted he’d thought she was joking when she said she only read German authors. Cecilia laughed out loud.
“But why only Germans?” demanded Martin, who didn’t quite get the joke.
“I needed a system. We moved back to Sweden when I was about to start upper secondary. I went to the public library and panicked. I think it was the first time I really grasped how much I didn’t know. Like, really didn’t have a clue about.” Cecilia leaned back in her chair and ran her hands through her hair. “I didn’t know where to start. At first, I figured I’d start at A and work my way through the alphabet, but that would have me reading fiction until I was fifty. So then I came up with the idea of doing it by country instead.”
If that isn’t the crux of it. We need a system to move through life, some way to tame the wilds of possibility. Religion, ethics, family pressures are all ways of doing this. We can also just do it for ourselves, following our own virtue rather than being told how to make these choices.
In this way we can have generative limitations. They can be purposeful or random, but they create boundaries within which we can explore. The language you use, the medium you work in, the media you engage with are all choices that frame what becomes possible for you.
My personal favorite (lol) constraint is being broke. I haven’t worked in a couple of months and that has encouraged me to limit my spending significantly. This creates a wealth of possibility! When my 1970s sewing machine broke (again), rather than take it to a repair person, I ordered the parts and figured out how to do the repairs myself from some truly terrible YouTube videos that showed about half of the actual process. The financial constraint forced me to learn something new, increasing my overall possibilities immensely.3 I can now repair a sewing machine!
You can purposefully create limitations, too. Maybe you:
choose to write by hand instead of on your computer or phone
only listen to records
walk or bike everywhere, no cars in town
work in an office or co-working space, sacrificing the convenience of home but opening the possibility of serendipitous encounters
stop work at 3pm every day to pick up your kids from school
watch DVDs (though it’s getting harder to find physical media)
use a completely different project management software (I did this recently and it has shifted my relationship to work and time!)
only cook, or never cook and use what would have been cooking time for something specific (may I suggest small appliance repair?)
What might these change about your day? About how you think? What you make?
Many of these ideas eschew convenience, that seductive solution to our problems. Convenience is sold to us as increasing possibility,4 but I’m not buying it. The available convenience relies on systems outside of our control that abuse workers, and preys on the same FOMO that founders feel when it comes to narrowing focus: that there is something (or someone) else better out there that we could be doing right now. In the time it took for me to fix that sewing machine, I could have…what? Made more money? Spent more money? Would that have increased possibility for me in the same way that active problem solving did?
Practice choosing something—anything—to change the parameters you’re engaging with. You can always choose again. But if you never choose at all, your possibilities will decay into regrets.
👀 The Hit List
What I’m into right now for the voyeurs, inspiration-seekers, and mimetic internet buds
Reading
I am about halfway through Collected Works by Lydia Sandgren5 and I think it might be my favorite book I’ve read in years. Definitely has some Knausgaard vibes but with an actual plot. Have any of you read it? I am still in the throws of fresh love and can’t see clearly enough to know why I’m so taken with it but it hits some of my favorite topics (writers, artists, La France), has a subtle mystery component, and is very long.
Friend of Think Piece and podcast guest Khe Hy was featured in the Wall Street Journal for his work on post-achievement professionals! A very cool article about moving beyond accomplishment as north star—thought it clearly helps to have some solid cash in the bank.
I recently finished Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovksy. The book has a very clever plot device and an interesting narrative constraint that I can’t share without spoilers, but I will say I started the book, was afraid that because of that device and that constraint it would be facile and stupid, and instead it was deeply moving, creative, and one of the most compelling books I’ve read in a long time. This is proper SciFi so if you don’t like that, not for you. I also recommend avoiding descriptions so you don’t hit spoilers; just dive in. I really enjoyed it, and there are two more in the series on my to-read list!
Listening
When I was a kid, I would ask my father what his favorite color was. Every time he would answer, “living color - oo!” This of course annoyed me to no end. Why can’t it just be blue, like my mom’s clear and consistent answer?!
But I loved listening to “What’s Your Favorite Color” with him anyway. I put on Living Colour’s debut Vivid this week. It’s still fantastic. The first song on the album, “Cult of Personality,” is always a good election year revisit. And the album reminds me of the time I saw them live at City Winery (?!?!?)6 in the 2010s and THEY WERE AMAZING. Vernon Reid truly one of the best guitarists of all time and Corey Glover sounded amazing and ran all over the tables like they weren’t playing the bougiest sit-down venue in Manhattan.
A couple of years ago, my father gave me his record collection. Paired with my husband’s, I now have access to a hefty set of records. I’m working on something bigger about physical objects, but for now will say that after many years of living in a house with a record player I finally started using it. I play records while cleaning, cooking, doing dishes. The limitation of playing what we have is surprisingly pleasing. It forces me to notice what I miss,7 and to explore what I don’t know. I’m also, as a child of the CD generation,8 hyperaware of the fact that you can’t just listen to a specific track. You can try to find it, but that’s messy. You listen to the album side by side. There is a constraint to the experience itself: you don’t get to choose. The artist—or the label—chose for you. And then, halfway through, you have to stop what you’re doing to flip it! Much like a physical book, you cannot escape interaction with the medium. You have to touch it, try not to get it dirty, store it properly, physically change it if you want to listen to something else. You can’t just let it run in the background, a passive soundtrack to life. It is life in that it requires your participation.
Doing
I sat outside of a coffee shop with a friend unbothered for two hours and then walked around a park and it was the best and it cost $5. Leave your house. Sit outside. Thank me later.
If I’ve mentioned this before ~apologies~ but if you live in a place with museums I strongly recommend getting a yearly pass. They’re usually available for the price of two visits, and now you can skip lines and get early access and generally have a place to go when you don’t know what to do and don’t want to spend money. I have a pass to MoMA and The Met9, and the reduced friction has made that my go-to “get out of the house” activity. Hop on the train, show up, look at stuff…pretty nice. Special shoutout to the MoMA garden which is a great place to hang out and read. Also, these places have bathrooms, and any NYer knows those are most important clubs to have access to.
What are you into right now? Favorite thing you read, ate, did this week? Comment and let us know! Be your own algorithm!
Amazon only sold books icymi
which is fine to be clear just using a common societal example! despite being married I have no attachment to the concept writ large lol
I often recommend the book The Art of Frugal Hedonism to folks who are either broke or are finding themselves overly attached to their money. It’s a sweet and easy read, full of ideas for engaging more actively in the world in a way where money is not the mediator of your experience. (On my most recent read I was struck by some fatphobia, a lot of “biking is great also it’ll help you stay trim!” so if that’s a no-go for you, don’t read.)
yes I used it as a reference above before finishing sue me
I also *checks notes* saw X (!!!) at City Winery in 2014. The booker there knew there was an audience of aging rockers (and me in my 20s) who wanted to sit and drink good booze during the show! The CBGB to City Winery pipeline.
somehow, despite it being a strong rotation in my childhood, there is no copy of The Stone Roses’ self-titled debut in my father’s collection?! I think that is my next purchase once I’m working again
though I did have some tapes, my first one notably being MC Hammer’s Please Hammer Don’t Hurt Them
technically my mother’s, don’t tell anyone. As a local I can get free-ish tickets but until recently you had to stand in line for them which was a deterrent. Now you can get them online which makes it easier!
I read recently, in 4000 Weeks, I think, that the word decide has the same roots at homicide, suicide etc. essentially making a decision means to kill off all other choices/opportunities. Which is not a bad thing. It makes us focus. The idea of this post right?