Welcome to Day 2 of the Creativity Challenge. Yesterday, we talked about how you can practice being creative, and noted that small, creative tasks are like stretches for your brain.
Today, we’re going to throw in some resistance bands.
If you think of creativity as a freewheeling and boundless activity, adding rules may seem counterintuitive. But research shows that blank canvases (whether they’re literal or figurative) can actually hinder creativity by allowing your thoughts to drift to the most familiar and least original places.
By comparison, “constraints force us to move away from what is obvious,” said Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, a senior research scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the author of “The Creativity Choice.” “They help us put our creative energy to productive use.”
Think about improv comedy: Actors often create a scene based on a word or phrase shouted from the audience. My friend Jane Borden, an author and former improv performer, explained how that bit enhances the creativity of the cast.
“The one-word suggestion gives you a small stretch of railroad track, and then you race to develop ideas around it,” she said. “Having no track can actually stymie the whole process, because your mind is weighing options and listening to doubts.”
Constraints can come in other forms, though. Dr. Seuss famously used just 50 different words to write “Green Eggs and Ham.” James C. Kaufman, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut who teaches creativity, has his students compose a short story without using the letter E. You could impose constraints on everyday tasks, too: Plan a week’s worth of dinners — no pasta allowed.
Research shows that the boost in creative thinking that comes from working within constraints lasts even once you complete the task. As you’ll find with all of this week’s activities, creative warm-ups can have lingering effects.
