Creativity is novelty constrained
American Psychological Association defines creativity as “coming up with something which is novel and is perceived useful”.
Now, you can come up with things that are novel but not perceived as useful, then it’s not creative. For eg., you can come up with a random tune that most likely is novel but not necessarily music and hence is not creative.
If you think about creativity from this perspective, creativity has a constraint i.e. to be useful or at least perceived to be useful. You can’t really separate creativity and constraints. They are two sides of the same coin
HIstory of creativity
Now, if you look back at the history of creativity from this lens, you will find ample examples of constraints fuelling creativity:
Technology: TikTok fuelled a new wave of creativity by forcing people to create 10-second videos, Twitter with 140 characters, Instagram with square pictures, so on and so forth.
Sports: What makes a sport fun are the constraints they have: Example, put a ball in specified spot to score (Soccer), hit a certain thing above a certain height but not far enough (Tennis) etc
Music: Capella is a popular form of music where the constrain is to perform without any musical instrument
Arts: Examples like a particular statue being carved out of a single stone. In India during Ganesh Puja or Durga Puja, you can come across many examples of statues being created out a single item (almonds, cashews, chocolates etc)
I can go and on. The point is, there is no creativity without constraint.
So what?
Once I came across this realization, I have started to appreciate the constraints coming my way whether it be at work, or at home. Now, I think of constraints as an opportunity to be creative and no longer dread them. This has been magical to my thinking and I hope it does the same magic to your thought process as well.
[Edit: Found this HBR article on same topic which is worth a read]
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