Good Idea! Now find a better one.

If someone tells you that you can’t do something, that you’re not allowed, or it’s not possible, what is your reaction?

Have they given you a Constraint or a Limitation? And what’s the difference?

Both constraints and limitations are boundaries on what you can do. But depending on how you think, one will condemn you to do less and one will enable you to do more.

I Can’t

What does it mean when you say “I can’t.”? It means you’ve made a decision; a decision to take no further action. There’s nothing to be done. I can’t.

This is where “limitation” brings you. It says what you can’t do. It’s gaze is on the other side of the boundary and all the things over there that you can’t do, that you can’t have, that you can’t be.

It’s the opposite of focus! It’s like Barry Bonds standing at home plate thinking to himself, “I can’t hit a 700 foot home run. I’m not strong enough. You can’t do it with a wooden bat - you’d need a metal bat. Man, I can’t even hit an 800, 900 or a 1000 foot home run!”

Focus Through Constraints

Think in terms of limitations and suddenly focus is gone. You’re spread out across all that you can’t do. Thinking about what you can’t do is a waste of time.

But with a constraint, you’re aware of the boundary and you simply focus on an objective inside that boundary. The boundary hasn’t limited you, it has helped you focus. It eliminated a whole swath of choices and decisions for you to make.

Examples

A limitation example from TechCrunch on the release of the iPhone API:

Perhaps future versions of the iPhone, with additional CPU and memory resources, won’t have this limitation. But for now, whole classes of applications are useless, or are significantly less useful than they otherwise would be.

The focus is on what can’t be done.

Consider this post from 37Signals on creating webapps for the iPhone:

As I was working on some UI ideas, Ryan and I were talking about some of really cool things about designing for the iPhone…I remarked that I loved the constraints…It’s a return to the power of text, shape, color, and basic HTML.

The constraints of a small device used as motivation for innovation.

Hank Williams devotes quite a bit of thought to what he can’t do with a product he doesn’t intend to use (the iPhone):

Lets look at some of the specifics of what kind of limitations the “no background apps” policy really imposes…[920 words of what you can’t do follows]

So much time and thought dedicated to the 800 foot home run.

Andy Rutledge’s perspective as a designer:

Constraints are a designer’s best friend. They’re signposts, not shackles. In a sense, constraints amount to the solution half-built. It is merely up to us to then realize the other half according to what these signposts indicate is appropriate.

It is helpful to know what you can build. Why waste effort on what can’t be built?

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey back in May 2007:

We’re fond of constraints that inspire creativity. Constraints inspire us in how we approach the press, how we approach business relationships, how we do everything.

Constraints require creativity.

Merlin Mann: Creative Constraints: Going to Jail to Get Free:

Twitter’s making me a stronger writer. I think harder about how to say more using fewer and shorter words. Nothing beats hitting the Twoosh.

Really it all comes back to control. You talk in terms of limitations when someone or something that you don’t control, does what you don’t want. You look at what you can’t do as a conspiracy to make you impotent, instead of the reality: You control very little.

But when You focus and when you use, and even look for, constraints to help you focus, creativity, ingenuity, innovation and genius spring forth.

Ignore limitations. Feed on Constraints.

Update:

37signals put up some great links on contraints. Choosing to constrain yourself, to do less, to work with less, requires you to be more creative.