I’m going to try and stretch this thought of rules sparking creativity into a couple of blog posts of how this is done in different industries but let’s start with a simple visual of what I mean.
The only way a home run is a home run in baseball is because there is a defined guideline that tells you if the ball goes passed this line it’s a home run. The baseball player who goes and plays a quick game at the park where no lines are defined and no umpire there to call the strikes/outs cannot feel the joy of actually hitting a home run. The rules in an official baseball game establish boundaries and goals to be met in this case a home run and when this is accomplished, a feeling of joy comes over the player.
The same thing for creativity and the rules that different tools set. You can think of the different mediums that can be used to create stuff. There are physical mediums like paint, wood, fiberglass, clay, etc — and then there are digital mediums like photoshop, illustrator, Final Cut Pro, audio recording software. All these mediums have rules so they can accomplish their purpose and these rules limit the capability unless one gets creative.
That’s the thought I will unpack in the next series. Rules/limitations/guides all spark creativity because you have to figure it out within the rules in order to want to break them to create something. Have you ever used the tip of a kitchen knife to unscrew a screw on something because you didn’t have a screwdriver at hand when you needed one? I know I have and this is how the rule/limitation of a knife to be meant to cut can then be broken by us making use of it as a screwdriver. Those limitations led to creativity.