045: Creative Constraint

Did you know that putting constraints in place can actually boost your creativity? It’s true!
In this episode, I talk about what creative constraints are and how I use these to aid in my own creative endeavors.
I chat about how you can set up constraints in a way that reinforces positive actions and the correlation between focus, constraints and creativity.
What you’ll find in this episode:
A segment on our creative community
What creative constraints are
How constraints can be a positive thing for you
What constraints I’ve set up for myself
How focus and constraints aid in creativity
Read the transcript of the episode below:
Do you ever feel overwhelmed with too many options, too much to do, and too little time? This is episode 45: Creative Constraint.
Welcome to the Committed to Create Podcast. I'm Lisa Funk and I am so excited to hang out with you here as we talk about the power of creating with our hands and our minds. I like to keep it real, remind you that you are not alone and share specific ways that creativity and mindfulness can help us live even more meaningful and joyful lives. I am so glad that you're here.
Hello, my friend. And welcome back to the podcast today. We're talking about constraint and how helpful it can be. So this is going to be a really good episode, and this is something I actually think about quite a bit, and I hope that it's really helpful for you. 
Before we get started, I wanted to have a segment called our creative community.
So yesterday I had the opportunity to do something totally new for me, which was a styled photo shoot. And I've had a lot of questions about what exactly is this and why are you choosing to do it? And so I thought I would just share a little bit more behind the scenes about what it is and why I'm doing it.
So I have just loved interacting with all of you so much on Instagram, through our newsletter, if you don't already get our newsletter, right now, it is just the best because sometimes you don't necessarily get on social media. You don't see what's being shared there. And so the newsletter comes straight to your email and it's got tutorials in there. It's got some tips from the podcast or it'll share some things that you might've missed and it's just full of value that's going to help you with your lettering. It's going to help you keep your mindset clear and it's an awesome way to stay connected, as a side note. But I love connecting with all of you so much and seeing your lettering journeys and your mindfulness journeys and hearing how it's impacting you.
And I want to start sharing more of you with our community, and I am so excited about it. This is so much bigger than me and my experience. This is about you. And so for this photo shoot, I wanted to bring some of you in to be a part of it and to just start showcasing more of our community and involving and including everyone.
And it was so much fun. I brought all of our lettering supplies to have them be a part of it. I brought a bunch of fruit and some treats to have kind of just like a lettering brunch together. And we took photos and laughed and had so much fun. So I hired an incredible photographer local here in Arizona who really specializes in product photography and it was just a blast. So I'm really excited to share more of those photos with you. 
And I'm also excited to hear more about your journey with lettering, with mindful lettering. So I want you to be on the lookout because we are going to be asking you if you would be willing to share some of your personal experiences.
Anyway, we just had such a fun time yesterday and it was new for me. I was a little stressed. I'm not going to lie, getting everything together and coordinating and setting up, but it was so much fun to do. And when we were all done, I was exhausted, but in the best way. So anyway, get excited to see some of that and also to be a part of sharing more of what our community is creating.
All right. So now we are getting into the main topic for today's episode, which is creative constraint. This is something that I think about a lot that has really helped me. And I hope that it might be helpful for you too. 
So a constraint is basically a limitation or a restriction. And I think in my life, there are certain constraints that happen naturally for me, such as constrained amounts of time or constrained amounts of money or constrained amounts of space. Now of course we could talk about: oh, but there's always options for more and we can always change our time. Yes, of course. But I think naturally in our lives we have kind of some constraints that just happen without us thinking too much about it or deciding on those constraints intentionally. And then there are other times where we can put constraints on ourselves so we can create additional constraints. 
And you might be thinking, I don't like the idea of constraints. This doesn't sound good to me. I don't know why you want to do this, and I'm going to turn off the podcast now, but stick with it. Because I think there might be something of value here for all of us. 
I personally believe that constraint can help us in so many ways. I think it can simplify our lives. I think it can increase our creativity, our problem solving skills. And our output because so many of us feel overwhelmed. We feel like we don't have enough time. We've got so many things we want to do and not the time to do it. We've got kids, we've got work, we've got home, we've got family. Besides the interest that we might want to pursue. It feels like a lot. And having constraints has really helped me. 
One constraint that I want to talk about right now is time. And I want to talk about how that constraint has actually really helped my productivity. 
So I have decided that I love being home with my toddler. He just turned three and I'm with him most of the time. I'm with him most of the time during the day. And I choose to not work during that time. And so I have created my own constraints around the time when I am going to work.
And that work might be recording for the podcast, creating lettering tutorials, creating lettering designs, writing emails, things like that. And so I choose to do those things during the times when my toddler is at playgroup, or if he's having an outing with dad, my husband takes them on an outing one morning, a week, which is so fun. They're at the river right now, while I'm recording this. Sometimes he gets to go to grandma and grandpa's house and there are these times where I have a short period and I have a fair amount to do. And if I had all the time in the world, I would take forever to say, record a podcast. If I was doing that, I would say, huh, I wonder how long it's going to take me to record the podcast.
I would spend a lot of time researching a lot of time writing, rewriting, getting the outline. Maybe I would even write it word for word. You've probably figured out by now that I do not write it word for word, this is very much conversational and that's the way that I like it. But if I had all the time in the world, I might do it differently.
And instead I know that I have a constrained amount of time, and I get so much done during this time, because I know that it's limited. And so another reason why I'm able to be so productive during these short hours that I have given myself to work is because I get down to business. I know there's no time to lolly gag.
There is no time for distractions. I can't have my phone on, I can't be checking emails. I can't be checking social media. I can't stop to organize my closet on the way through my bedroom. I can't do any of those things. I've got to get down to business. And also it helps me because I cannot be a perfectionist when I only have a short amount of time to get something done.
I know I'm going to work hard. I'm going to do my best and whatever comes out at the end of it is going to be great and I'm not going to nitpick. I'm not going to throw it away. I would never come out with anything. If I had decided that it needed to be perfect, I have to just create things and let it go.
And sometimes there's some noise in the background and sometimes I stumble over my words and sometimes there's a typo in the book that I publish and produce. And that's OK. And I do try to go back and fix those things when it's on typo in a book. But if I were to wait and wait and wait and take forever, I wouldn't create as much as I do because I give myself these constraints.
So even though it might seem like constraints are challenging and could stifle creativity, I believe that they can do the opposite because I only say to myself, all right, you know what? I've got 30 minutes to prepare for the podcast. And then I'm going to give myself 45 minutes to record. And then it's time to pick up my toddler from play school. It's time, I got to go. And that really helps me to focus. And once I get that focus, my creativity does flow. I have to direct it. And I think that it is amazing. And honestly, I really believe that I've been able to create what I have in my business because of the constraints that I've given myself. I think that if I had all the time in the world, I may have floundered a little bit. I may have gotten off track or given myself too much time to create something. Now that may not be true. And some of you may be very efficient, no matter how much time you have. And I think that that's amazing. For me and for my personality. The, this has been helpful. 
Now, am I really actually talking about business and productivity inside of a business? No, this is just one example of how constraint can help us get anything done. Think about when you say all right, I've got 15 minutes and I'm going to get this laundry done and put away. I've got this much time and I'm going to set a timer and figure out how clean I can get this kitchen or I have to make it to this place and this place in this place before I need to pick up so-and-so. Anytime we give ourselves some constraints, I think that our brains go to work and we can find that we're more productive sometimes. But I just want you to think about where's an area in your life where time is constrained and that you might be able to use it to your advantage.
Oftentimes we use it as an excuse. Like I just don't have a lot of time. It's like, okay, what if you can say, you know what? Let's use this as a creative problem solving opportunity and say, I don't have a full hour to spend doing a new painting project or doing lettering, but I do have 15 minutes. At this time of day and how can I use that to my advantage?
Can I get my watercolors and have them ready and set out? And can I do some practice shapes once a day and get that muscle memory going? You know, how can we use our time constraints to our advantage? Use that time to really focus. 
When we give our brain a problem and we ask our brain a question has good answers. So we don't want to ask our brain questions like, how come I never have enough time? Our brain will be like, well, because this and this and this, but if we ask our brain, okay, how can I fit this in? How can I make this work? What pocket of time do I have during the day that I could start writing that book that I want to write, or that I could start learning more about writing poetry or fill in the blank?
You've got ideas. You have an inkling, you've seen something and thought that kind of looks fun. That kind of seems interesting. Where in my day could I figure this out? Could it be while I'm waiting at my son's practice and maybe I just have my headphones in listening to a book or a podcast, teaching me more about doing this thing that I'm interested in. But we can ask ourselves good questions about using the constraints that we have to our advantage. 
Another way that I want to talk about how constraints can be helpful is when we constrain our focus. So I know that I can get really overwhelmed really easily with too many ideas at once trying to tackle too many things at the same time. And for this example, I want to talk about my house. So we moved into our house about nine and a half years ago or so. And in that time I've done a little bit of decorating, but not a lot. And there are several rooms that I've always wanted to actually decorate. And I just always was thinking about all of them and I might start with one room and then I think about another room.
And then I think about another and it was always just kind of the whole house. And I had a friend, my friend Ann Cropper, who came to visit and she's super good at interior design. And I thought I should ask her about this front room and my family room and my, you know, all of these different spaces and she, like many other experts, was like, you need to do one room at a time.  That is going to help you so much. You've got to just focus on one space at a time. And I just was like, ah, but I that's so hard to do. I want to focus on everything and if I'm buying one lamp, then maybe I can just buy lamps for every room.
No. Cause, you know, what would happen is I would start thinking about all of those things I would get so overwhelmed and then I would do nothing for years.
Some of you can not relate to this. Some of you are really good at just getting it done. I just would think and think, and think, and then get overwhelmed and then not do anything. So she helped me, having a friend, an expert, is really helpful sometimes, but she helped me with my front room. She said, okay, let's get a plant for, you know, this spot and let's get a lamp that can, you know, shine on for your piano music. And let's get this other kind of stuff for your coffee table and just a few little things that I wanted to kind of spruce up that room, some art for the wall. And it just was like, oh my gosh, when I just focused and constrained my attention to one space, I was able to get so much more done and I actually did things and purchased things and found things and was able to make progress.
So as I have continued to want to decorate different rooms in my house, I have still found myself falling into that trap of wanting to do it all at once. And I can't, I have to really try to focus on one room at a time or else I get too overwhelmed. Too sidetracked. And then I just kind of abandon it. 
So this might seem like a simple concept, but I find that it's very challenging in practice to actually pick one thing at a time. Like, can you constrain yourself to focus on one thing that you want to accomplish? Now, of course your life is still going to continue. You're still gonna find a way to eat and get dressed and get the things done that you need to, I'm not trying to say that you're going to ignore every single thing, and this is all you're going to do. It is more a matter of focusing your brain when it comes to this project. And I imagine it like turning down the volume on all the other things that you're interested in doing eventually so that you can hear that one priority, that you're going to start with that first thing that you're going to do, because our brains are like small children. They love to get off topic. 
I remember teaching a group of small kids, and you know how cute they are. I've taught art masterpiece for years at my kid's school, and it's so much fun and you're in there and you're talking about this artist and their life. And next thing you know, someone raises their hand, and they want to tell you about their pet bunny at home. It's so cute, of course, but our brains try to do this too. Our brains like to get distracted. And when we're trying to focus on one thing, our brains are like, oh, but what about this? And what about this? And what about this? And why don't we? And we have to learn how to gently bring it back to being on topic and just like we do when we're teaching little kids, it's like, okay, that's great. And now we're coming back. 
And I find that when I focus my brain on one thing at a time that it really eliminates a lot of decision fatigue and gives me more energy to what I want to do. It clears my mind. I imagine it like running in a lane, you are going to get so much farther. If you stay in your lane than if you start meandering off the path and you start going back and forth and circling around trees on the side of the road, it's like, we're going to stay in the lane.
We're going to stay in the lane and we're going to make so much more progress because we're not wondering if we should be stopping and running in circles, which is what happens when we are so distracted and overwhelmed that we don't move forward. 
So there are other ways that I find I can focus or constrain decisions that helps me to eliminate decision fatigue.
One of those things is shopping at a certain store. We've decided to do grocery delivery and every Sunday, I typically make a list, make the meal plan for the week, get the groceries into the grocery app and get the groceries delivered. And it's amazing because I'm not thinking, should I go to this store or this store or this store? And when should I go and what should I do? And should I make a list before I go, or should I decide when I get there? It's so much more mental energy. When I'm trying to make all these decisions and believe me, I lived a lot of my life where I just didn't have a system, didn't have constraint around how I did that.
And believe me, there's still a lot of other areas of my life where I have not constrained. And it still feels a little bit overwhelming. I think about Steve jobs and how he wore the same outfit every day. I mean, I'm sure he had multiple pairs of jeans and multiple black turtlenecks, but he wore the similar outfit every single day so that he didn't have to think about what he was going to wear.
And I know a lot of people that will shop at the same store. And they have found that the clothes there fit them well, and they like the selection. And so they aren't going to a million different places and it just helps them to simplify their life. 
For us, one thing that has really helped to simplify our life is having kind of a repeatable meal plan where we repeat similar meals every week and sometimes we'll switch them up, but often we'll do some type of pasta and then some type of tacos and then burgers and then maybe chicken and vegetables. And then every Friday night is pizza night. We make homemade pizza every once in a while, if we don't feel like doing homemade, we'll order it, but we do pizza and movie night on Friday, and then we generally have a fun meal out on Saturday. Then a home cooked meal Sunday. So we have kind of these ideas of how, what meals we have. And so when I'm going to create my grocery list, I know what recipes my kids like, and eat, and what's fun for me. And of course I can mix it up. Of course I can add something new in, but I have a baseline. I have some kind of constraint just to help me to make decisions so that I'm not completely overwhelmed, opening up every single cookbook that I have feeling like I'm starting from scratch all the time. And so a lot of my grocery orders have similar items in them. And my little app reminds me of maybe this is something you normally get and do you want to get this again? So having some constraints around different systems in our life can really help us to focus and to eliminate that decision fatigue.
I mean, when you think about buying a big purchase, like a car, can you imagine if you're like, I don't know. I think any car could be good. I don't have any idea if I want a small car or a big car, or what color of car or any of the features that I want the car to have. It would be such a huge range of makes and models and colors and features. And it could take a really long time to figure out what car you wanted to buy. 
It helps so much when we give ourselves constraints. I know that I need it to fit this many people. I know that I want this powerful of an engine, or I want to be able to tow something or I want it to be small to parallel park easily, or whatever your constraints might be.
And then think about once you make a big purchase or a big decision in your life, that huge relief that comes that you are not going to spend all of your free hours researching and searching high and low to get the perfect thing. You have it. You're done. It might not be perfect, but you've made your choice and you have so much time back.
I always think that like, oh my gosh, I'm so glad we just decided, because now I have so much time back. So giving ourselves some constraints can help us to make decisions more quickly and give us more time back in our life. 
So I want to talk about this in regard to creativity. If you said to yourself, I just want to be creative. I want a creative outlet. It could be any medium, any time. Man, that's going to be really hard to narrow down and to actually make that happen. I believe that it helps us to have constraints so that we don't get overwhelmed by all of it. That is the beauty of the Daily Mindful Lettering books. That's why I created them. Because people would get so overwhelmed by, which thing do I do? And how long should I do it for, and what pen do I need? It's like, no, here we go. You do this much a day. It's a short amount. You can totally manage it. These are the pens you need. The pens are going to come with the book. There's a video that shows you exactly what to do. You constrain yourself so that you actually will make something happen. 
When I don't constrain things, I often feel like I'm floundering. I think about if you wanted to start taking more pictures and learning about photography, join a photography challenge that helps you give you ideas of what to take pictures up today. You're going to go outside and take a picture of a flower. The next day. You're going to take a picture of your breakfast, whatever. Maybe one day you take a picture on the hour, every hour, wherever you are to kind of document a day in the life. 
Having constraints can help us to be more creative too. If someone asked you to make a sculpture, you know, who knows what you would pick to create a sculpture out of, but if someone said here's a milk carton and some masking tape and an exacto knife, create a sculpture, then your brain is going to get to work and think, huh, I've got masking tape and a milk carton. What could I make out of this? And your brain is able to focus. And I believe that it helps our creativity. Oftentimes because of that focus. 
The other reason why I think that focus can help our creativity is because it gives us the opportunity to go through the full cycle of learning. When we have so many options and we might try a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and we're kind of scattered, instead of saying, you know what? I am going to focus on learning lettering, which means I'm going to go through the discomfort of having the shaky strokes and not exactly knowing every single thing about it, but I'm going to keep learning and keep trying and keep going through it. And because of that focus, we're able to practice and make progress and improve. And enjoy it more because we have focused. 
For example, for me, I love lettering. I love teaching lettering and I have niched down. I don't teach every single thing about lettering. I don't show everyone how to make signs with vinyl and your Cricut and silhouette. And I could. I do sometimes make those things. And I'm not saying I couldn't do that or that I couldn't teach people how to, you know, become a wedding calligrapher or there's so many things I could explore so many roads I could go down with lettering.
And if one of those roads sounds really interesting to you, I just think you should go down it. I am not here to say like, everyone just needs to use lettering in this one way. This is just the way that speaks to me. This is the way that I love to teach it, that I love to encourage people to let terin, even if it isn't perfect, and to enjoy it just for the process.
And as I have constrained myself to this niche within lettering, I have found so many ways to be creative. And it's helped me so much. So that relates to cooking dinner. If I just have a few certain ingredients, it's like, okay, how can I use these ingredients to make something as opposed to all the ingredients in the world sometimes feels overwhelming.
You know, we use iPhones. I don't think iPhones are necessarily better than any other phone. I've learned how to use an iPhone. I stick with the iPhone and that works for me. Instead of every time I'm going to get a new phone thinking, huh? Let me go out and look at all of the different phones out there. And let me switch every time and look at all the different brands. And if you have a brand that you want. I think that's amazing. And again, I don't think that any brand is necessarily better than any other. You might, but for me, it's just constraining so that I can focus and use my time and energy wisely.
I think about this with some people on Instagram that I follow. Chris loves Julia, she just talked about how, when she first started doing home decor, which is what they do, interior design, she had $25 a month that they had budgeted when they were just first married that she could spend on design and decorating their home.
And she said she got so creative with that $25 and she would go thrifting and she would try to find things that were free and she would repurpose. And she learned how to DIY and that constraint of the $25 helped her creativity and helped her productivity. And it helped her to, you know, make certain decisions instead of saying, oh, you have all the money in the world, and all the time in the world. We can either have our natural constraints that are just kind of naturally occurring in our life. Or we can put additional constraints in order to help us focus and to simplify. 
So I just want to encourage you to look at your life and say, how can I use constraints to be more creative? To simplify things, to make my life easier? And maybe that's deciding that you're going to just wear Birkenstocks because Birkenstocks are so comfortable and you're just going to wear them every day and then they're gonna wear out and then you're going to buy a new pair. Is that just me? That's just what I do. I just wear pretty much the same shoes and it works for me and I love it. And it's great. So that's what I do. When it's cold, I, you know, find some other shoes to wear. But the point is: simplify. Focus. If it serves you. This is of course, as always with every podcast episode, take what serves you all leave what doesn't, but I do believe the constraint can help our creativity.
Thank you so much for being here. I hope you enjoyed my podcast last week with my daughter. If you haven't listened to it, we got so much great feedback on that episode. It was so fun to do. She actually talked about creative constraints in that episode, where she talked about how it can really help your kids to be more creative when you give them constraints and say, here's this and this and this, what can you create with it?
Because when they are just given every single option in the world, It's hard to make decisions. It's hard to narrow things down. So she was adding to this podcast before she even knew, she doesn't even know that this is the topic for this podcast this week. So, she's a genius and it was so fun to record that with her.
And I hope that you will check out Daily Mindful Lettering if you haven't yet. It's a great way to create some constraints for yourself as you look for a creative hobby, something just for you every day. I just heard from someone in my DMS on Instagram that said that they're loving it so much that they now do it instead of even watching a show at night, which of course you can watch a show at the same time if you wanted to. But I thought, well, that is high praise for some people. And she had said that she had gotten a different course and some other supplies earlier, but it just felt so overwhelming, that having Daily Mindful Lettering helped her to focus on one thing at a time and constrain it to just a couple of pages of practice each day and how helpful that was. And that is just a testament to this concept of creative constraint. 
All right my friends, thank you for being here. Thank you for your reviews of the podcast. Thank you for sharing the podcast. And I hope that you will check some of this out. I will put links to everything I mentioned in the show notes.
I'm so glad that you're here and I can't wait to talk to you again next week.
Links:
Daily Mindful Lettering Volume 2
044: Like Mother, Like Daughter
Ready for a fun activity to feel less stress? Come get our FREE Guide - 5 Creative Steps to Less Stress & More Joy while it's still available: http://CommittedtoCreate.com/lessstress
I hope that my podcast has left you feeling inspired and excited to create the life that you want. If you’ve enjoyed listening to this podcast, I’d love for you to subscribe so you can continue to hear more. Want to get to know me better? Connect with me on my website or on Instagram to keep up with everything that is going on with me and my business.
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Jennifer L. IN LOVE!! What a perfect idea! I am a plant mama too, like Lisa. I also manage a great deal of anxiety. I got into lettering a couple years ago as a creative outlet and discovered a multitude of treasures in the lettering community! This book that Lisa created with her daughter is just perfection! It's all the feels for me! Thank you both!!!
Cinthanie C. EXCELLENT BOOK! I really enjoy taking a minute each day to slow down and apply my hand to something that is not only emotionally supportive but relaxing and fun to do!! The mantras for everyday are very helpful for me. Thank you for your work and bringing such a high quality product into my life!
Daily Mindful Lettering Kit: Live With Love

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045: Creative Constraint

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046: Removing the Pressure

044: Like Mother, Like Daughter
