The Element of Constraints and its Hope for Focused Creativity

I meditate on asteya. Asteya is one of the yamas (ethical precepts) of yoga.

It means taking from the world only what you need -- without greed, excess or wastage.

I am far from where I want to be when it comes to asteya, but I get a little better every day.

Recently I spotted a can of beets and a can of pineapples in my kitchen cupboard. The cans had been sitting there forever.  I had picked them up and never gotten around to using them. They were a glaring example of not living by the principles of asteya.

But now I looked at the cans and decided “Enough is enough.  I need to use these cans and not let them lie around gathering dust anymore.”

Of course, there was the challenge of what to do with them.

I thought if I  opened the two cans and mixed the ingredients together - they might pair well. But the pairing needed something to make it work and taste good. 

That made me think about fruta picada – the Mexican street vendor snack they sell at the Beryessa Flea Market.  It is a mix of chopped fruit dusted with lime and chile.

“Fruit chaat, that’s it,” I thought, “All I need to do is add some chaat masala to the beets and the pineapple.” It worked.

This got me thinking about the avocados I had in the fridge.  “I wonder how they would taste with chaat masala,” I thought. I gave it a whirl. This was a successful experiment too.

Encouraged, I wondered what avocado pani puri might taste like.  I typed avocado pani puri into the Google search box.  Several recipes came up.  Avocado pani-puri turned out to be a great spin on pani-puri which is traditionally made with boiled potato and garbanzo beans.

Thanks to constraining myself to use up all the canned food I had at home, I experienced one culinary breakthrough after another.

Constraints lead to creative breakthroughs because they force us to think in new ways.

When you have to make do with what you have and nothing more, you find a way to make it work.

Whether our constraints are time constraints, resource constraints, information constraints, talent constraints, skill constraints or action constraints, when we have any of these constraints, our imagination and ingenuity is called into play.

Jonah Lehrer says: “The imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles.”

It was a constraint that led Archimedes to his famous principle which states: Any object, wholly or partially immersed in a fluid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object.

This is the story…..

King Hiero II gave some pure gold to a goldsmith and commissioned him to build a votive crown with it.  However, when the crown was delivered, the king thought it seemed a little light and suspected the goldsmith might have kept some of the gold for himself and substituted silver for it in the crown. He asked Archimedes if there was a way to confirm his suspicions. Archimedes’ constraint was he could not damage the crown. He would not be able to melt it down into a regular shaped body to calculate its density.

How Archimedes solved this is a classic example of how a constraint forces one to be creative.

While having a bath, Archimedes noticed that the level of the water in the bathtub rose as he got into it. Archimedes immediately understood that this effect could be used to determine the volume of the crown. All he had to do was submerge the crown in water. The crown would displace an amount of water equal to its volume. Then by dividing the mass of the crown by the volume of water it displaced, the density of the crown could be obtained. If cheaper and less dense metals had been used by the goldsmith, the density of the crown would be lower than the density of gold.

Archimedes was able to confirm the king’s suspicions.  The goldsmith had indeed been dishonest and substituted some of the gold with silver.

Any challenge is more intellectually stimulating when there’s a constraint.

Have you ever thought about why you like detective stories?

It’s because the detectives in these stories operate under extreme information constraints.

They typically have a big puzzle to solve and very little information to go on.

But by being observant and making deductions from every little scrap of information, they are able to piece together the solution to these big puzzles which are given to them.

Recently, I watched the pilot episode of Sherlock on Netflix. Throughout the episode, Sherlock deduces all sorts of things based on very little information.  In the episode, besides making several brilliant deductions about Watson, Sherlock has to uncover who or what is behind several happy people committing suicide by consuming the same pill. I won't tell you more.  Watch the episode if you get a chance.

Games and puzzles would be no fun without constraints. We either need the constraint of time, or the constraint of resources, or the constraint of action to get intellectually involved in a game.

In chess, each piece can move only in certain ways. This is the constraint.  As soon as people become good at chess, they set themselves a time constraint as well.

Time constraints force you to think fast.

Many games would be half the fun without the time constraint factor.

I think back to the days when I used to play Pictionary with my friends in Chennai. Half the fun was being under the gun to make your team guess the word before the sand ran out in the timer.

People who are fast at games can get exasperated by players who don't like to play with a time constraint.

My friend Mira was one of them.  Whenever I played Scrabble with her, she would go “hurry up, hurry, up, hurry up, you are taking so long.” My slowness was a drag to her.

Since I started playing Merriam Webster Scrabble Online, I am faster with my Scrabble moves.  Time is of the essence in playing Merriam Webster Scrabble Online, because your points really go down if you take too long on a move.

Information constraints are a major form of resource constraint.

When you invest in the stock market, for instance, there’s no way to know if the market will go up, down or sideways after you invest.  If you invest in individual stocks, it’s even worse.  You do not know how the company is being managed and if the forces of change are about to take that company down. You have to be able to act without this information.  What’s a person to do?

Faced with this constraint, I found my own creative answer – and it was Pascal's Wager.

Here is an explanation of Pascal’s Wager from Wikipedia:

Pascal's Wager is an argument in apologetic philosophy which was devised by the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician, and physicist Blaise Pascal (1623–1662). It posits that humans all bet with their lives either that God exists or does not exist. Given the possibility that God actually does exist and assuming the infinite gain or loss associated with belief in God or with unbelief, a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.).

I had an epiphany that Pascal's Wager could be applied to anything in life, even investing in the stock market. Because you don't know if the stock market will go up or down, given the possibility it could go up, a rational person should elect to have at least some money in the stock market.

If you are having a tough time making a decision because of information constraints, see if you can apply Pascal’s Wager to your decision like I did.

I owe the fact that I did not panic when the Dow went to 6000 in 2009 to the fact that I had already accepted the information constraint which characterizes the stock market and to the fact  I had found my own creative answer to it in Pascal’s Wager.

If Archimedes owed the Archimedes Principle to the constraint presented to him by the king’s votive crown, we will all have victories we owe to constraints.

The advertising campaign of my career was the result of a constraint. 

It was for a brand of condoms, and all the initial creative ideas were considered too risque or too tame. 

The challenge of coming up with the right campaign presented 2 constraints. The first constraint was how to achieve excitement without crudeness or offensiveness.  The second constraint was how to develop on an already existing idea of associating different colors with different days of the week -  an idea which the account manager thought had potential, but just needed to be creatively reworked.   It was these 2 constraints which led to the development of the final campaign, a huge and instant hit. 

If you want people to think creatively, set them constraints. Tina Seelig regularly does this in her entrepreneurship classes at Stanford.  In one class, she divides her students into teams and gives them five dollars of seed funding in an envelope.  They are given any amount of time to plan what they are going to do with the money, but once they open the envelope, they have two hours to generate as much money as possible. This constraint forces the students to be creative with the limited time and money they are given. If you read her book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, you can find out how inventive people can be under these constraints. One team generated $650 in 2 hours.

Seelig says: “Workers are puzzle builders, they get stuck when missing a piece. Whereas creative people are quilt makers — they can fit anything together.”

Indeed, the number one thing which was required from me back when I was a copywriter was to be able to quilt things together.

If we are not able to perform within constraints, we can be disqualified in some circumstances.

Athletes have to compete with the constraint of not taking any performance enhancing drugs, otherwise they will be disqualified.

When you play statue, you are constrained to not move. The minute you move, you are out of the game.

When I was in Toastmasters, sticking to the time limit for a speech was one of the constraints. 

You could not be more than half a minute under the stated time limit for the speech, or go more than half a minute over the stated time limit for the speech. 

If you were participating in a Toastmaster contest, you would be immediately disqualified if you were over or under time. 

I had to learn to speak within the allotted time, before I was able to participate in, and win the Toastmaster contest I told you about in my post How I Lost a Grand on Donuts.

Constraints lead us to cut out fluff.

When I developed my money workshop for the students of Bertha Taylor Elementary, I set myself the challenge of avoiding technology and sticking to just pen and paper.  My goal was to create a workshop I could administer virtually anywhere – even around a table in someone’s backyard; thanks to creating the workshop with these constraints, I was able to deliver it to my friend Sharon's children in just such a setting – someone’s backyard.

We should embrace the opportunity for constraints and turn them to action. Whenever we are given a constraint, our first thought may be, “it's impossible” “can’t do it with that kind of budget”, “can’t do it in that time”

We should replace these thoughts with “How can we achieve this?”

The Tata Nano is a result of a constraint.  The inventors set themselves the challenge of creating a car that would cost just $2000 dollars. Of course they had to think very differently in order to do that, which is why they had to model it more on a helicopter than a car.

The Jaipur foot is the result of a constraint. The inventors set themselves out to design an affordable prosthetic. The Jaipur foot costs only $45 to make and is fitted on 16,000 people across the globe every year.

The book Green Eggs and Ham was also the result of a constraint. Dr. Seuss was challenged to come up with a book using only 50 different words. Green Eggs and Ham was the result.

The above examples, all very different, explain the amazing things that can happen when you have a constraint.

Constraints are not just a passport to originality, but often a key to progress.

  

Producing under constraints leads people to break with tradition and prejudice.  For instance, until World War 2, American women were prohibited by law to work after they got married.  However, when World War 2 started, and there was an acute labor shortage, since so many men were off fighting, and extra hands were needed to produce arms and ammunition, the American government relaxed the law about married women working. Large numbers of married women joined the American workforce for the first time, and the path was set for the eventual freedom of women, single or married, to be able to work.

So how do you become more comfortable with constraints?

Be open to making decisions in spite of them.

Welcome the opportunity to make decisions with any kind of constraint - Incomplete information.Time constraints. Resource constraints. Skill constraints. Talent constraints. Action constraints.

Thrill to the challenge of doing more with less.

Get intrigued by the idea of solving puzzles with little to go on.

Trust that you will find the answer.

Hopefully, when you do, you won’t be in a bath-tub like Archimedes.

Why?

You don’t want to be running naked in the streets shouting “Eureka”, now do you?

As always, thanks for reading and have a great day and week….M….a Pearl Seeker like you.  Thanks to Goldwire Ananda, Ajay and Rosie for their comments on Facebook on my last post The Element of Everyday Miracles and Its Hope for Reveling in the Mystery of Life.  And thanks to all the rest of you for your votes.

The Element of Everyday Miracles and Its Hope for Reveling In the Mysteries of Life

The Rocks from Galilee - they were a gift to Mary's Mom from her Grandpa; Mary's Mom in turn gifted it to her.

The other day, I was sitting in a conference room with Mary and a Varicent developer.

Mary is on the commission team at the company where I am currently on assignment.

Tasked with documenting the commission processes at this company, I was entering notes in Microsoft One Notes about the different sales incentives paid out by the company, and the data sources for each of them.

“What can you tell me about the SPIFFs, Mary?” I said, “How often do you pay SPIFFs and who gives you that information?”

Mary replied: “Strange you ask. Piper just sent me an email asking me about this month's SPIFFS as well.”

Piper is Mary’s boss and I have to work closely with both him and Mary.

 “It's telepathy”, I said. 

Both Mary and the developer stopped what they were doing and looked at me.

When someone says something like that, there usually is more to come.

“I have had several amazing coincidences in which telepathy had to be involved” I said.  “Do you want to hear my story about the 3 benches?”

“Yes,” said Mary, lighting up, “I have had some amazing coincidences happen to me as well.  You tell us your story about the 3 benches first and then I will tell you both about my pebbles story.”

So I told them about the time I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea for a story about 3 benches and what I discovered later on.

“That’s amazing,” said Mary, “now I will tell you my story”

Mary’s Story

Mary was a member of a Bible Study Group. 

Then she decided to take a break.   

After about a year, she felt she should start going to Bible Study again.

But she wanted to find a new Bible Study Group and was unsure about how to go about finding this new Bible Study Group.

Around that time, she visited her mom. Mary’s mom surprised Mary by giving her a velvet box which contained some pebbles and a note.

“This is from the Holy Land and it is over 50 years old” said Mary’s mom.  “Your grandpa gave it to me. He brought it back from his visit to the Holy Land. The stones are from Galilee where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount as it says on the note.  I would like for you to have it.”

Mary knew she would treasure the box for life.  It contained, besides the stones, a hand-written note from Mary’s grandpa, which read: “These rocks are from the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus spoke to the multitude. The Sermon on the Mount from the mouth of Jesus.”

The next Sunday Mary was attending Sunday service when she happened to glance through the church bulletin.  Suddenly, the following words caught her eye in the events section of the bulletin:

 “Women Only Bible Study Group meets every Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the church hall. Topic this week:  Sermon on the Mount.”

Mary felt the hair rising on her hand.  She thought about her mom’s gift to her and her grandpa’s words and knew her search for a new Bible Study Group had ended. The answer was staring at her in these words in the bulletin. She would go to this new Bible Study Group and study the Sermon on the Mount with them.

On Tuesday Mary went to the church hall at the appointed time. 

“What can we do for you?” asked the group of elderly women she saw before her.

“I have come to join your Bible Study group and to study the Sermon on the Mount with you” Mary answered. 

“This is amazing,” said one of them, “We have been praying non-stop for someone new and young to join our group, and here you are. But do tell us, how did you find out about our group and what made you to decide to join us?”

So Mary told them the story of the stones from Galilee from her grandpa and his note about the Sermon on the Mount, and about reading in the church bulletin about the Sermon on the Mount being the topic for this week for the Bible Study group.

The ladies were perplexed, “But the Sermon on the Mount is not the topic of the week. You must have read wrong.”

Mary had brought her church bulletin. “I am confused,” she said, “this is what my bulletin said.” She showed them her bulletin.

As it turned out, the Sermon on the Mount was a misprint. The bulletin had been reprinted with the correct information. Everyone in the group had the corrected copy. Everyone save Mary. Her copy still had the topic listed as the Sermon on the Mount.

Call it a miraculous misprint - Mary would be the only one to get a copy of the bulletin with this misprint - a misprint with so much personal meaning for her; and this misprint would bring her to this Bible Study Group where they had been praying for someone like her to come along.

A miracle on all sides.

Mary's miracle got me thinking about how in each of our lives, there are miracles that are uniquely ours, miracles that are precious, important and personal, miracles no one else can claim.

But we will see them as such, only when we are transformed, when we have moved to a different level of being and have become open to the idea of miracles.

Getting my first job in advertising was a miracle.

So was getting my first break as a commissions analyst.

And my first break as an SPM consultant. 

Do you sometimes wonder why someone else lands a role or a job you feel you can perform better than they do?

I often do.

The answer is the miracle that got them that role or job was meant for them and is uniquely theirs.

Albert Einstein said,“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” 

When you join the camp of those who think everything is a miracle, you revel in every small stroke of luck, every little chance happening that saves the day.

Here's a small miracle that happened to me recently...

The Vacation Fish Feeder 

Recently Tanita and I had to go out of town.

In the days leading up to our trip, I worried about the 3 members of our family who would be left behind.....

Our 3 goldfish...

Who would feed them?

The last time we went out of town, my friend Becky was living in our apartments. I gave her a spare key and she popped in once a day and fed the fish in our absence.

But now Becky lived 4 miles away. Driving over to feed our 3 goldfish would take a lot of her time. I was hoping I could come up with some alternate solution so I didn’t have to ask her.

A week before my trip, I had lunch with Rich, a commissions analyst. At lunch we were talking about this and that.

When he told me he had several different pets -  dogs, cats, birds, fish, thinking of my upcoming predicament with my goldfish, I asked “Dogs, cats, birds, fish...who takes care of them when you go out of town?”

“Oh, I have to make arrangements with someone to look after them,” he said.

“I am in a predicament,” I said, “I am going out of town next week and I have 3 goldfish to be fed.  It’s tough to ask someone to come over every day in your absence just to feed 3 goldfish.”

“Oh, you can always buy a vacation fish feeder,” he said.

“What,” I asked, “a vacation fish feeder? I didn’t know there was anything like that.  It must be very rare and expensive and available only online. Would it be worth it for only 3 goldfish and would I be able to get it in time for my trip?”

“They’re cheap,” he said, “here let me look it up on Google”. He looked it up and announced, “it will cost you between 2 and 3 dollars and any pet store will have it”

I thought to myself, “Who would have thought there would be something like that!”

I went to Petsmart. Right enough, there on the shelves, with all the brands of fish feed, I found the vacation fish feeder he was talking about. Fish shaped blocks which came 4 to a pack, and which when placed in water, would dissolve slowly to provide a time-released source of food.

I was set.

A small personal miracle had saved the day.

I was able to go on my trip without worrying about my fish, and without bothering my friend Becky.

Small miracles happen on a frequent basis

Some of them appear as 'aha' moments.

It was an “aha” moment which led to my becoming an SPM Consultant...

I had quit my full-time job as a Commissions Analyst, and was still trying to figure out what to do.  Meanwhile my sister Rosie attended a job search talk. At this talk, the speaker told the attendees they should not hesitate to include on their resumes, any skill development courses they planned to pursue - even those skill development courses which were in their future. Rosie shared this with me on a phone call. After the phone call with Rosie, I found myself thinking about this.  “I know what I can do, ”I thought, "I can do the Xactly or Callidus Administrators Course. Once I am able to put that on my resume, job opportunities will open up.”   

And so I called Xactly and signed up to do their Administrators course. This got me into an Implementations company. From that I branched out into becoming an SPM consultant doing implementations, testing, documentation and administration for companies using Excel, Centive, Xactly or Varicent.

It all started with a miraculous phone conversation with my sis Rosie which was the first link in a chain of events.

I am sure you have stories to tell about your own miraculous first links in a chain. And your own "aha" moments.

Your own Newton moment. Your own Archimedes moment. Your own St. Augustine moment.  Your own Goldwire moment.

Goldwire moment? What’s that?

Let me explain.

The Goldwire Moment

Back when I ran my own creative shop Purple Patch, a client of mine decided to start his own agency and didn’t know what to call it.

He and his wife went on a vacation shortly before he launched the agency.

In the nightstand drawer beside their hotel bed, they found a King James Bible.

Devout Christians, they decided to open the Bible and seek inspiration within its pages to find a name for their agency.

When they opened the Bible, it opened to Exodus 28 and the chapter Clothes for the Priests. The chapter made several references to gold wire.

“That’s it,” they decided, “let’s call our agency Goldwire.”

Be Ready and Willing 

“Miracles come in moments.  Be ready and willing”, says Wayne Dyer.

And Richard Bach says “You're never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true.” 

There is a mystery at the heart of who we are, and our personal struggles and longings, and there are forces beyond logic and reasoning to help us solve our problems, overcome our challenges, and to dare to dream.

Enjoy each small everyday miracle in your life, and understand there are more to come, they are a natural result of your spiritual development.

I will end with this quote from Deepak Chopra: “According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous.”

As always thanks for reading and have a great day and week….M….A Pearl-Seeker like you.  Thanks to Ajay and Rosie for their comments on Facebook and everyone else for their votes. Happy Easter to all of you celebrating Easter today.