Rich From Constraints

If the constraints you have aren’t helping you, you need better ones.

The people around you. The amount of time in your day. The tools you use to do your work. Your physical working space. The number of words in your copy. The cadence of your publications. The things you say no to. The clients you accept to work with.

Never mind that the world is removing constraints in real time, by deploying AI tools.
Never mind that constraints are imposed on you.

What’s at play are the constraints you decide to keep.

—

There’s a pattern for reconfiguring the source of your constraints.

First, you create a space where you can create constraints. You set your own new deadlines, you form some habits, you pick some people to keep you accountable, you set your pace. You develop independence.

Second, you exercise your new constraints. You produce the work you decided you would do, given your constraints. Pretty soon, you will feel a new sense of ability, a new form of richness that nobody will be able to take away from you.

Third, you become free from your former constraints. They just don’t matter anymore, because you’ve set your own.

—

The introduction of new technology and new tools has tended to remove the constraints of older generations. There’s no question that removing constraints creates prosperity. Creating technology has moral merit, for the sake of serving our people and their need for progress. You will be rewarded for removing the constraints of others.

You also first need to be free to create, able to finish what you set out to do, to make promises, and to keep them. That’s still the main currency of the creative, and constraint construction is still the way to get there.