Creativity is often presented as the key to thinking or working “outside the box”.

In many situations, that is exactly the right way to frame it.  Organizations and traditions tend to codify and calcify over time. As they do, the structures they form can limit lateral thinking and creative problem solving. When standard patterns and old approaches don’t work, escaping from boxes — anything that limits the scope of thinking and doing — is essential.

However, associating creativity with “out of the box” thinking can lead us astray, especially in less-structured situations. Creative minds can wander aimlessly, ambling unimpeded across the vast open spaces of the mind, on a journey unshaped by a formless landscape.

There are phases of particular projects when such an approach is optimal. When brainstorming, for example, you don’t want to get tangled in barbed wire or have your ankles caught in cattle guards. You want open spaces.

At other times, directionless causes anxiety, and brings us no closer to a particular goal.  What are we trying to do?  Explore the territory, or reach a destination?

Personally, I need boxes to push up against and work within. I need deadlines and structures — external or self-imposed. Constraints and obstacles can provide just the resistance we need to make decisions, understand our mistakes, better understand our options, and re-double our resolve.

I’m not urging you to climb back into any old box within reach. The key is to consciously build a box appropriate to the challenge, one that contains and shapes, yet leaves enough room for the project — and you — to grow.

Questions

• Where does most of your work take place: inside a box or outside it?
• Where do you feel more comfortable thinking?
• Are these circumstantial? Externally-defined? Self-imposed? Intentional?
• Do different phases of your projects benefit from different forms of openness or constraint? Is there a repeating pattern, or do you decide which is best with each new project?

Exercise

• Choose a project that you’ve been working on “outside the box”.  Did you intentionally move your activity there?  Why?  Was that a good choice?
• What constraints could you add to the situation?  Try a couple different sets and see what works. Compare the results of each.
• Then try working in an entirely free way again. What works best for you?
• Would any of the constraints you contrived be helpful in other projects?  Start keeping a notebook of arbitrary constraints and refer to it anytime you find yourself wandering in the wilderness.