“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

--Theodore Roosevelt

Yes, there is indeed one, rock-solid rule for being more creative than you've ever been in your life. We've all brained stormed, we've all sat there staring at a blank page and waiting for inspiration. Forget it! Those days are gone. You want to be more creative, I'll tell you how: Give yourself as few resources as possible. Confine yourself. Set rules and boundaries. Fence your creativity in and tell it that it isn't allowed to do certain things. Take away everything at your disposal. Take away anything with which you might be creative. Why? Because limiting your creativity, trapping, restricting it is the only way to unleash it's true power and potential.

Setting Yourself Up For Success Doesn't Mean Getting More Stuff.

When I've told you in the past that you should set yourself up for success and celebrate the little victories, I meant it. What I did not mean is that you needed something more than you already had. So often we think that success cannot come to us because we don't have what it takes to succeed, we're missing something. We tell ourselves lies like, “It takes money to make money.” That isn't true, but we tell ourselves that. The truth of the matter is that the more resources your creativity is given, the harder it becomes to be creative. An overabundance of resources just stunts our creativity more than it helps it. If you want to be more creative you have cut yourself off at the knees. You have to take away your resources, restrict yourself, then you'll unleash creativity.

Necessity is the Mother of All Invention: Having Less, Gets You More.

If I told you that I was holding a contest for the next great invention, where you could win $1,000,000 just by inventing something in two hours, using any materials you wanted, I'll bet you couldn't do it. But, if I told you that your invention could only be made from a list of four select materials, you wouldn't have any problem at all inventing something new and probably pretty great. Why the difference? Because in the first scenario I gave you everything and told you to be creative. In the second scenario I limited your options and told you to be creative. Creativity only thrives under restriction. Creativity works around things, under things, it finds loopholes to fit through. Creativity needs obstacles. Give it an open field and creativity just can't function. This is why writers hate blank pages, because it's nothing but an open field that drives us into analysis paralysis. It isn't until we set the boundaries of a story that we really know where we're going.

"I love writing but hate starting. The page is awfully white and it says, 'You may have fooled some of the people some of the time but those days are over, giftless. I'm not your agent and I'm not your mommy, I'm a white piece of paper, you wanna dance with me?' and I really, really don't. I'll go peaceable-like."

--Aaron Sorkin

We've all heard that necessity is the mother of all invention and it really is true. The times you have been at your most creative have been the times in your life when you were limited by money, time or resources. You had a deficit and it kicked your brain into high gear to find new ways around your obstacles. So often we try to find new and creative ideas by sitting and staring at old ideas, but that's not enough. Want to be really creative? Cut yourself off from everything you think you need. Give yourself a deficit, then watch how clever you can really be.

Being Creative Means Not Being Resourceful.

Know why MacGyver was always so cool? It certainly wasn't his hair. It was because Mac could make anything out of whatever he had in any given room. He had to use his knowledge of chemistry to get him out of tight spots. He was like watching the espionage version of Mister Wizard. The funny things about MacGyer is that we would call him “resourceful,” which is a complete misnomer. Think about that word for a second: Resource-Full, full of resources. The irony here is that we are at our most resourceful when we are completely resource-less. If we were really resource-full we wouldn't have to be resourceful.

Being clever, being creative can only occur in confined and obstacle-filled spaces. If you give yourself too much freedom you get stuck in analysis paralysis wondering where to turn next. If, on the other hand, you give yourself an obstacle course your goal becomes clear: get around the obstacles. You don't have to debate about the direction to go, you don't have to wonder if you're making the right choices, you simply have to move toward and beyond the given obstacles. What could be easier?

Want to turn yourself into the world's most creative person? Get used to dealing with less. Get used to confining yourself. Get used to holding yourself back. Because it is only when we are cornered, when we are confined, when we are imprisoned that our creativity comes to our rescue. Remember that creativity is evolutionary. If we never faced obstacle we would have no need for that brand of cleverness. We could meander without purpose from one end of our “open field” to another with thinking twice about how or why we were doing so. Give yourself something to overcome, a limit to blow past, a rule to break, then step back and be amazed at the capacity for greatness that resides in you.