Creativity needs constraints

I always believed that creativity just happened. I don’t anymore.

There seems to be a common conception that creativity just pops out of nowhere, like a flash of lightning. And if you’re a creative enough person, it will strike you when you least expect it. All you have to do is simply wait for the inspiration to present itself.

But I’ve come to realise that, paradoxically, creativity comes from the opposite of spontaneity. Creativity is given room to bloom through a framework, rigour, constraint, discipline and structure. It doesn’t just happen when it happens – it’s the result of consistently carving out time and space to be creative. For an architecture and design industry parallel, how much better is a project when you have to problem-solve around constraints? That is where innovation takes root.

This concept really started to sink in when working on Creative or Dead, a podcast I launched at the tail end of 2024 with my friend David Constantine. And, as an aside, you can expect much more to come on that front.

By taking a deep dive conversation into the inner workings and process that makes different creatives tick, patterns started to emerge. What truly stood out is that each and every one of the guests we spoke with made time to practise their craft. It’s sacred time. It’s routine.

The funny thing that happens when you start to notice something, is how much it crops up everywhere. In a not-too-dissimilar way to the repetition of marketing messages (apparently, someone needs to see a message 7 times before it lands), I’ve been seeing the pattern of this message all over the place, in conversations with friends, but also penned by other creatives that I deeply respect.

In a dispatch on Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files, when asked by a reader ‘what does it take to be free?’ the artist describes a rather rudimentary routine that pierces the heart of this notion:

“I feel free to express myself and can access a greater quality of imagination when certain restrictions are put into place. As many of you know, I observe specific protocols to open the creative mind – I sit at a desk in my office and write, working exclusively between 9am and 5pm. Within ‘office hours’ I find my mind becomes genuinely free, and I feel a creativity that is qualitatively richer than anything I may experience outside of this time, in the disorder and distraction of the ordinary world. For me, what must appear to some as forced labour is where all the imaginative mischief, beauty, and love are free to happen. Freedom finds itself in captivity. Disorder, randomness, chaos and anarchy are where the imagination goes to die, or so I’ve found.” When considering just how prolific Cave is as an artist, he might be onto something.

And just like a smoke signal billowing into the sky, this same sentiment has continued to follow me around. Just a few weeks ago, I leisurely opened Rick Rubins’ meditative book The Creative Act: A Way of Being and these words leapt off the page.

“Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not … We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.”

Again, in a chat with the ever-forthright James Howe for a story about mid-century architecture and its value [which was published on Habitus Living here], we also talked about consistency as a means for creativity. He recommended the book The Practice by Seth Godin.

In it, Godin expounds the value of showing up every day and doing the work. It doesn’t matter if it’s not ready, if some is better than others – it’s about showing up. Godin says, “Creativity is a choice, it’s not a bolt of lightning from somewhere else.” Adding, “The practice demands that we approach our process with commitment. It acknowledges that creativity is not an event, it’s simply what we do, whether or not we’re in the mood.”

All of this is, in essence, a long-winded way of publicly declaring (and by default publicly attempting to hold myself to account) that in 2025, I am creating the structure to be more creative. What does that mean exactly? I’m committing to a weekly Substack. Some may be short, others more researched – but every Thursday throughout 2025, and perhaps beyond, a newsletter will hit your inbox.

I hope you come along for the meandering ride.