Constraints are your friends

mentalmodel extremelyimportant sketch

tl;dr

Constraints are your friend.

1. Decreases the cognitive load by shrinking the decision space
   

   • so you can focus on the things with higher leverage
     

2. Prevents you to stuck in cycle of non-high-leverage decisions
   

3. Solves paradox of choice
   

   • decision fatigue, Hick’s Law, FOMO
     

4. Makes your tradeoffs explicit
   

5. Every time you reuse your style, you save time, it's a durable investment
   

6. Forces you to be creative
   

   1. The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
      

   2. constrained creativity
      

7. Gives you a style/identity
   

references

1. Fred Brooks - The Design of Design by Brooks - Chapter 11 is named Constraints are Friends
   

   • "Form is liberating" - Artists' Aphorism
     

   • "I need four walls around me, to hold my life, and keep me from going astray."–James Taylor, “Bartender’S BlueS”
     

   • "A general-purpose product is harder to design well than a special-purpose one."
     

   • Constraints shrink the designer's search space
     

     • removing all constrains makes the task of designing harder
       

       • Many of us disliked "Write an essay on whatever you want" assignments in junior high school for that reason
         

       • "Bach understood this. Wolff says, “Bach, predisposed from the very beginning toward traversing conventional boundaries, nevertheless preferred to work within a given framework and accept the challenges it imposed.
         

         • Wolff [2000], Johann Sebastian Bach, 387. "When not sufficiently constrained by commission or available performance talent, Bach would sometimes adopt quite artificial constraints to stimulate his creativity. An example is the repeated use of the BACH motif (the sequence of notes B-flat, A, C, B-natural)"
           

     • constrains can stimulate completely fresh creations by challenging the designer
       

       • David example
         

       • Blue Ridge Parkway viaduct (had to touch ground as little as possible to minmize environmental damage)
         

         • 
           

     • artificial constraints have the nice property that one is free to relax them
       

     • 🔗

       1. Real constraints
          

       2. Obsolete once-real constraints
          

       3. Misperceived constraints
          

       4. Intentional artificial constraints
          

       
       
       

       Real Constraints

       Obsolete Once-Real Constraints

       • Heed the constrains becoming obsolete with new tech
         

       • technology makes many obsolete
         

       • experienced designers, like a lion accustomed to pace the confines of its cage, usually continue obeying those much after they're obsolote
         

         • trying to optimize for speed
           

         • tyring to write minimal memory computations
           

         • The Hundred-Year Language.md > computation speed constraint is relaxed, we can design programming languages makes everything string and 100% descriptive (and many other ideas)
           

       
       

       Misperceived Constraints

       • lots of creative comes from realizing that a constraint is an illusion (perceived as constraint by most beacuse of human heuristic thinking, or cognitive biases)
         

       • 
         

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       Intentional Artificial Constraints

       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       

     • General-Purpose artifacts are than Special-Purpose Ones
       

       • Hardest part of designing is deciding what to design.
         

2. DHH
   

   1. Constraints are your friend. They force you to think differently. You should win by doing less and working less from your competition. (My addition: The way to do is coming up with something very different that no one else is doing in the same way). Stanford link, youtube**
      

      1. Underdo your competition–have fewer features
         

   2. 🔗

      David Heinemeier Hansson (04:09): I’d go even further and say it forces you to make those cuts. Because once the constraints are in place and you’ve committed yourself to them, they are boundaries that allow you to do what you deep down want to do, but find so very hard to do when the constraints are not in place. There are always an excuse for why that feature should do more or why you should have more features or why you should explore things from additional angles. If you have constraints in place, you’re forced to boil that down to just the stuff that matters. And that process of boiling down, in my optics, is the better part of creativity. So much of creativity is actually that process of, “Well, do you know what, if I had unlimited time and unlimited resources, I could build the unlimited thing.” That’s not a very interesting space. In fact, it’s a very intimidating space for a lot of people. I find that. That usually where I do my best, most efficient, simplest quote unquote work, is when I’m forced to do it quickly. When I have the week or two weeks to do it.

      
      

      1. Another reasons constraints are helpful can be that it constraints amount of second type of procrastination in Paul Graham's Good and Bad Procrastination (archived).
         

         1. This idea comes from Why Is It Hard to Do Real Work (archived)
            

3. Design is compromise.md by Kepano
   

   • prioritizing
     

     • comprimise is prioritizing
       

   • choosing the right compromises is what defines good design.
     

   • tradeoff -> conveys the relationship between strengths and weaknesses
     

     • You are trading a weakness for a strength.
       

   • be proud of your compromises
     

     • Having an opinionated set of tradeoffs exposes your approach to a set of weaknesses. The more you tip the scale on one side, the weaker something else will be. That’s okay! Making those difficult choices is what people pay you for. You should be proud of your compromises.
       

   • Good design is choosing the right compromise for your audience.
     

4. Style is consistent constraint by Kepano
   

   • Style is a set of constraints that you stick to.
     

   • having a style collapses hundreds of decisions into one, and gives you focus
     

5. The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
   

   1. 🔗

      • The Role of Constraints:

        • Creativity often thrives within constraints; limitations can spark ingenuity.
          

        • Accepting and working within certain boundaries can lead to more focused and profound creative output.
          

      
      

   2. See Temporary Rules section in the book
      

6. Taste for Makers (archived) > Good design is simple (Baris: another way of saying good design has constraints).
   

   • beauty should depend on a few carefully chosen structural elements, rather than a profusion of superficial ornaments.
     

8. Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman (book) -> Chapter 4 deals with constraints, and has a section on forcing functions. Read it later and add notes here.
   

9. Chamath Palihapitiya's talk on foundational model in All in Pod (Elon Musk reposted)
   

   1. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1893225864378060989
      

      1. 
         

      2. "pre-training Siri"
         

   2. Full episode: The Stablecoin Future, Milei's Memecoin, DOGE for the DoD, Grok 3, Why Stripe Stays Private (archived)
      

10. Relevant: The One Course by Dabeaz (constrained creativity) (original)