Name: How limits can boost your creativity | BBC Ideas
Uploaded: 2020-09-10T19:10:39.000Z
Duration: 4 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Newton came up with the theory of calculus in quarantine.

Dr Seuss wrote using no more than 50 different words.

Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine.

as an endless open field of possibilities.

But the reality is, when people face such a wonderful open field

The growth of the human brain is by growing branches.

By growing branches you can make more connections

and it's by having connections that you can say "aha".

over whether constraints are actually beneficial

There's still disagreement, at least in psychology,

It's people making things that haven't existed before.

Everyday elements but putting them together in a way

not that is just novel but that actually has a meaning for people,

that actually changes the way they see the world.

creativity is something that happens to people

There is no such thing as a single gene for creativity.

We can distinguish between two different types of constraints -

the intentional constraints and the unintentional constraints.

and they can be political, socio-economic.

could be seen as a limitation within the art world,

which historically has been a very patriarchal,

Resilience comes when you have problems and challenges

An artist who I very much admire, called Faith Ringgold,

wanted to make these huge, huge canvases,

But she didn't actually have the space at home to do that.

And so she started to make these huge quilts -

roll it up and take it to various galleries.

She's a great example of how an artist can flourish under limitation.

or a different method or a different process.

when you are going to do nothing else but engage in the creative task.

people with very little time can write books -

that that's what you're going to be doing

you're actually protecting a space for yourself,

Start drawing and give yourself five minutes.

Do another drawing, give yourself 10 seconds to do the drawing.

When we are given less time to do something,

usually the most important information comes across.

If you're playing in a band and you're getting really, really stuck,

That can create new ideas in your songs as well.

in the upper left corner of your blank canvas

and then challenge yourself to incorporate those constraints

And even though you may not end up using those particular constraints

in the final product, they can be beneficial for creativity

as long as you play around with them willingly.

What might happen is that the mere experience

with playing around with different limitations

stretches your imagination and improves creativity.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

How limits can boost your creativity | BBC Ideas

stick

process

engage

resilience