“Think of your shoulder injury as an invitation — to explore all the movements, recovery protocols you never had time for.”
My client chuckled. He knows me too well.
I turn every constraint into something productive. Something interesting. Something with a silver lining. So you might end up having fun doing all the right things.
I just finished “Inside the Box: how constraints make us better” by David Epstein — the book everyone is talking about right now.
The main idea: constraints don’t limit what we create. They shape it (including us) into something better.
You already know this, even if you’ve never thought about it this way.
You finish things when you have a deadline. You go all over the place when you have all the time in the world. That’s why work gets done — and why your life vision gets pushed back again and again.
Epstein tells the story of a Silicon Valley company that had everything. Money. Talent. The best technology available. And it went bankrupt. Because people were creating all day, every day — without ever needing to ship something the market actually wanted. Something that actually made sense in the real world.
No constraint. No good result to ship, it seems.
Then there are the athletes who lacked resources and had to reinvent their approach, and often entire sport — and ended up outperforming everyone doing it “the right way.” The writers who produced their best, genre-redefining work precisely because they denied themselves the old way of doing it.
Blocking your default, you usual way of doing things and imposing specific constraints doesn’t kill creativity. It ignites it. It forces you past more-of-the-same and into genuinely new territory.
The same principle helped me end my battle with food. For over a decade now!
One day I made a pact with myself: I don’t consider packaged food - food. More like some entertainment to try from time to time. What goes on my plate has to be something my grandmother would recognize — fruit, vegetables, meat, fish, natural dairy, nuts, seeds. Real things.
That one rule changed my eating for life.
Not a diet. Not a phase. A constraint that became an identity. You wouldn’t expect vegan to go and “cheat” with meat on the weekend, so why would I think of that? My cat doesn’t eat any of that. So I decided I’m gonna pass on that franken foods from now on too.
The best health researchers will tell you it’s also the best nutritional framework going now - the less processed food you eat, the better you are. But that’s almost beside the point. What mattered was that the rule was clear. No grey area. No negotiation.
Constraint.
Jocko Willink, my favorite Navy SEAL has a popular saying: “Discipline equals freedom.”
The constraint is the freedom. The box that you need to become who you actually are.
I was in an Uber recently. The driver asked me — coach to stranger — how to quit smoking. I told him the single most important thing he could do: stop saying “I’m trying to quit” and start saying “I’m not a smoker.”
Identity constraint. That’s the best move. Habit gurus like James Clear taught this to millions of people.
I tell clients struggling with food to try the same thing.
Imagine you’ve decided — like a vegan — that an entire category is simply off the table. You don’t wait for a cheat day to “not be vegan.” The constraint eliminates the decision. There’s nothing left to negotiate. You have to find a workaround. How to be satisfied with what you have.
Constraints don’t just create some of the best works of art and athletes, they give you the freedom and ease to fully live your values.
What behaviors or habits do you want to be more consistent with — and what’s the bright-line constraint that could help you to stay “in the right box”?