{"id":1930,"date":"2018-04-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-29T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/?p=1930"},"modified":"2020-03-18T00:52:09","modified_gmt":"2020-03-18T00:52:09","slug":"beautiful-constraints-47a478ac12a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/?p=1930","title":{"rendered":"Beautiful Constraints"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 name=\"d79d\" id=\"d79d\" class=\"graf graf--h3 graf--leading graf--title\">Beautiful Constraints<\/h3>\n<blockquote name=\"7fa5\" id=\"7fa5\" class=\"graf graf--pullquote graf--startsWithDoubleQuote graf-after--h3\"><p>\u201cGive me the freedom of a tight brief\u201d, David\u00a0Ogilvy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p name=\"7c9c\" id=\"7c9c\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--pullquote\">I often think back to the large easels in the life-drawing class. Each blank sheet ripe with endless possibilities. There was a time that they also represented personal failure. My first defining strokes kept failing to capture the pose, proportions, mood.<\/p>\n<p name=\"5a5a\" id=\"5a5a\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\">The teacher, in a last-ditch effort to coach her failing student, \u201cDestroy the surface, pass the white paint, grab that black acrylic, is that a nail over there? Scratch up the surface. Get your hands dirty!\u201d<\/p>\n<p name=\"9ab5\" id=\"9ab5\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\">Gazing at the destroyed surface, the instruction that changed everything. \u201cGo ahead! Extract the figure from the noise\u201d.<\/p>\n<p name=\"98f3\" id=\"98f3\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\"><strong class=\"markup--strong markup--p-strong\">Fast forward 15 years.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p name=\"d428\" id=\"d428\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\">The discomfort of a blank page, cursor stuck in one spot, blinking\u00a0.<\/p>\n<p name=\"2da3\" id=\"2da3\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\">99 Ideas allude me; it might be \u2018blank-canvas syndrome\u2019 or \u2018writer\u2019s block\u2019. I know these excuses don\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n<p name=\"e707\" id=\"e707\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\"><strong class=\"markup--strong markup--p-strong\">Where is the noise?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p name=\"a79b\" id=\"a79b\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\">Realisation. I need to set the constraints, the formative strokes on the blank canvas. Specific parameters that, at first, seem to throttle creativity.<\/p>\n<p name=\"1b26\" id=\"1b26\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p\">A cacophony of opportunities erupt! The act of attempting to \u2018create ideas\u2019 turns to \u2018extracting ideas\u2019, the most compelling, buried near the borders of the constraints.<\/p>\n<p name=\"7a2e\" id=\"7a2e\" class=\"graf graf--p graf-after--p graf--trailing\">Finally. Who sets these constraints? Who\u2019s job is it? Mine.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/1QSGkhXnOM7CXrPu1KnVjFA.png\" \/><figcaption>The task, the text alludes to, was to create 99 Business Concepts. It got off to a very slow start, but creativity erupted once we set the constraints, some of them where (1) Type: Boot-stap Businesses (2) Industry: Food etc. Brainwriting and a set of business model cards help oil the process but it was the initial constraints that lit the\u00a0fuse.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beautiful Constraints \u201cGive me the freedom of a tight brief\u201d, David\u00a0Ogilvy. I often think back to the large easels in the life-drawing class. Each blank sheet ripe with endless possibilities. There was a time that they also represented personal failure. My first defining strokes kept failing to capture the pose, proportions, mood. The teacher, in[&#8230;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-medium"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1989,"href":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1930\/revisions\/1989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xperience.consulting\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}