Are you useful?

I preach about the miracle of constraints and their ability to boost creativity in anyone. But I see un-useful constraints being used all the time by creators, so I wanted to make a small list of examples to clarify what a useful constraint looks like.

There’s only two real constraints when publishing anything online:

What is useful to your audience?

Useful:

• Getting to the point
• Finding obscure ideas, people, and resources for solving specific challenges
• Finding entertaining ideas, people, and resources
• Providing more value than you ask for in return
• Having a consistent publishing schedule

Not useful:

• Over-designing to seem professional rather than human
• Over-formatting for topic: Podcasting like you’re on the radio in the 90s (you don’t need segments)
• Over-formatting for style: Emailing or blogging with sections for links versus essays (readers don’t care)

What is useful for you?

Useful:

• Time blocking your work
• Having a consistent publishing schedule
• Limiting word counts
• Limiting when or how your work is published
• Using process-based templates and automation
• Being imperfect and humanizing your publishing (versus “personalizing”)
• Ridding yourself of any work unrelated to your objective (like stressing over photos when consistent writing is your goal)

Not useful:

• Using templates and automation that detract from your publishing voice
• Being overly acceptable to everyone
• Limiting or expanding your publishing based on SEO or trends

As you can see, there’s some overlap in those examples. When you find a constraint that works for you and your audience – like publishing a one-paragraph newsletter every day or creating visual essays on the backs of business cards – you’ve found a set of successful constraints. Congrats!