BOOK NOTES

Serbian born chemist Dmitri Mendeleev, over three days in February 1869, struggled to organize all sixty-three known elements of the universe. Just a few years before, more elements (i.e. platinum, nickel, oxygen, etc.) had been discovered. Mendeleev searched for an organizing scheme but kept hitting dead ends. He didn’t believe it was all random. In his work over those days, he created the most important data visualization tool ever—the periodic chart. His table propelled the search that has led to our understanding of all matter in the universe. He created a eureka moment in history.

Author Epstein’s central point is that constraints have benefits. They can be tools for creativity, collaboration, and contentment. Mendeleev had a textbook contract and was desperately searching for an organizational scheme to get all the elements into a single volume. He found the periodic pattern while searching for a way to order the elements in the space of an introductory textbook. He didn’t have a dream. He had a deadline.

Consider the story of General Magic—a visionary company in the 90’s with incredible talent and vision that went public in 1995, and its stock price doubled the first day. The company had been created as a “heaven for engineers”. The vision was a company that was free to imagine, play, and invent. What more could a talented engineer wish for? The answer turns out to be a little less freedom. Its first product launch was a disaster. General Magic had it all—a visionary leader, people with incredible talent and an anything is possible attitude. Former leaders employed by GM cofounded Linked In, Nest, and Android. How did it collapse so spectacularly? A movie about its downfall suggests too much freedom fueled by too much money. Overflowing with resources and talent, they were bereft of helpful constraints. Creative ideas abound in many organizations but refining them into something useful is rare.

LIMITS

Think of constraints like bumpers in a bowling lane to keep the balls going in the right direction. People at Pixar, the animated film company, argue that an abundance of resources leads to sloppiness. Boundaries can help you channel creativity. The history of Bell Labs reveals while much latitude existed for researchers, everyone was expected to solve real specific problems. They had at Bell “circumscribed freedom”—freedom within a framework. Successful problem solvers shrink problem spaces.

Epstein offers several examples of studies that didn't lead anywhere because researchers would hypothesize AFTER results were known. Founders of successful companies have learned to formulate hypotheses first and test results against your theory. Our brains are designed for not having to think. Constraints push us to engage in deeper problem solving. Total freedom can be the enemy of creativity, while constraints are its companion.

Consider the “green eggs and ham” model of creativity. It gets its name from author Theodore Geisel’s seminal book because he was winning a bet when he wrote it—declaring he could write a children’s book using just 50 words. Houghton Mifflin Publishers later gave Dr. Seuss a list of vocabulary words and told him to write a book for 6–7-year-olds using no more than 225 words from the list. The “Cat in the Hat” was born! Obstacles force experimentation. Kylie Irving, a great NBA shooter grew up playing on a driveway hoop that was missing the right side of the backboard. He learned to play strange angles and apply certain spins with the ball.

Poet Robert Frost noted that writing free verse is like playing tennis without a net. New boxes like Haiku can help promote creativity through constraint. The writer Virginia Woolf had her best books published after she experimented with constraints of her own making to write differently. What you preclude and exclude can matter.

REMIXING

Remixing, borrowing, and building on work that has proven itself effective to audiences is what many good speakers do. Martin Luther King Jr. was especially effective sharpening his remix strategy throughout his life. A deductive sermon, according to Epstein, starts with an idea that the audience finds irrefutable like a well-known Biblical lesson. Follow that with anecdotes, analogies, quotations, stats, etc…things that demonstrate the truth listeners already embrace. King successfully shared his ideas in material that audiences could not help but accept. This is a concept of bounding the new with the familiar. King was particularly gifted at it.

An even stronger example of this remixing comes from UPS which employs 1000’s of drivers who make on average 120 stops each day. A team was assigned to create the most efficient routes—an overwhelming task of mathematical complexity. But saving one mile per day per driver throughout the system would be worth 50 million dollars. Mapping America was the easy part. The team smartly worked making many small improvements because they knew drivers knew all sorts of local knowledge critical to efficient routing. The team interviewed every driver and built that wisdom into the routes. It was remixing familiarity of drivers with the change of more efficient routes.

The key is starting with something familiar or very specific to get to creativity. It’s why a study of reading comprehension among middle schoolers found that poor readers who knew about baseball did better at comprehension than good readers who knew little about the sport when reading about it. Another idea for more creativity is to limit one’s distractions for other things. When distractions are removed (constraints if you will) people become more creative. That’s why multitasking is so crazy. It is the act of distracting yourself. The more switches you make in attention, the less productive you will be at the end of the day.

COLLABORATION AND CONTENTMENT

One of the pillars of our extraordinary progress as humans with respect to economics has been business between people who don’t know each other. This impersonal exchange is a modern invention. When piracy declined two centuries ago, shipping production improved. Insurance costs plummeted because trade became less uncertain. Constraints that make human interactions more predictable determine the economic fare of a country. It’s why Uber works as does Airbnb, Amazon, etc. Coordination, trust, and accountability have become rules of the game—constraints if you will. It’s no surprise that countries with people who feel they can trust others have the highest GDP.

Thoughtful constraints enhance participation and collaboration. Consider Google’s study on teams. Collective intelligence is real and success can transfer from one task to another. What best predicts team success in Google’s study? Team cohesion? Motivation? Satisfaction? Nope. The hallmark of best teams was that they had equal conversational turn-taking. Clear norms that apply equally to everyone foster teamwork. It’s why Wikipedia works—it exists to collect facts from published sources, not to share original ideas. Again…a constraint.

Robert Weisberg writes that “we use old ideas in creating new ones and that the creative process is based on inside the box thinking.” Stating a problem appears to be the best way to ultimately solve it. Idea linking works to promote creativity. Epstein concludes his book by invoking the words of philosopher Bernard Suits: “the willing adoption of constraints makes the game possible.” It also enhances meaning, spurs creativity, and enables cooperation.

Publisher: Random House Large Print, New York City, NY, 2026