#597 How thinking inside the box will lead to more opportunities for your squiggly career.

First of all, so I'm patching the original box.

Yes, got it.

Which I have to say, I find quite appealing.

Like at least on the surface, I'm like endless options, blank piece of paper, infinite.

You can do what you want, go where you want.

And actually, I think what people find is that when that is their context, actually, it can end up being demotivating.

It can be overwhelming.

And there is an example in the book of like a tech company where they did have endless resources.

Yeah.

A lot of the people I think were like X people.

apple or they'd all come from this place and they kind of came up with this company got magic in it um that i'd never heard of but they were like they got all these brilliant people so much investment and sort of just couldn't couldn't produce anything because it was almost just like they could just do whatever they wanted um and that constraints actually can be quite helpful is it like you know when you're at the supermarket i And there's like too many,

too much choice.

And then you get like the analysis paralysis thing and people can't make the choice for as much easier if you just got a couple of variants to pick from.

Yeah.

And I think the interesting thing in the book, if you do read it, is there are loads of stories and examples of when constraints have made people more creative.

And I think if we're thinking like, well, why should we care about this? Like, why does this matter in the context of our squiggly career? You and I talk a lot about, I think, creative thinking, which is something that is relevant in all of our roles, feels like it's more important than ever.

Mm-hmm.

And if we want to get better at creative thinking, how we approach constraints is one way to do that.

Here's some questions and

reflections on this.

Because I'll share some fun examples.

I've got some fun examples before

we get very practical.

Okay.

Do you want my questions, reflections first? Do your questions first.