Creativity

Is more choice always a good thing? My friend Simon first introduced me to the "paradox of choice": that having more choice is not always a good thing when it comes to decision-making.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz gave a good talk at Google, which you can watch here: The Paradox of Choice - Why More is Less.

From an interview with Barry Schwartz:

Everyone agrees that having choice is better than not having choice. It seems evident that if choice is good, then more choice is better. The paradox is that this "obvious" truth isn't true. It turns out that a point can be reached where, with more choice, people are worse off. People can't ignore options - they have to pay attention to them. If they make a choice, is there another choice would have been better? There's more effort put into making decisions, and less in enjoying them. What's nagging is the possibility that, if they had chosen differently, they could have gotten something better.

This paradox is apparently quite pervasive, even applying to decision-making outside the world of consumer goods, career choices for instance.

I've been thinking recently about how this might apply to creativity and the creative process. It is sometimes said that stricter rules lead to greater creativity. This isn't always the case, but for example, poetry with strict rules regarding rhyme and meter would seem to require more mental effort to write, but is perhaps easier than writing "free-style", because the rules "squeeze" the creativity out (that's how I've always thought of it!)

Similarly, it is much easier to design a Web site within design constraints set by a client (as long as they're not too frustrating!) than to create it entirely out of thin air. Of course, Web design always has ridiculously short deadlines (I wanted it yesterday!) another constraint which catalyses a creativity of sorts. Read/WriteWeb has an interesting piece on this titled, "Think Inside the Box".

Ever since I decided to specialise in Python and Django for Web development, it has made things much easier in terms of choosing technologies. The thought of using other technologies scarcely crosses my mind when taking on new Web projects. I don't need to switch because I know that Django is good enough for what I need. I am satisficed.

I'd be interested to experiment with this by doing some photography that is strictly restricted to a particular topic, or perhaps which has some interesting constraint e.g. I have to take all the photos upside down, or from atop a tree. Maybe someone can suggest something fun?