They help give the thing actual shape, focus, and clarity.
Are we brainstorming or honing? Dreaming or doing? Asking or answering?
All are worthwhile, and I can’t help but laugh at my former self. A younger guy who rebuffed any attempt at limitation. And it’s because I used to view it as precisely that - holding me up, keeping me trapped, encircling me, a feeling of being un-free.
A common view for a young buck.
I’ve since found constraints to be brilliant fuel for the active part of making - not the plotting, planning, and unreal (literally just not real yet) ideations that remain in the land of the undone.
No, no, no. The fuel brings abut the productive work that moves the thing closer to reality.
Guardrails, constraints, boundaries, or rules help us stay active. They help us create the thing we always hoped for by giving it a nudge into the realm of the practical, valuable, useful, or beautiful.
The first constraint though, is getting it out of our heads and onto paper.
Get it out, give it shape, make it real.