Sibelius, the late 19th and early 20th century Finnish composer, is considered to be one of the greatest of symphonists. Much of his greatness stems from the limitations he set himself. He was very disciplined in working with and developing only those ideas central to his musical argument, a characteristic fundamental to the pure art of writing a symphony as opposed to any other form of music.

Another, but in many ways very different composer who worked within very severe limitations was Shostakovich. This time, however, the limitations were externally rather than internally imposed. Shostakovich was a Russian composer who worked during the time of Stalin’s intolerant regime. This regime sort to dictate almost every aspect of a person’s life and work, including the styles within which composers could write. Within these constraints, however, Shostakovich was able to be subversive and create truly original and in many cases great symphonic works.

The key message here is that one way to encourage creativity and new thinking is to create limitations that force you to explore novel routes and think in new and unusual ways.

Sometimes we have difficulty addressing issues and problems not only because the problems themselves are difficult, but also because the options for dealing with them seem too numerous and/or complex. The next time this happens to you do the opposite of what is normally assumed to be creative, limit your options. Work only with those ideas that fit a certain criteria, but work harder at finding ways to develop, combine and enhance these ideas in ways that will produce effective and perhaps even novel solutions.

Try the following:

• Limit the ideas you consider to six at a time.
• Limit the number of people involved in problem solving to no more than six.
• Set financial constraints.
• Set time constraints.
• Work only with what is to hand or is easily attainable.
• Put your emphasis upon combining ideas rather than generating ideas.
• Work hard at creating a new third idea by combining and adapting two existing ideas.
• Work with rather than against the context and constraints within which the problem exists.

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