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“One morning, one of us ran out of the black, it was the birth of Impressionism.” - Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Perhaps a poetic, revisionist take on the start of a new style of art, but Renoir speaks to unexpected blessings of constraint.

When something you’ve relied on is taken away, a vacuum is created.

A creative vacuum.

👉 The modern day challenge, for many of us, is not absence but abundance.

Abundance is confusing because it requires discernment. Decisions are about which rather than whe...

In 1996, librarian turned restaurateur Stephanie Alexander published a new type of recipe book.

Rather than simply a collection of recipes, The Cook’s Companion let you build a dish around an ingredient. It started with the constraint.

Have a turnip? Here’s what you can make with it.

Wilting broccoli? Here’s what to do.

Unremarkable now that we have internet search, but at its time a revelation because it was designed around the user. 

When it comes to your work, there are times when peo...

On how technology has changed the craft of writing, author Neil Gaiman remarked;

“Typing is not work. Choosing is work.”

Since moving from typewriters to computers, he noted, the average word count has blown out from 3-6,000 per article to 9,000 because "it’s not hard to include two ways of saying something”.

I can’t shake this insight because it says so much about how we behave. At work. At home.

When writers drafted in longhand, it was painstaking to type up their final work for submission...