I’m intrigued by the number of casual conversations lately that have touched on the theme of embracing constraints as a gateway to creative solutions. Are artists as constraint infected as their tech world brethren? There seems to be an awareness that unrestricted composition is a daunting task and that introducing constraints can get you to the downbeat.

Instead, someone says, “Write me a piece of music using only a flute, saw, and this broken toy piano. You can only use the notes D, E, and B – but never all 3 at the same time. It has to be in 3/4 time, start quiet, get loud, then get quiet by the end. Go!”

Aha! Now you’re cookin’!

[From Restrictions will set you free | Derek Sivers]

Recently, I’m hearing folks talk about their timed dashes. Duff says Nokahuna was a 48 hour burst effort and Nathaniel is crafting his weekly schedule to create artificial calendar constraints.

There, I did it. A blog post constrained to three paragraphs, a quote plus six links that associate 37signals with a broken toy piano. How’s that for a creative solution?

Freedom’s author is none other than Fred Stutzman, co-founder of claimid and local ibiblio dude. Now, can I get a weekend version to lock the keyboard…

Freedom is an application that disables wireless and ethernet networking on an Apple computer for up to three hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the internet, allowing you time to code, write, or create. At the end of your selected offline period, Freedom re-enables your network, restoring everything as normal.

[From Freedom, OS X Networking Freedom Software]

About the same time I described a local company’s IT abomination as “antiquated”, I came across loosewireblog’s post about user determined computing. An apt description of a blossoming concept.

Why do companies inflict IT systems on their employees that they wouldn’t dare ship to their own customers? Sadly, use of the word enterprise in the name or description is an early warning that it is going to suck. Here are a few examples of internal enterprise solutions I’ve encountered recently:

• Restricted email clients. If you don’t use the corporate approved client, you can’t get support.
• Internal mail lists that don’t archive messages. What’s the point?
• Time accounting systems that suck.
• Gold plated, IEEE compliant project management tools that make your eyes glaze over with features, links, colors, formatting, buttons… Please make it stop.
• Wikis (nice try, though) that have no RSS feeds or change notification.
• Byzantine process for scheduling conference calls on an internal bridge.
• Serialized document collaboration based on email workflow.
• Over engineered bug tracking and case management tools.

Some companies see their IT services as cost centers rather than strategic. When that’s the case, employees suffer the consequences and ignore the tools. Everyone loses.

Interesting middle ground:

• Internal wikis that require a request be sent to the owner for an account. Please justify why you want to able to write to this wiki.
• Workers just daring enough to create wikis, but not enough confidence to improve them with their daily gleaned nuggets.
• Internal web with documents and articles, but no search capability.

My old basketball coach used to call this “day late and a dollar short”.