Constraints Breed Creativity
Work swells to fill the time allotted for its completion, Fred Again.. has a solution.
Fred Again.. is the hottest name in Electronic/Dance music and maybe music. In July 2022, he performed a set at the Boiler Room in London, and it has become the third-most watched set on the Boiler Room’s YouTube Channel with over 37 million views. His rise continued in October 2022 when he released his third solo studio album. This was his third album in the last 1.5 years when it is common for artists to go years between albums. This began his ascent to stardom.
Fred’s work was noticeable. It was not only quality music he produced, but the volume at which he produced music was equally impressive. Fast forward to 2024, and he was nominated for “Best New Artist” at the Grammy Awards, one of his four nominations. He would lose “Best New Artist” to Victoria Monet, but he still took home two Grammy Awards that night. It’s safe to say he has arrived or is well on his way there.
Fred Again seemingly exploded overnight, but it begged the question of what drove Fred’s rise to stardom? How at 30 was he able to finally break through? In a time when music stars can reach stardom in their teens and artists can have years between albums, Fred Again stood out. His drive, commitment, and passion were evident by his volume of live shows, albums, and songs. He has continually pushed himself to be better.
His drive was evident in an interview with Swedish House Mafia, a house supergroup or, in more layman terms, a DJ group, spoke about working with him,
“He [Fred Again] took a plane to Sweden, and we spent three days with him in a studio and it was really, really inspirational. He’s like, ‘Okay guys, I’m not sure if you’re going to be stressed out about this, but I have a timer. So I make a song in 35 minutes.’”
Swedish House Mafia, a group with 25.7M monthly listeners on Spotify, could see the talent. And some of his methods for making music were unconventional, leading them to be pretty inspired. Fred knew constraints bred his best creativity.
Today we live in a society structured to promote needing all this time before we explore our passions, nurture our creativity, or do any meaningful work. Social media tells us must set aside four hours for “deep work” each morning. Influencers advocate for people to quit their jobs to be able to pursue creative endeavors. Some say getting a 9-5 job sucks away all our time and our ability to create anything meaningful. Many of our most prominent success stories made it big without being constrained by typical time commitments – Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs.
But for many people, time is limited and the creativity born out of constraints is quite beautiful. Research has even shown that more time might sabotage your pursuit of a goal. Fred Again gives himself 35 minutes to create a song. In 1961, United States President John F. Kennedy set a goal to land a man on the moon and return him safely before the end of the decade. Apollo 11 made that happen. Pope Julius II gave Michelangelo a tight deadline to complete the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Why do constraints breed creativity? In the study mentioned, longer deadlines can lead people to think the goal is more difficult thus requiring them to allocate more time and resources to the goal than necessary. We can be undisciplined because the more time we have to think, the less we spend on doing what we set out to do. Thinking becomes a substitute for doing.
This is partly explained by Parkinson’s Law, which is the idea that work will swell to fill the time allotted for its completion. I am certainly guilty of it. If I had a project due in a week in college, there is a good chance I would finish the bulk of it the night before. Six of the seven days were spent making a mountain out of a molehill.
Perhaps this piece is proof of it. This week, I was up against it. I had written something for the week, but I didn’t love it. I knew I needed more time to sit with it and edit it. It was the night before I typically publish and I needed to come up with something else for the week. I had a serious time constraint to work within, and thus this piece was born. The constraints bred creativity.
Fred Again gives himself 35 minutes to make a song, and it has worked out quite well for him. We have financial, physical, technological, and time constraints in life, but some beautiful things have been born out of working within them.
I’ve noticed this pattern again and again: when we have loose deadlines and fixed hours to do work, it is easy to find unproductive ways to fill it. The work takes longer, and less gets done. More time is rarely the answer. We don’t need long blocks of time to make it happen. Sometimes, 35 minutes is enough.
The best give themselves constraints to work in. It forces them to get creative. It forces them to get work done. Short sprints. Rest. Repeat.
Appreciate your time. Tap the heart if you enjoyed.
-Scantron
Great post that resonates with my own experience. It took me having a kid, and all the new time constraints that come with that, to finally get around to writing. I've also become more keenly aware of my mortality. I wonder if this sense of ultimate finitude bleeds into Fred Again's effective timer approach. DEADlines and all.
For the past few weeks I’ve been playing around with writing only when I feel like it. Fast forward to today and I haven’t published anything in two weeks. I’m still working on finding a happy balance between constraint and flexibility, but have definitely been reminded of the necessity of time pressure when it comes to creation. Great stuff!