How Constraints Make Us More Creative

Ofra splits her time among a number of hobbies in her retirement, but she wants to stop feeling rudderless and find the focus necessary to write a book of observational humor based on her twenty-year career as a psychotherapist. Enter David Epstein, workplace researcher and author of Inside the Box, who advocates for creating artificial structure and imposing concrete deadlines rather than falling into the trap of endless optionality. He introduces Ofra to an evaluation rubric for vetting creative output, advising her to write a mock press release before starting her project to define her audience and clarify the exact parenting misconceptions she wants to target. He exposes the traps of subtraction neglect that trick retirees into adding too many low-stakes activities to their daily routines.

Executive Producer Corey Wara

Edited by Geoff Craig

Booking by Ben Astaire

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