I used to think unlimited resources and total freedom were the path to great work. Then I learned that the best breakthroughs happen when you're forced to focus on what really matters.
For years, I chased freedom. I thought bigger budgets, more time, and zero limits were the keys to success. I was completely wrong.
The best work I've ever done came from having my back against the wall. Not because I enjoyed the stress, but because constraints forced me to cut through all the noise and focus on what actually mattered. It took me way too long to figure this out.
Early in my career (when I was around 16 years old), I landed what I thought was a dream project. Generous budget, flexible timeline, and the simple instruction to "build something amazing." I was thrilled as any teenager would be.
We spent months in brainstorming sessions, filling whiteboards with ideas. Every meeting generated more possibilities. And we shipped absolutely nothing. The endless options were paralyzing. We kept circling back to the same question: "But what if we could also do this?"
Looking back, that failure taught me something I wish someone had told me earlier. Having no limits isn't freedom. It's just a different kind of prison. A well-defined problem you can actually solve beats unlimited possibilities you can't any day.
The most focused I've ever been was on a project that was about to die. We lost half our funding overnight, and someone moved our deadline up by a month. My team was freaking out.
But something interesting happened. All the endless debates we'd been having just stopped. The "wouldn't it be cool if" features got cut immediately. We were left with one simple question: What's the one thing we absolutely have to solve for our users?
That crisis gave us something we'd been missing for months: clarity. The constraints weren't killing our creativity. They were sharpening it. We ended up building something simpler and way more powerful than what we'd originally planned. Not despite the pressure, but because of it.
Now I try to build this into how I work with my teams. I don't create fake emergencies, but I do set up focused challenges. Instead of asking "What's the next big thing?" I'll ask "How can we double our impact with exactly the people we have right now?" or "What's the simplest thing we can ship in two weeks that actually solves this problem?"
It sounds like I'm limiting people, but I'm really giving them something valuable: focus. When you know exactly what you're trying to solve and what your boundaries are, you can put all your creative energy into that one thing instead of spreading it across a dozen possibilities.
We all love the story of the genius who gets struck by lightning and suddenly has the perfect idea. But that's not how it actually works. Innovation is messy. It comes from wrestling with a problem long enough that you start seeing it differently. The constraints aren't getting in the way of the solution. They're shaping it.
The best solutions I've seen aren't the most complex ones. They're the ones where someone figured out what could be left out. That only happens when you can't afford to include everything. When you have to choose.
So if you're feeling stuck, don't wish for more freedom or resources. Look for better constraints. Figure out what you're really trying to solve and for whom. Set a deadline that matters. That's where the clarity lives. That's where the good work happens.