NORTHERN PLANNER

You wouldn't want to have been my boss in my twenties. I had a problem with authority. 

I still have a healthy disregard for arbitrary rules that have no reason for being, just as I have a suspicion of 'always done it this way'. 

In most cases, this is someone trying to keep things as they are because it suits them.

It's why I'm nervous of templates and proprietary process, it becomes the point rather the actual work itself.

Yet I've learned to value the constraint too. It's when you're boxed in that you tend to do your best work.

Creativity and ideas actually love shackles. Some of the most wonderful songs still conform to two versus, chorus and middle eight. Haikus have very limiting, unbreakable rules, yet produce some of the most beautiful things ever written.

Prince was at his best when his record company forced him to edit his work and it was the tension between Lennon and McArtney as much as the partnership that was the core of the Beatles.

So as long as you have a goal bigger than compliance in the first place, the strictures of a formal process, brief template or whatever liberate great work.

They force you to edit, distil hack all the fat from your work.

Like a caged tiger, your mind fights harder because of the limits.

Every hero needs an enemy, the better the enemy, the more profound the hero.

And if you're a quiet rebel like me, there is nothing more motivating than being told 'can't'.

So thank you budget restrictions.

Thank you 'that's not how we do it here'.

Thank you 'that will never work here'. 

Thank you status quo.

Thank you time servers.

Thank you 'the client will never do that'.

Thank you complacent creative directors.

The more you tighten you tighten your grip, the more potent the response you fear