[taurath]

Creativity does spawn from constrained environments, as any game developer can tell you. Most of the beauty in hacks or interesting ways of getting around things is the context of limited resources.

I think people who are consistently creative can frequently either find an environment that constrains them (a writer taking a retreat to the woods, for instance), or tackles problems with existing constraints.

If everything in your life is going well and there's not boredom, there's not a whole lot of purpose to creativity - you are however free to create constrained environments. Burning man for instance creates a lot of opportunity for creativity because its out in the desert, temporary, and must be packed up or burned afterwards. Same with living out in the country with few social connections. Its easy however to just get dragged down by depression or just the dreariness of boredom when living out in the country for me at least - there's a reason a lot of people turn to drugs in rural areas (in the US at least).

[epa]

Can you expand that argument to work life - as in creative people may be better at dealing with situations such as startups where a constrained environment is often time and money. Are there trends that successful founders often had prior creative outlets in their childhood more often than not?

[taurath]

The general trend that I've seen is that founders in general (successful and not) is that they have a propensity for risk thats out of line with the general population - frequently (in my anecdotal experience) stemming from a strong sense of security and exposure to possibilities from a wealthy upbringing.

[junko]

Ah but my mind is very good at stripping down artificially constrained environments - just artificial. The lazy part of me will always seek for the comfort zone.

That's another wild horse to get in control of I guess.