I am an unreserved fan of David Epstein’s writing. He manages to write about complex concepts and explain experimental and theoretical results through his adept use of anecdotes, analogies, and drawing parallels. He does so without overextending the metaphors and straining the constraints of his arguments, as it were.
Since I had read his previous books enthusiastically, I
greeted the news that he was working on this book on one of his messages in his
Substack with great excitement. He is a non-fiction writer that I will unreservedly
read regardless of the subject, although this subject is one that I have been
thinking about throughout my engineering life.
This book is a delight; even better, Epstein left it open
ended as he is going to continue the conversation about constraints through his
Substack newsletters. It is extremely exciting.
As an engineer, I have had to deal with constraints in my
work all my career. Even though I am well aware of the necessity of having
constraints, as Epstein reiterated, in my idealistic perspective of problem
solving, my default reaction has always been to opt for situations where I can
negotiate minimal constraints. Engineers get extremely excited about white
sheet design — meaning that the design is to be done from scratch — even though
white sheet designs never happen. The first thing that happens is that the
design team lays out the constraints: physical, mathematical, manufacturability,
cost, the list goes on and on. We always think in terms of free form thinking
because we are seduced by the freedom promised by open design. Unconstrained thinking
promises thinking that is unimpeded by the detritus of reality; the irony is of
course, that we are supposed to be engineering in reality and not in a fantasy
world. The first chapter is the story that is a serious reminder of how
unfettered thinking can demolish creativity through having to deal with too
many degrees of freedom, so much so that nothing gets done. I have experienced
that firsthand. Beware of giving the creatives too much rope, they will inevitably
hang themselves with it.
As a counter to the first chapter, the second chapter
discusses how a constrained environment — perhaps an over constrained environment
— forced those creatives to be creative. The third chapter tells the story
tells how humans, given the freedom to roam, will inevitably take the short cut
because the constraint isn’t there, and end up chasing ghosts.
David Epstein always manages to find historical anecdotes to
illustrate his points. He managed to find some of my favorite stories. In
particular, the story behind Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert, how it came about,
the kind of constraints that he had to face — constraints that are seemingly impossible
to overcome, and the brilliance of the solution. In the same chapter, the story
of how J. S. Bach severely constrained his composing that he was able to create
some of the most creative and original music in history. There are stories that
I was not aware of that amply demonstrated the point: constraints are not just
beneficial but are essential toward creating original solutions by necessarily creating
obstacles in order to force the creative mind to be creative.
One of the seductive mindsets that many of us naturally fall
under is of originality. Who would turn down the opportunity to be original? David
Epstein convincingly argues that originality may not be so original after all,
that humans have a proclivity to default to the procedural and known when there
are no constraints because there is nothing there for us to push against. This
is an essential point that usually needs to be iterated repeatedly during any problem-solving
effort. Ironically, constraints are what sparks actual originality.
During my early years in the working world, I was made aware
of the book by Eliyahu Goldratt titled The Goal. Indeed, I could
probably dig up my own well thumb copy from my boxes of books in the basement. Goldratt
called the idea behind the book: the Theory of Constraints. I will leave the
explication of Goldratt to Epstein and this book, but it was a delight to find
that the ideas that had fascinated me early in my working life had been cited
in this new book.
Chapter 9 is probably the most personal chapter. It seems as
if it was a very personal chapter for Epstein, it certainly was for me because
it clarified some of the lessons I had learned from Oliver Burkeman’s book 4,000
Weeks. I believe that I read that book because Epstein had lauded it, and
he was prescient. This chapter is personal because it forced me to face my own
work habits, and how ineffective my habits have been in trying to accomplish
what I wished to accomplish. Be forewarned that the crux of the discussion is
NOT how to be more efficient with our time, but how to be effective with our habits
as we apply ourselves in doing what we wish to do. Even as I had subconsciously
changed my own habits prior to reading this chapter, reading the chapter now clarifies
my personal goals.
One of the more effective tools that Epstein used in this,
and all of his books, is that he introduces initial examples, as he did in
Chapters 1 and 2, as well as many other stories; he then deliberately and
repeatedly return to those stories as landmarks, reminding the readers and reiterating
the essential lessons that those stories demonstrate.
The book is categorized by four distinct parts, each part
serves a purpose, and Epstein devotes three chapters to each part. The most
hopeful and useful part is Part IV: Collaboration and Contentment. Epstein uses
this last part to drive home the crux of his point and to inspire the reader to
sum up all the lessons that he had presented in the previous chapters and tie
them up into a coherent whole. I would not say he tied it up in a neat red bow,
the topic is too complex to do so, but it is close enough.
Even though I admire the book and I enjoyed Epstein’s story
telling ability, there were a couple of points
that he made which I felt was either too simplistic or came to a conclusion
that I did not. Which means that I will need to dig deeper into the granularity
of the argument, which is what a good book is supposed to do.
