Believe it or not, human creativity benefits from constraints. According to psychologists, when you have less to work with, you actually begin to see the world differently. With constraints, you dedicate your mental energy to acting more resourcefully. When challenged, you figure out new ways to be better.
The most successful creative people know that constraints give their minds the impetus to leap higher. People who invent new products are not limited by what they don't have or can't do. They leverage their limitations to push themselves even further. Many products and services are created because the founders saw a limitation in what they use. They created innovation based on what was not working for them at the moment.
Innovation is a creative person's response to limitation. In a 2015 study which examined how thinking about scarcity or abundance influences how creatively people use their resources, Ravi Mehta at the University of Illinois and Meng Zhu at Johns Hopkins University found that people simply have no incentive to use what's available to them in novel ways. When people face scarcity, they give themselves the freedom to use resources in less conventional ways because they have to. Obstacles can broaden your perception and open up your thinking processes. Consistent constraints help you improve at connecting unrelated ideas and concepts.
Marissa Mayer, former vice president for search products and user experience at Google, once wrote in a publication on Bloomberg, "Constraints shape and focus problems and provide clear challenges to overcome; Creativity thrives best when constrained."