Most managers want their people to “think outside the box” and come up with “blue sky ideas”. What they don’t realise is that setting constraints on your creative process will often make it easier to come up with really special ideas.

For many people, Weird Al Yankovic is considered a bit of a joke. For those of you who don’t know him, he’s an American musician who spoofs / satirises songs which are popular at the time, and became popular in the early 1990’s with songs like Amish Paradise, Like a Surgeon and Eat It. But this week, his new album Mandatory Fun has just topped the album charts after going viral, and people are taking him a bit more seriously.

I’m not going to write much about the content of the new album, although I’ve included my two favorite tracks here: ‘Word Crimes’ (based on Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke) and ‘Foil’, (based on Royals by Lorde). Instead, I want to use him as an example of how having creative constraints is often one of the most effective ways to produce great creative work.

By satirising specific songs, Weird Al needs to use the existing melody, rhythm, intonation and even rhyme scheme as the original song, but use new words to bring about a completely different meaning. This can be extremely challenging, and many people would expect it to be much harder to come up with ideas if your palette of choices is so limited. Surely it makes more sense that if you give an artist complete freedom to produce anything they like, a ‘blank slate’ some would say, they will be able to produce their best work. But in reality, many artists find such creative constraints free their creativity.

Put another way, many artists admit to struggling to come up with ideas when faces with a blank sheet of paper, especially if they are given complete freedom of time and budget. One of the best known advocates of placing constraints on yourself to spur on your creativity is Grammy-winning White Stripes frontman Jack White.