I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier.

One of my secrets of adulthood is that often when we give ourselves limits, we give ourselves

freedom.

That's one of the models of the upholder tendency, and it's also true and often remarked

that even for people who aren't upholders, when we give ourselves limits, we often spark

creativity.

It just doesn't seem like this would be true, but it turns out that it is true.

For instance, a lot of listeners loved the try this at home to write a haiku that Elizabeth

and I talked about in episode 117.

Happing to follow that strict structure of syllables in a 5, 7, 5 pattern unleashes new

thoughts, and it's surprisingly fun to have to figure out how to make it work.

And I recently learned another example of how limits can spark creativity.

In television, a bottle episode is an episode that's meant to cost as little as possible.

So to keep expenses down, the episode is written to use only the regular cast.

It's set in a single location, and if possible, the main standing set and has no fancy effects.

Often a bottle episode is an episode that's made cheaply in order to make more room in

the budget for another episode to be made more expensively.

So for a bottle episode, choices are quite constrained.

But it turns out that the people who make TV often rise to this challenge.

I love the television show Friends, and I read it on Friends, the success of their bottle

episode, the one where no one's ready in season 3 inspired the show to create at least

one bottle episode in each season.

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