constraints boost – David Epstein, author of Range and The Sports Gene, lays out five practical ways deliberate constraints—like cutting commitments, batching email, and setting “good-enough” rules—can improve focus, reduce stress, and make people think differently at work.
At many workplaces, the biggest threat to getting things done isn’t a lack of effort.. It’s the constant reshuffling of attention—too many projects running at once. inboxes pinging dozens of times a day. and the default urge to take the familiar route on every problem.. David Epstein’s new book. Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better. takes aim at that cycle with a counterintuitive message: limit what you can do. on purpose.
Epstein—an author of The New York Times bestsellers Range and The Sports Gene and a former senior writer for Sports Illustrated and investigative reporter for ProPublica—argues that constraints and simplification strategies can help people focus better. become more productive. and make more creative decisions.. He outlines five ways to put the idea into practice.
First, make commitments visible enough that you can’t ignore them.. In one genomics lab. staff wrote each current project on Post-it notes—one project per note—and posted them on a wall.. The team quickly saw they had “way too many things in progress at once. ” Epstein says. and used that clarity to pick priorities.
Epstein frames the exercise as a subtraction audit.. People, he notes, struggle to take things away—an effect he links to a concept called subtractive neglect bias.. The prompt he recommends is direct: if you had to cut one item out in the next 90 days. which would it be?. You may not have to kill the project forever, but placing it on hold can clarify what truly matters.
Second, reduce the mental churn of constant switching by batching email.. Epstein points to psychologist Gloria Mark. who studied workplace behavior and found people in offices check email about 77 different times a day on average.. Frequent toggling. Epstein writes. lowers both productivity and stress. and switching tasks repeatedly can also affect the pace and quality of work.
He describes the brain like a whiteboard: each time you switch tasks. you erase what you were doing. but residue remains and interferes with the next thing.. The result is less cognitive bandwidth for successive tasks.. Instead of answering all day long, Epstein says consider dividing email into one, two, or three batches a day.
If monotasking feels hard, he suggests starting small—begin the day with 30 minutes of non-toggling work focused exclusively on your most important task, then gradually expand the blocks before opening the inbox.
Third, use a constraint to break out of the default “easy” solution.. Epstein calls this “preclude constraint. ” where you intentionally block the familiar path so you’re forced to think in new ways.. He ties the idea to research on how decision-making works: thinking is energetically costly. and the brain tends to reach for habits and convenience.
To make the approach concrete, Epstein describes his own writing process for Inside the Box.. When starting new chapters. he would jot down the first idea that came to mind—but then cross it out and force himself to find another beginning.. “It was annoying and inconvenient. ” he says. but it pushed him to choose where to start based on what was truly best.
For work problems, the prompt is similar: ask, “If we couldn’t recommend the usual thing at our next client meeting, what would we do instead?” Even if the familiar option wins, Epstein argues it’s worth exploring the alternatives.
Fourth, start with the “box” before you build the project.. Epstein credits Tony Fadell—best known as the lead designer of the iPod and later cofounder of Nest—with a technique aimed at narrowing decisions early.. Fadell, Epstein says, advises entrepreneurs to write a press release before embarking on the work.. At Nest, the team even prototyped the literal box before the product.
Epstein quotes Fadell’s reasoning: the early step forces teams to prioritize what they’re trying to communicate to the end user. clarify those messages. and decide what matters first.. Fadell also suggests writing a single-page press release “as if your project were done. ” answering what it will look like. what problem it solves. and what people should say when it’s finished.
Epstein says he used the same approach for his own projects.. He notes that his previous books had “really sprawled. ” so for this one he made a full structural outline of the book on a single page.. That boundary. he writes. slowed him down at first. but it helped him prioritize sharply—so much so that it was the first time he didn’t write “50% over the length” allotted.. He also says he turned the book in early, which he calls “unheard of” for him.
Finally, set “satisficing” rules and stick with them.. Epstein explains satisficing as a term coined by Herbert Simon. a Nobel laureate in economics who was also one of the founders of AI and cognitive psychology.. Simon’s point. as Epstein tells it. is that people can’t optimize decisions the way classical economic theory assumes because bandwidth is limited and predicting the future is hard.
So, instead of maximizing every choice, Simon argued for good-enough decision rules. Epstein says the approach works like this: once an option meets your threshold, you choose it and don’t keep looking.
He contrasts satisficing with maximizing—the mindset of evaluating every option for the “best” answer—using examples like endlessly searching on Netflix for something better. or swiping further on dating apps even after finding someone you like.. Epstein includes a line from the research he cites: “Maximizers are less satisfied with their decisions.” He adds that psychology research suggests maximizers are also less satisfied with their lives and more prone to regret.
Epstein closes the point with Simon’s own habits.. Simon wore the same brand of socks. kept only one beret at a time. and bought a new one only when the old one wore out.. He told his daughter a person needs three pairs of clothing: one on the body. one in the closet ready to wear. and one in the wash.. He ate the same breakfast every day and lived in the same house for 46 years.. Simon also famously wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.”
In Epstein’s telling, the constraint isn’t about lowering standards for everything—it’s about deliberately saving cognitive bandwidth for the decisions that truly matter.
David Epstein Inside the Box constraints productivity creativity email batching monotasking satisficing Herbert Simon Tony Fadell workplace focus