Why I Love Boundaries and Why You Should Too

While I am an avid scrapbooker of my own life, I am generally months or even years behind as I happily work on it in small doses. I revel in looking at all of the interesting papers, stickers and other scrapbook tools to find a perfect combination. That takes time. Serious time.

Last month, I was inspired to make a scrapbook as a gift. This scrapbook project had an obvious deadline. I had to make choices and start working right away. Suddenly, the rows and rows of interesting papers were too much. It was overwhelming. How could I finish and make it all look good when there was so much to consider? So I set a color scheme. I would only look at supplies within the color scheme. As soon as I set the color scheme, it was a boundary that made everything else fall into place. The boundary freed me to be more creative. The scrapbook turned out great.

As Barry Schwartz talks about in The Paradox of Choice, too many options actually create problems. (View his talk about it at the TED conference here.) Putting boundaries around your choices can actually make things smoother. To what do you need to add boundaries (a color scheme, a time line, or another boundary)?
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