Constraints build capacity, goals just collect outcomes

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we structure our work lives, especially as someone with AuDHD navigating the tech world. Here’s what I’ve realized: goals are great for accomplishing things, but constraints are what actually build lasting capabilities.

There’s a fundamental difference between having run a 5K and being capable of running one whenever you want. The first is an achievement; the second is a capacity you carry with you. And I’ve found that developing that kind of durable capacity comes from the constraints I choose to live by, not the targets I occasionally hit.

When I talk about constraints, I’m not being abstract. I mean concrete, self-imposed operating procedures: “I stop working at 5 PM.” “No meetings before 10 AM.” “Ship one small change before lunch.” These aren’t suggestions or ideals – they’re guardrails that protect both my work and the rest of my life from bleeding into each other.

The softer constraints matter too. “Don’t work with jerks” might sound like a preference, but it’s actually a meta-rule that protects all my other boundaries. I’ve learned this the hard way: if I join a team where late nights are normalized, my “no work past 5” rule dies through a thousand tiny exceptions. So I’ve added an upstream rule: don’t join cultures where my downstream rules can’t survive.

Goals often masquerade as clarity when they’re really just placeholders. We set a neat metric because we’re not entirely sure what we truly value. And once that goal is established, it brings all this residue – assumptions about “how things are done” that narrow our thinking. We start optimizing for crossing finish lines instead of building sustainable, repeatable practices. You can technically “hit 10,000 steps” by frantically pacing at 11:58 PM, but you can’t fake “phone off after 9 PM” without actually turning the thing off.

What I love about constraints is that they force second-order thinking. When you set tight rules, the simple solutions become impossible, so you have to redesign the entire process – your environment, your defaults, your sequence of actions. That’s the exact mechanism by which capability forms: you shape conditions until the behavior you want becomes your path of least resistance. This is especially important for me personally because having both Autism and ADHD is a perfect storm: deeply needing structure and repetition while simultaneously being often incapable of sustaining it.

I’m fascinated by how some of the most creative work emerges from deliberate constraints, though. Richard Feynman didn’t set big Big Hairy Audacious Goals when he felt stuck: he picked a problem he’d collected (you do collect interesting problems, right?) and set some simple constraints about what he was allowed to do while trying to solve it and curiosity did the rest. That wasn’t aimless wandering. It was disciplined attention within boundaries. Cutting off common paths with artificial boundaries requires finding new ones: a durable skill.

Here’s the part I’ve had to learn to accept: not every game deserves my effort. If the rules that keep me sustainable can’t exist within a role or team, the problem isn’t my rules – it’s the game. I need to either change the ruleset or change the game entirely.

If you want to experiment with this approach, keep it small and concrete: write three constraints that protect your energy and focus (maybe one time rule, one scope rule, and one culture rule). Live by them for a week. Don’t add a goal. Instead, measure capability: Did your day get easier to repeat? Did your evenings stay calm without heroics?

Goals collect outcomes. Constraints create the person who can produce those outcomes – again and again.