It’s tough when we hear others say this. Everyone should have a choice, or a few choices. In fact, we tend to learn best, and grow most, when choices are provided to us, and we are given the freedom and flexibility to pick and choose what we want to do, and how we want to do it.
Of course, the same feeling of sadness we feel when choice isn’t available is exactly what we feel when we have too many choices to make a decision. Lack of choice and too much choice tends to make us anxious, angry, and frustrated.
For me, I’m creative to a point. I like to know my parameters and know my boundaries if I am going to be able to think differently and, hopefully, critically. While I can’t work tethered to the surface, I also can’t work in a vacuum. Too many options limits my thinking precisely because I don’t know which pathway to take to get somewhere.
In all that we do, we want to make sure that we have choice; therefore, whether teaching, leading, learning, or a combination, we have to make sure that options are always present; no one should ever feel trapped. That said, just like excellent design thinking practices exhibit, we must make sure that we have constraints in what we do and the choices we make. Otherwise, we’re apt to end up floating from idea snippet to idea snippet, never able to truly land on anything and take root.