One paradoxical aspect of innovation - to increase your creativity or output, it's a good idea to decrease your creative bounds.
For example:
- Timeboxing - Limiting the time you have to execute a task, helping reduce the effect of Parkinson's Law (the tendency for work to expand to the time allotted for its completion)
- Sizeboxing - Limiting the physical size in which you can produce work e.g. limiting your essays to the screenshot of a phone, writing individual notes on 4x6 index cards, record a song with only two instruments, paint on canvas no more than 4x4 inches.
- Scopeboxing - Limiting the scope of ideas you're allowed to produce e.g. "If I was the only one working on this project, what kinds of risks would I focus on mitigating?"