The Unlimited Power of Limitation
Limitation: A limiting rule or circumstance; a restriction.
Everyone has experienced this at some point in their lives. Whether it be a lack of connections in the business world, lack of knowledge about a topic, or a lack of money; at some point, you have likely felt that you were unable to do something due to a lack of something. At face value limitation just plain sucks, and while that is true, beneath the surface of the issue there is the power to not being able to get what you want.
While limitation limits can restrict what you can do there is no end to the skills it can build. The limitations that I have experienced in my life have allowed me to do many things, and in a way, I attribute them to the place that I am currently at. Limitation forced me to spend to much time on projects, think more than I should have had to and learn unnecessary amounts of information; and for this I am grateful.
Creativity
Seaperch.
For those who don’t know, Seaperch is an educational competition hosted by the Office of Naval Research in which a group of students must build and operate a small underwater vehicle capable of completing a series of tasks that change from year to year. When I participated in this challenge I was in charge of the propulsion system for the robot and because I had no budget for creating said the system, I had to get creative. At home I found myself with an old remote, some motors, receiver and an Arduino. If I had money for this project I would have simply purchased a more up to date remote along with an ESC (Electronic Speed Controller) but because that wasn’t an option I was forced to create a custom ESC with the Ardunio. While this example might not be the most creative thing ever, it is just an example of how you can find different ways to do things with the resources you have. Limits force more creative solutions.
Limitations also taught me how to be more creative about the problem and not just the solutions. For example, if I thought I wanted a new computer, was it that I really wanted a new computer or is it just that I want faster load times for my files? By first being more creative in the way in which I framed the problems, I was able to find more creative solutions in order to solve these problems. What a lack of finances taught me first was how to analyze what I really want; how to restate the problem at hand. To go back to the example above, if it turned out that I did in fact just want faster load times, it changes the questions that ask; by extension, changing the results.
Perseverance
While this is not a completely direct lesson, a byproduct for me of limitation has been gaining more perseverance. While creative solutions come from trying to solve the problem, I have gained perseverance from the process of solving the problems. Unable to afford a real VR headset, I recently began a project to merge ARKit and GVR to create a cheaper VR experience. I spent hours working on how to combine these two different SDKs in Unity and getting a working solution for this took about a week of trying different verisions of Unity, editing scripts, and reading the documentation before I found a solution. While it wasn’t the limitation that directly lead to the development in my perseverance, the process set in place by it did. Throughout the many different projects, I have started as a creative solution to an issue I was having, they all taught me how to truly push through in order to find a solution.
Knowledge
To me, this is really the most important lesson that can be gained from limitation. It rides off the back of the other points above, but I think for me, it was the most valuable. Have limitations that caused to find a more creative solution to problems and then push forward for weeks on end is what has allowed for me to learn about all sorts of things. The best example of this is when I was learned that you could create something called a Hackintosh this idea coming about because I didn’t have the money to buy an actual Mac. So, using some cheap computers that I had lying around I began to disassemble them and rebuild them in an effort to see if I could install macOS onto them. Throughout this time, I had no idea what I was doing, but by learning as I went through watching videos and reading articles, weeks later I found myself knowing how to build a computer along with knowledge of the current hardware in circulation. While this project sadly didn’t end with me in possession of a Hackintosh, the knowledge I was left with proved invaluable in the long run when I was able to afford parts to a build a function Hackintsoh years later. Throughout my life, it is limitations like these that have forced me to learn new skills and truly learn about the things for the sake of learning.
This is just my personal experience with the limitations in my life, and while I know that my experience is somewhat inconsequential compared to more serious issues, I do think that limitation can really build the three points above. There are many more than this to be learned, so I encourage you to examine your life to see how limitation has helped you grow. Everyone has struggled in their lives and in these, we grow.
