Jerry Seinfeld says the rules are the fun part: a refreshing lesson for creators
His TV show got away with so much because it embraced the rules.
There’s a quote from Jerry Seinfeld I just can’t get out of my head. He said it in a 60 Minutes interview in 1997 just as his show Seinfeld was coming to an end.
Reporter Steve Kroft asks how the show got away with adult themes on primetime television. “You’ve been able to disguise all of it as family entertainment,” Kroft said.
Seinfeld’s response was interesting. He doesn’t attack political correctness, polite society, or censors. You might expect his answer to be that his show succeeds despite this oversight. Rather, he says: “That’s fun, that’s part of the game. It’s like playing by the rules. That’s what makes the game fun is the rules. Without the rules, it’s not fun.”
“That’s what makes the game fun is the rules. Without the rules, it’s not fun.”
This is a beautiful way to think about creating. Instead of viewing boundaries or limits on your work as hindrances, think of them as merely the rules of the game, which make the game fun. Rules force us to find work-arounds, strategize, take risks, and experiment. Without rules there is no game, just action without an end.
Basketball without lines that tell the players where the game can be played is chaos. Great players don’t complain about the constraint, they work within it. The same goes for creating.
It’s counter-intuitive. The world teaches us to unshackle ourselves from forces holding us back, which is often the right approach. But we all face the rules of the game eventually, whether it be literal rules like deadlines, word counts, and budgets — or limits on time, money and energy.
So rather than fight limitations or boundaries we work in, maybe we focus on working within them and accepting them as the rules of the game, which make the game fun.