In 1665, the Black Death was spreading across Europe. The bubonic plague would kill 15% of the population it’s first summer in England. People were fleeing from major metropolitan areas. The famous diary of Samuel Pepys described astonishing scenes of empty London streets, as anyone who could leave did.
At the time, Isaac Newton, just a normal student and not a scientific genius, was studying at Trinity College, Cambridge, to avoid the plague he was sent home to Woolsthrorpe Manor, where the famous apple tree can still be found today.
While at home, he had no professors or teachers to guide him but he continued to work on mathematics and even called the quarantine year annus mirabilis or the year of wonder.
During the year, Newton invented Calculus (Calculus was invented by Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz roughly at the same time). With this breakthrough, he could figure out how fast items were falling at any given time and started to describe gravity. The story of the apple actually falling on him is mostly apocryphal.
Constraints
While we might not have the mathematical or scientific mind of Newton, his time at home during the plague can offer some insight into what you can do.
Creativity doesn’t happen when you are given unlimited time and resources, it happens when you are put in a box. When you have constraints on what you can’t do and are forced to think in new and different ways.
How do you turn the constraints you currently face into an asset?
Turn a weakness into a strength
Amazon.com turned its expense line into an asset. Shipping is a cost the businesses either pass on to the customer or eat themselves and hide within the price. Amazon.com created Amazon Prime which gave free delivery. They made the expense line of shipping into a cash flow machine.
Abundance
We are rarely in a position to have everything we need all the time. We can always look at what we don’t have. Or you can reframe and look at what you have, how you can use it to your advantage, and how you can turn that weakness into a strength?
Luke McMeeken-Ruscoe 