About this quote

A tight label makes something feel smaller and decided before you've explored it. Pinning a person, idea, or plan to one name cuts off other possibilities you might have tried. That can speed a decision, but it also traps you into the wrong route. Try holding a description lightly for a while and test another way of seeing it before you commit.

When to use it

• At a product sprint retro, I said, "To define is to limit," to push the team to sketch different directions instead of locking one feature.
• In my art critique, someone called my painting "abstract" and I mentioned the line to explain why that single tag flattened what I was exploring.
• At a family dinner, a cousin labeled my sister "the quiet one" and I used the line to stop the label from becoming the whole story.
• After a bad race, my coach wouldn't let me call myself "slow"—he quoted the line while we focused on specific technique fixes.