I want to ship amazing things and yet it’s really hard to avoid mediocrity when you’re building things.
I’m sitting here on a Sunday morning after listening to a MFM episode on naming things and had a bunch of thoughts around building a creative culture. This is a memo I wrote to my team today and I’m sharing it with you all.
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I often find as a team we tend to shut down ideas too quickly, or we don’t empower the team to think creatively. I actually think everyone in this company has creativity - it’s not just “creative people” and “non-creative people”. I think there are a number of cultural things & frameworks to ensure we don’t kill the process.
Open to hearing everyone’s thoughts as well but this is what I’ve personally felt (also to be clear, I’m definitely guilty of a lot of these too!)
How to Not Kill the Creative Process
Separate dreaming from judging. When you’re generating ideas, don’t evaluate them at the same time. These are two different modes and they can’t coexist. Disney apparently had three separate rooms - one to dream, one to plan, one to judge. You don’t judge in the dreaming room. When we mix the two, we anchor the whole conversation to what’s safe and workable before the interesting stuff has had a chance to breathe.
ACTIONS:
Don’t say “that won’t work.”
Redirect instead. When someone brings you a rough idea, resist the urge to say “that’s too expensive” or “that’ll never pass legal.” Instead try: “I wish we could make that work - how might we?” You’ve turned a shutdown into a problem-solving prompt. Generally people love solving problems. It also doesn’t just kill the ‘energy’ of the conversation
Give ideas time to live. Just say things like “that’s a great idea - I wonder how we could build that?” if you really want to push it. There’s a moment where ideas just need to exist before we start pairing them down. I feel that when we do that we converge on mediocrity.
In the naming podcast they come up with 2000 ideas. I’m not saying we need 2000 ideas but we often limit ourselves or fixate on the first idea without a divergent exploration. @max always talks about the ‘local maxima’ - it’s what happens when you don’t do a divergent exploration
Philosophies Around Creativity I Think About
Desirability before viability. Fall in love with the idea before you interrogate it. “That’ll never work” is the most expensive sentence in business - not because it’s always wrong, but because it’s almost always premature. But a warning: this cuts both ways. Refusing to ever evaluate is just as destructive as evaluating too early. Desirability-first is a sequencing principle, not a permanent stance. You still have to ship. (Heard this phrasing from Shaan Puri)
Start with the weird. This is a Jason Fried thing. Start with the weird idea first - the one that makes you uncomfortable. You can always dial it back. You can never dial up something that started boring. When you begin in the safe zone, you anchor the entire conversation there.
The energy of a polarising idea: if nobody hates it, nobody loves it. I love ideas that 50% of people hate. Ideas that everyone finds “fine” are invisible. Polarising ideas have energy in them. Safe choices feel like progress - they’re actually surrender. The naming expert who came up with Swiffer, Blackberry, and Impossible Burger calls this the “comfort trap”: where high familiarity meets low distinctiveness. Every one of those names was rejected by the client at first because they were polarising. That polarisation was the signal, not the problem. I think we can all sit with the polarising energy or investigate why we feel this way. Note: this doesn’t mean all polarising ideas are amazing but there is energy in that and it’s worth exploring or investigating. Why do we feel that way?
Anyways the main takeaway here is just asking ourselves how we can be a better sparring partner to others so that we don’t kill the creative energy and how do we ensure that when we create things we don’t settle for the local maximas by doing more divergent exploration.
Hope this was useful. I’m actually just going to start writing more raw, less structured thoughts in these newsletters. The high polish has been killing my personal creative process so we’ll see how these go!
Until next time,
Ajay
🧠 Ajay’s Resource Bank
A few tools and collections I’ve built (or obsessively curated) over the years:
100+ Mental Models
Mental shortcuts and thinking tools I’ve refined over the past decade. These have evolved as I’ve gained experience — pruned, updated, and battle-tested.100+ Questions
If you want better answers, ask better questions. These are the ones I keep returning to — for strategy, reflection, and unlocking stuck conversations.Startup OS
A lightweight operating system I built for running startups. I’m currently adapting it for growth teams as I scale Superpower — thinking about publishing it soon.Remote Games & Activities
Fun team-building exercises and games (many made in Canva) that actually work. Good for offsites, Zoom fatigue, or breaking the ice with distributed teams.
✅ Ajay’s “would recommend” List
These are tools and services I use personally and professionally — and recommend without hesitation:
Athyna – Offshore Hiring Done Right
I personally have worked with assistants overseas and built offshore teams. Most people get this wrong by assuming you have to go the lowest cost for automated work. Try hiring high quality, strategic people for a fraction of the cost instead.Superpower – It starts with a 100+ lab tests
I joined Superpower as Head of Growth, but I originally came on to fix my health. In return, I got a full diagnostic panel, a tailored action plan, and ongoing support that finally gave me clarity after years of flying blind.
