What happens when a team generates a thousand ideas - and kills most of them within minutes?

In this Quick Win, I speak with Exploding Kittens co-creator Elan Lee about how he and his team turn chaos into creativity during their quarterly design retreats. Over three intense days, they generate, test, and ruthlessly discard ideas - all without bruising egos.

Elan shares how he’s built a culture of trust where killing ideas isn’t failure, it’s focus - and why showing your team it’s safe to let go might be the most powerful leadership move you can make.

Elan and I discuss:

• Inside Exploding Kittens’ quarterly design retreats

• Why Elan ditched the “yes, and…” rule for “no, kill it”

• How to create psychological safety in creative chaos

• The leadership habit that helps teams detach from their ideas

• Why rejecting ideas fast can unlock better ones

KEY QUOTE

“All the best ideas start out as terrible ideas - they just need room to evolve.”

Explore Elan’s games at explodingkittens.com and connect with him on Instagram, X (Twitter), and LinkedIn.

Listen to my full conversation with Elan here.

My latest book The Health Habit is out now. You can order a copy here: https://www.amantha.com/the-health-habit/

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha-imber.ck.page/subscribe

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

Credits:

Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In a portfolio career, requests have a funny way of multiplying. A speaking gig here, a board invite there, a coffee catch-up that sounds valuable but drains you for days. The answer to all of them is technically "yes" right up until the moment it isn't.

Katie is 18 months into consulting and a portfolio career, and she came to me with a problem a lot of people share: she's getting busier, she cares deeply about protecting time for values-driven work, and saying no is a muscle she's still building.

This episode is part of The Work Edit, a format on How I Work where I sit down with someone facing a real professional challenge and we work through it together live.

We cover my yes triage framework, the no club concept, the to-don't list, the never again list, and a simple rule called the next Tuesday test.

Katie and I discuss:

• The yes triage: three questions to run every request through before deciding, and why you need a "hell yes" to at least two of them
• Why saying yes out of flattery or guilt is so common, and how to catch yourself doing it
• The no club: how a small group of trusted colleagues can give you the objective perspective you can't give yourself
• The to-don't list and how to use it monthly to protect your energy from the things you already know drain you
• The never again list for the spectacularly bad decisions you keep forgetting you made
• Why a slow no is not polite and why a fast no within 24 hours is almost always the kinder move
• The next Tuesday test: how to reality-check a far-off commitment by imagining it was happening this week

Key quotes

"A slow no is actually unkind because the other person is just waiting and probably following up when they could already be finding someone who'll say yes."

"What all these strategies do is reduce cognitive load. There's no longer a decision to make. There's just a rule to follow."

My latest book The Energy Game is out on July 7, 2026. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

Credits:

Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: The Podcast Butler

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

**Join the AI Agent Bootcamp here: https://www.inventium.ai/learnvirtually-agents**

You have access to AI. You probably use it a fair bit. And yet there's a good chance you're still manually scrubbing through meeting transcripts, tabbing between LinkedIn and Google News before every sales call, and spending 20 minutes writing an executive summary for a paper you just finished writing.

That gap between having AI and actually letting it take things off your plate is where a lot of time quietly disappears.

In this How I AI episode, Neo and I walk through eight tasks that knowledge workers should never have to do manually again, and what it actually looks like to hand them off to agents.

How I AI is a special series within How I Work where Neo and I explore how high performers are using AI at work to boost productivity, make better decisions and reduce overwhelm.

What you'll learn in this episde:

• Which meeting-related tasks are the easiest to hand off to an agent

• How to build a pre-meeting briefing agent for sales and business development

• Why editing and proofreading agents need very specific instructions to protect your voice

• Where inbox agents are most useful, and what they can and can't do for you

• How to think about agents when comparing options before a purchase decision

• Practical AI tools for productivity and focus

• Real-world AI workflows used by high performers

• How to use AI at work without burning out

• Smart shortcuts for managing time and mental load

Connect with Neo Aplin on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/neoaplin/) and via inventium.ai (https://inventium.ai), where he leads Inventium's AI training and upskilling work with organisations and teams.

My latest book The Energy Game is out on July 7, 2026. You can order a copy here: https://amzn.to/48ID29M

Connect with me on the socials: Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanthaimber)

Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/amanthai)

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work and live, I write a weekly newsletter where I share practical and simple to apply tips to improve your life. You can sign up for that at https://amantha.substack.com/

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

Credits:

Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.