00:00:01
Speaker 1: Have you ever been in a room where a thousand ideas are born and most of them die within minutes. That's what happens every quarter when Elan Lee, co creator of the megabst selling game Exploding Kittens, gathers his team for their quarterly three day design retreats. They fly everyone in, lock away their phones, and spend days creating, testing, and mostly killing ideas. It's not about saying yes, and it's about saying no next fast, brutally, without ego. By the end of this quick Win episode, you will learn how to turn idea overload into creative gold, and how to protect your team's trust while doing it. Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. I heard you talk about the quarterly design retreats that you have, and I would love you to explain like what that process involves, because yeah, I found it incredibly interesting.
00:01:13
Speaker 2: Thanks. Yeah, it's kind of Look, there's no rocket science I'm about to describe, but we have found that getting everyone in the same room, physical location, making eye contact is the best way to start with the game design process. So we usually either use my house or we rent an airbnb. Anyone who is remote, we fly them in. We usually do this for three days, and it's three days of us all sleeping in the same place, eating the same meals, like really really getting in there with each other, and making sure that like you're not distracted by your phone, you have no other meetings, there are no other obligations, like all of the pressure that you normally experience. We've all committed to put all of that stuff on hold for these three days. Is because we're going to play. And more important than play is we're going to iterate. All the best ideas that I've had that anyone has ever had start out as terrible ideas, and they have to have room to evolve from terrible to great. And you can only do that with focus, with relentlessness, and with the passion that is kind of like contagious. When we all get in the room together and somebody says, yes, but what if, And then somebody else says, Oh, I like that, but what if this? And on and on that process goes in order for us to either get to great or to say this has no chance, let's abandon it and move on.
00:02:41
Speaker 1: What else would I be observing, Like, if I was a fly on the wall for this creative process where you've, you know, put away all the pressures of daily life, what else would I observe that I would be like, Oh, wow, that's interesting.
00:02:53
Speaker 2: You know that improv theory where they say you never say no, you all say yes, and we hate that. We don't use that at all. That's the worst idea. We are very very liberal with. Yeah, that sucks. Let's just move on. And that's great because we're going through so many ideas so quickly. It's very important to not take any personal pride in anything. Instead to say, here's why I don't think this thing is going to work. Ever, let's not waste any more time on it, because we are capable of generating a thousand more ideas in the next hour. Let's move on. And undoubtedly we are abandoning tons of gems in there, stuff that could eventually be developed into something amazing if we adopted the yes and theory. But we'd only be going through two or three ideas a day. And what I much prefer is to go through thousands a day because the output for those meetings is incredible, and we learned that right, Like we started with yes, and now we're at no, kill it, and on we go.
00:03:53
Speaker 1: And how do you create the conditions so that people and not just laving with the eat our ego in the rubbish ship?
00:04:02
Speaker 2: How does that work? It's just leadership. It's like I show, I give everybody permission to destroy my ideas immediately, and the first time they do, I'm very careful to show Okay, yeah, cool, let's pick up what about this? And I pick up another thing, and as long as they can see there's no ego involved, nothing is taken personally. By the end of their first session, especially when we have new designers in there, by the end of those three days, everyone is so proud of the like five or six beautiful things that we have come up with that you know, Okay, next time, I'm going to trust this process. It works so well, so let's just go with it.
00:04:39
Speaker 1: How are you making decisions? Because I imagine, I mean, like, if you're generating that many ideas, every idea that you're caping, your killing involves it like essentially a decision, even if it's a micro decision.
00:04:50
Speaker 2: What's the process for that? As soon as somebody says to kill an idea. That's usually the definitive answer, unless someone else wants to chime in and say, wait a second, here's why I think we should spend another minute on that. If a game or a core loop has a champion like that, we'll linger on it for sure until all of those exceptions have been exhausted, and once that happens, then we move on. So it's a very collective decision making process. There is no leader in the room. There's nobody with authority. It's do we think this thing has legs or not. They're very talented people in that room. We all trust each other and so we just trust the group think to get us through that process.
00:05:31
Speaker 1: What I love most about Elon's process is how he reframes rejection. Killing ideas isn't failure, it's focus. It's how great ideas earn their place. So the next time your brainstorming, try this. Invite people to challenge your ideas first, show them it's safe to let go. That is how you build creative trust. Now, if you like this quick win, you will enjoy my full conversation with Elan, where we dive deeper into how he designs games that create connection not competition. You will find a link to that in the show notes. If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the Coulan nation.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been in a room where a thousand ideas are born and most of them die within minutes. That's what happens every quarter when Elan Lee, co creator of the megabst selling game Exploding Kittens, gathers his team for their quarterly three day design retreats. They fly everyone in, lock away their phones, and spend days creating, testing, and mostly killing ideas. It's not about saying yes, and it's about saying no next fast, brutally, without ego. By the end of this quick Win episode, you will learn how to turn idea overload into creative gold, and how to protect your team's trust while doing it. Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals, and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor Amantha Imber. I heard you talk about the quarterly design retreats that you have, and I would love you to explain like what that process involves, because yeah, I found it incredibly interesting.
00:01:13
Speaker 2: Thanks. Yeah, it's kind of Look, there's no rocket science I'm about to describe, but we have found that getting everyone in the same room, physical location, making eye contact is the best way to start with the game design process. So we usually either use my house or we rent an airbnb. Anyone who is remote, we fly them in. We usually do this for three days, and it's three days of us all sleeping in the same place, eating the same meals, like really really getting in there with each other, and making sure that like you're not distracted by your phone, you have no other meetings, there are no other obligations, like all of the pressure that you normally experience. We've all committed to put all of that stuff on hold for these three days. Is because we're going to play. And more important than play is we're going to iterate. All the best ideas that I've had that anyone has ever had start out as terrible ideas, and they have to have room to evolve from terrible to great. And you can only do that with focus, with relentlessness, and with the passion that is kind of like contagious. When we all get in the room together and somebody says, yes, but what if, And then somebody else says, Oh, I like that, but what if this? And on and on that process goes in order for us to either get to great or to say this has no chance, let's abandon it and move on.
00:02:41
Speaker 1: What else would I be observing, Like, if I was a fly on the wall for this creative process where you've, you know, put away all the pressures of daily life, what else would I observe that I would be like, Oh, wow, that's interesting.
00:02:53
Speaker 2: You know that improv theory where they say you never say no, you all say yes, and we hate that. We don't use that at all. That's the worst idea. We are very very liberal with. Yeah, that sucks. Let's just move on. And that's great because we're going through so many ideas so quickly. It's very important to not take any personal pride in anything. Instead to say, here's why I don't think this thing is going to work. Ever, let's not waste any more time on it, because we are capable of generating a thousand more ideas in the next hour. Let's move on. And undoubtedly we are abandoning tons of gems in there, stuff that could eventually be developed into something amazing if we adopted the yes and theory. But we'd only be going through two or three ideas a day. And what I much prefer is to go through thousands a day because the output for those meetings is incredible, and we learned that right, Like we started with yes, and now we're at no, kill it, and on we go.
00:03:53
Speaker 1: And how do you create the conditions so that people and not just laving with the eat our ego in the rubbish ship?
00:04:02
Speaker 2: How does that work? It's just leadership. It's like I show, I give everybody permission to destroy my ideas immediately, and the first time they do, I'm very careful to show Okay, yeah, cool, let's pick up what about this? And I pick up another thing, and as long as they can see there's no ego involved, nothing is taken personally. By the end of their first session, especially when we have new designers in there, by the end of those three days, everyone is so proud of the like five or six beautiful things that we have come up with that you know, Okay, next time, I'm going to trust this process. It works so well, so let's just go with it.
00:04:39
Speaker 1: How are you making decisions? Because I imagine, I mean, like, if you're generating that many ideas, every idea that you're caping, your killing involves it like essentially a decision, even if it's a micro decision.
00:04:50
Speaker 2: What's the process for that? As soon as somebody says to kill an idea. That's usually the definitive answer, unless someone else wants to chime in and say, wait a second, here's why I think we should spend another minute on that. If a game or a core loop has a champion like that, we'll linger on it for sure until all of those exceptions have been exhausted, and once that happens, then we move on. So it's a very collective decision making process. There is no leader in the room. There's nobody with authority. It's do we think this thing has legs or not. They're very talented people in that room. We all trust each other and so we just trust the group think to get us through that process.
00:05:31
Speaker 1: What I love most about Elon's process is how he reframes rejection. Killing ideas isn't failure, it's focus. It's how great ideas earn their place. So the next time your brainstorming, try this. Invite people to challenge your ideas first, show them it's safe to let go. That is how you build creative trust. Now, if you like this quick win, you will enjoy my full conversation with Elan, where we dive deeper into how he designs games that create connection not competition. You will find a link to that in the show notes. If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on the traditional land of the Warrangery people, part of the Coulan nation.
