Why I Don’t Brainstorm

Brainstorming is one of those practices that feels unquestionably right. It sounds creative, collaborative, and modern. It looks productive. People leave the room energized, the whiteboard is full, and there’s a comforting sense that “we did something.”

I’ve learned to be suspicious of that feeling

The core assumption behind brainstorming is that good ideas appear when many people think at the same time. In practice, this often produces the opposite effect. The room fills with opinions before the problem is properly understood. Speed replaces depth. Expression replaces thinking.

Ideas are not the hard part.

Understanding is.

Most brainstorming sessions begin with solutions. Someone says, “What if we add this feature?” Another person builds on it. Soon, the discussion is no longer about the problem—it’s about refining an assumption that was never questioned in the first place.

This is how teams move fast in the wrong direction.

There is also a human dynamic that rarely gets acknowledged. In group settings, thinking is not independent. The first idea anchors the conversation. The most confident voice carries more weight than the most accurate one. Seniority subtly shapes what feels acceptable to say. Even well-intentioned teams end up converging too early.

What you get is alignment, not insight.

That’s why I prefer to think alone first.

Isolation removes social pressure. It allows slower, deeper thought. When I work alone, I can follow a question all the way down without worrying about sounding wrong, boring, or uncertain. I can sit with ambiguity long enough for the real structure of the problem to reveal itself.

I usually start by writing, not ideating. I try to describe the problem in the simplest possible language. If I can’t explain it clearly, I assume I don’t understand it yet. This alone eliminates most bad ideas before they are even formed.

From there, I work from first principles.

What do we know for sure?

What constraints cannot be violated?

What would make a solution obviously fail?

Only after answering these do solutions begin to appear—and they tend to be fewer, sharper, and more grounded in reality.

At this stage, collaboration becomes useful.

I don’t bring people in to generate ideas. I bring them in to challenge them. The goal is not creativity, but stress-testing. I want others to attack assumptions, find edge cases, and point out blind spots. This kind of collaboration improves thinking instead of diluting it.

Constraints play a central role in this process.

There is a common belief that creativity requires freedom. In my experience, creativity requires boundaries. When everything is possible, nothing is clear. When constraints are tight, trade-offs become visible. Bad ideas collapse quickly. Good ones survive pressure.

Brainstorming expands the solution space too early.

Thinking compresses it at the right time.

As a founder, my responsibility is not to maximize participation. It is to minimize error. Every decision compounds. Every wrong direction has a cost that doesn’t show up immediately. Clarity upfront is cheaper than correction later.

Brainstorming optimizes for energy.

Building optimizes for correctness.

So I don’t brainstorm.

I think quietly.

I write until the problem is precise.

Then I collaborate with intention.

That approach is less exciting in the moment, but far more effective over time.