Creativity has been top of mind lately. In a recent episode of My Best Campaign, I interviewed the CMO of Crayola, and she defined creativity as the practice of “putting imagination into action.” 

As AI seeps deeper into daily life, true imagination seems to be the first thing we farm out to tech. Like many of you, I fear that creativity is a muscle that will atrophy when we stop putting imagination into action, and instead outsource to the AI in our pockets. 

In a recent (brilliant) interview with Ezra Klein, Brian Eno captured this risk in a way that only he could:

“When I was a kid, I liked watercolor painting a lot. And I used to notice that after a day of painting, the water that I was dipping my brush into, which was, of course, a mixture of all the colors I’d touched that day, was always the same color. I called it “munge,” a sort of purply, browny — horrible color, basically.

“And whenever I’ve tried creating things on ChatGPT … I work very hard to get my prompts right and to filter what I’m saying to it and to try to urge it into something interesting. But the color of munge covers all of it. It’s so overdigested, and of course, it’s quoting things, it’s using things, on the basis of how frequently they have appeared.”

With the launch of OpenAI’s Sora and Meta’s Vibes, we’re witnessing the Slop Tsunami—a flood of low-quality content generated by AI (thanks to In Good Co. for that perfect term). Some of it is weird and surprising, but like all the AI hype that has come before, it’s sure to turn into an ocean of munge. And that munge will bleed out into brands and campaigns as leaders and budget-holders look for creative shortcuts. 

There will always be campaigns that break through, and certainly some will come from AI, but the best work will start with a human brainwave. My anxiety is that we’ll lose the habit of pushing through creative problems. Of sitting with a sentence and fine-tuning it for an extra level of linguistic magic. Of inventing new words when the existing ones don’t quite nail it. Of taking risks on a truly out-there idea instead of settling for a gen AI list of so-so ones. Of starting four sentences with “of” because: human creative license. 

As a leader, my priority right now is keeping my team creatively fit—ensuring we preserve the resilience it takes to sit with a problem long enough to solve it on our own, even if we (may) eventually bring in AI to support on production. I want to create more opportunities for creative frustration and persistence. I want everyone on my team to cultivate the muscle of human ingenuity.

And I wish that for you, too. 

In that spirit, here are four very simple ways I’m keeping my creative connective tissue strong right now:

• Drawing and coloring with crayons – The stakes seem lower when I’m using such a playful medium. I don’t beat myself up if the result isn’t a masterpiece.
• Collage nights – I’ve been participating in events in Portland that provide supplies, drinks and a judgment-free space to literally cut and paste.
• Freewriting – Whether you hate or love The Artist’s Way, the practice of Morning Pages (three pages of free-flow writing to start each day) is one of the greatest creative unlocks.
• Oblique Strategies – Speaking of Brian Eno, for over a decade I’ve been using his deck of Oblique Strategies when I’m creatively stuck and need an unblock. These are weird—oblique even!—little prompts that help you look at a problem in a new way. 
• Staring out the window – I’m forcing myself to sit with creative blocks instead of going to AI for munge-y answers. I’m forcing myself to write 10 possible subject lines and headlines for this blog post, just like I did in the old days.

We’ve been talking a lot about intentionally cultivating boredom, and I think creatives have a stronger responsibility to sit in blank spaces, put imagination to the test and go where AI just isn’t capable. 

I’d love to know: How are you training imagination and getting in your creative reps? 

What are your AI-proof strategies for preserving ingenuity and keeping the munge tide at bay?

Send your ideas my way, and they may appear in a future Monday Email.