Idea Surplus Disorder

In this week’s Idea Surplus Disorder, we start with a simple but powerful icebreaker that helps people connect through lived experience, not small talk.

From there, we explore why preparation so often masquerades as progress, when it makes sense to delegate work to AI (and when it doesn’t), and how writing becomes real leverage when we stop waiting for the perfect moment.

We also look at the habits worth leaving behind in 2026, the ways AI is reshaping our collective intelligence, and a question designed to pull teams out of default pessimism and into clearer, more optimistic action.

As always, I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here!

What I'm Writing:

One of my favorite icebreakers is The Fortune Teller and the Four-Year-Old. It is a distinctive yet simple activity that offers a refreshing departure from traditional icebreaker exercises. It’s designed to create immediate connections between individuals who may not be well-acquainted.

Here’s how it unfolds:

• Start by dividing the attendees into pairs. One participant in each pair assumes the intriguing role of the 'Fortune Teller', while the other adopts the curiosity of a 'Four-Year-Old'.
• The Four-Year-Old's mission is to ask the Fortune Teller questions about their imagined future, such as "What will I be when I grow up?" or "Whom will I marry?"
• Instead of providing fictitious predictions, the Fortune Teller responds with stories taken from their own history. For instance, in answering "What will I be when I grow up?" the Fortune Teller might share, "You’ll grow up to be an accountant in a bustling firm in Chicago." This response, disguised as a prediction, is a sharing of the Fortune Teller's own life lessons and experiences.
• To delve deeper, the Four-Year-Old is then encouraged to ask further questions about the Fortune Teller's narrative, adding depth to the conversation before moving on to their next query.
• After dedicating about 15-30 minutes to this engaging exercise, the pairs switch roles, allowing everyone to gain insights from both perspectives.

This simple exercise is a minimal time investment that yields substantial dividends, including stronger team bonds, improved communication, and a heightened sense of empathy among team members.

Moreover, it encourages participants to reflect upon their own life journeys, fostering greater self-awareness and understanding toward others.

So the next time you find yourself in a gathering with individuals you're keen to connect with on a deeper level, try out this fortune-telling exercise. It could be the key to establishing faster, more effective connections and meetings.

My Favorite Find:

I read hundreds of blogs and dozens of newsletters every week, and I always find more ideas than I can share. I'm not sure I "loved" Things That Aren't Doing the Thing, but it sure resonated with me.

Here are just a few of the things that aren't the thing:

• Preparing to do the thing isn't doing the thing.
• Scheduling time to do the thing isn't doing the thing.
• Making a to-do list for the thing isn't doing the thing.
• Hating on yourself for not doing the thing isn't doing the thing. Hating on other people who have done the thing isn't doing the thing. Hating on the obstacles in the way of doing the thing isn't doing the thing.
• Reading about how to do the thing isn't doing the thing. Reading about how other people did the thing isn't doing the thing. Reading this essay isn't doing the thing.
• The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing.

A Few More Things Worth Your Time:

Should you delegate something to AI? Ethan Mollick shares the three variables to consider:

1. Human Baseline Time: how long the task would take you to do yourself. 2. Probability of Success: how likely the AI is to produce an output that meets your bar on a given attempt. 3. AI Process Time: how long it takes you to request, wait for, and evaluate an AI output

A useful mental model is that you’re trading off “doing the whole task” (Human Baseline Time) against “paying the overhead cost” (AI Process Time), possibly multiple times until you get something acceptable.

The higher Probability of Success is, the fewer times you have to pay AI Process Time, and the more useful it is to turn things over to the AI.

Writing is leverage:

Writing is one of the few tools that can reliably change how you think. It forces you to commit to a line of thought and to turn half-formed ideas into something you can examine.

People who write regularly don’t just produce more and better work, they understand themselves and their work more clearly. Regular writing also makes you better at explaining things, whether that’s in emails, presentations, or conversations. You develop an instinct for what works and what doesn’t when communicating complex ideas. Plus, you create a record of your thinking that becomes valuable over time – patterns emerge, forgotten insights resurface, and you can see how your perspective has evolved.

But most people never get that leverage, because they treat writing as something that requires the right mood, the right idea, or the right moment.

Here are a few distractions to leave behind in 2026 (out of 12 in the full post). What's on your list?

• Scrolling as a way to recover from stress. After a long day, your brain wants relief. Culture offers the fastest version: endless content. But relief and restoration are not the same thing. Scrolling often leaves you more restless than when you started—because it never resolves anything. It just fills space. Try a different question this year: “What restores me?” Then do that instead.
• The “I’ll just check real quick” habit. Quick checks are rarely quick. They’re gateways. A message becomes a thread. A headline becomes an hour. A quick lookup becomes a detour through ten other topics. This year, make checking intentional. Put it in a time window. Keep it contained. Stop paying with your day.
• Consuming more opinions than you can think through. Information isn’t neutral. It shapes mood, worldview, and stress level. You can care about the world without absorbing every hot take. And you can stay informed without living in a constant state of agitation. Choose fewer sources. Choose better sources. And choose time limits that protect your mind.
• A to-do list that never meets a calendar. Lists feel productive. They’re also easy to ignore. If you want traction, put tasks into time. Timeboxing is one method that forces clarity and reduces the anxiety of an endless list. HBR breaks down why it works. Your calendar becomes your plan.

AI is changing humanity's collective intelligence:

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) does not transport bodies, but it is already starting to disrupt the physics of collective intelligence: How ideas, drafts, data, and perspectives move between people, how much information groups can process, and how quickly they can move from vague hunch to concrete product.

These shifts are thrilling and terrifying. It now feels easy to build thousands of new tools and workflows. Some will increase our capacity to solve problems. Some could transform our public spaces to be more inclusive and less polarizing. Some could also quietly hollow out the cultures, relationships, and institutions upon which our ability to solve problems together depends.

The challenge—and opportunity—for scientists and practitioners is to start testing how AI can advance collective intelligence in real policy domains, and how these mechanisms can be turned into new muscles and immune systems for shared problem-solving.

This Week's Question:

It’s easy to default to the negative, especially for the natural pessimists on every team. But asking, “What happens if everything goes right?” unlocks optimism and forces clarity about what “everything” actually means. That shared clarity becomes the starting point for doing remarkable work together.

This week's question is inspired by the podcast Best Case Scenarios, hosted by Kevin Kelly and Dan Pink, in which they ask experts to share the best possible good news scenario in the next 25 years in fields including energy, transportation, biotechnology, and brain science.

Random Things for Smart People

• Stuck in a loop? Unloop helps you map it and get unstuck.
• Logorrhea is excessive and often incoherent talkativeness.
• Text Behind Image is a super-simple way to, you know ...
• Take the Correlation Experiment test.
• Bubble Wrap was originally designed to be 3D wallpaper.

Words of Wisdom

Mastery is the revenge of the patient on the privileged. – Shane Parrish

Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest. – Georgia O'Keeffe

The universe is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose. — J. B. S. Haldane

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart. – Eleanor Roosevelt

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning. – Louis L’Amour