Nishi Shah

All things brand | marketing, music and books | Building Dibs Creative👩‍💻 occasionally writes, always overthinks

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

just watched project Hail Mary last night and I fully enjoyed it. went in blind… but such cool stuff. incredible writing, the banter is funny. cinematography is fab and the detailing just leaves you in awe.

heartwarming, so fun... amaze amaze amaze 👎 (you’ll know) go watch!

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

how are there calm brides when there are this many decisions. a full venue recee today, the floor plans were deeply discussed. we’re around 50 days out and things are allegedly “coming together,” which i’m choosing to trust for mental health reasons. i am internally buffering while my man is only worried about what’s for dinner after. adorable. unhinged. can’t wait.

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

three weddings in three weeks and my body is still catching up. it’s loud and tiring and emotional and somewhere in between you remember that you really, really love love.

currently exhausted, a little tender, and choosing not to look too closely at the fact that the next one is mine.

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

Once again, I am the chosen one. That’s all for today.

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

Ate like it was my full time job and met some incredible people - Dibs is fully scheming and can’t wait to talk more on that soon. until next time, bombae - you chaotic, all-consuming little enabler. 🥰

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

something about this city makes me want to do more, be more, max out in every way. Ran on pure momentum and that full send energy- the sea link moment still hits, still makes me romanticize it all.

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

back in Mumbai after six months and excited to linger. if there’s someone i could meet or catch up with, always up for a good conversation. but mostly- what’s fun, what’s new? here till the weekend, fully looking to make the most of it.

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

@qtfan @b50 @Netra @girishmallya @X Hi, would love to know more! Unable to DM.

[Gautam @gautxm]

On the performance anxiety of ideas

I’m in the business of ideas. So there's something darkly comic about how most ideas in my head are born insecure, like they have some sort of pre-existing performance anxiety. To a lot of us, new ideas often feel fragile; they come wearing armour, already apologetic for their existence. In those moments before we spit it out publicly, they seem particularly vulnerable, absolutely certain they're about to be laughed at. So folks like me, we develop this elaborate choreography around our thoughts. We perfect the dark art of pre-packaging thoughts, wrapping them in protective layers of ironic distance and careful curation, preparing them for a world that might not receive them kindly.

Or worse, we suffocate them before they can emerge. Take for example, the sheepishly delivered "thanks for coming to my TED talk" that follows a random opinion on something as mundane as coffee - it's both a joke and not a joke at all. Or how we often prefix "this might be a bad example, but.." before sharing a thought - it stems from the same fear, a way of cushioning potential criticism by acknowledging vulnerability first. Even the "I don't know, maybe it's just me" at the end of an honest perspective - a preemptive surrender that dismisses our own insight before anyone else can. They’re all intended to be self-protective, but are ironically self-defeating, becoming a defense mechanism that undermines our thoughts before they stand a chance.

What gets lost because of this choreography and extra packaging is the weird stuff - the half-formed thoughts, the 2am epiphanies that sound brilliant in the dark, but embarrassingly naive in daylight. Conversations that may often seem objectively ridiculous, but those where ideas could be wrong in interesting ways. We've managed to develop a kind of collective impostor syndrome about our own thoughts. Even as I write this, I'm aware of the meta-performance of writing about performance, the way this very post participates in the culture it critiques.

Problem is, this sort of perfection paralysis can be fatal inside creative agencies. At @TalentedAgency, we often say, "In here, the best idea always wins" or that "We're a safe space for outrageous thinking." But the truth is messier and isn’t so straightforward. Getting to the best idea takes work. I've witnessed so many brainstorming sessions where someone's ‘terrible’ idea becomes the spark that ignites something brilliant. But none of that happens if the first person is too afraid to speak up. Because you can't get to the brilliant ideas without going through some bad ones first. The process of creativity is rarely as linear as agencies make them sound to be.

I think about our creator agency, @TheNewThing_in 's ritual of ‘100 bad ideas’ at the start of some of their brainstorms - a practice that feels like collective permission to temporarily abandon carefully constructed personas of creative competence. More often than not, something genuinely innovative would emerge from this sanctioned chaos.

One of the most interesting parts of my week is a recurring one-on-one I’ve got scheduled with a colleague of mine who has a particular affinity for AI. Everyone at Talented will know exactly who I’m talking about. Ever so often he’ll bring up something he experimented with, pitch a creative idea around it and then suddenly stop halfway through, and say something along the lines of, "This sounds completely unhinged and isn’t cooked enough, I know!" But those are precisely the kind of intellectual leaps that might lead somewhere unexpected. The kind of connection that wouldn't emerge from more conventional, ‘serious’ thinking.

Perhaps, what you need most of all if you’re engaged in any kind of creative enterprise, is to be around people who don’t make you feel stupid for throwing up a bad idea. People who certainly never feel stupid for doing so themselves. People who can hold you through those moments gently without immediately crushing your ideas under the weight of practical concerns or obvious objections. Those who understand that good ideas often start out looking like bad ones, that brilliance and foolishness are sometimes indistinguishable at first glance. At work, if this sounds like your immediate manager, then lucky you.

Everyone must have a responsibility to make this sort of vulnerability a part of unconscious culture. To create little pockets of resistance against the tyranny of always having to sound smart. To build spaces where we can be as stupid as we need to be in service of potentially being brilliant. To have the courage to let the process be as messy and unoptimized as they need to be until it isn’t.

My working theory, after years of watching ideas either flourish or wither in conference rooms is that teams that institutionalize this kind of psychological safety - that make it boring and normal to be wrong - will inevitably outperform those that maintain the fiction of perpetual competence. Those that come with a default permission to float bad ideas without fear of them being permanently attached to your personal brand, your professional identity or your entire sense of self. In a sense, the freedom to be wrong becomes the most valuable currency in the economy of ideas. And the ability to speak foolishly, the ultimate privilege.

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

reminded me of this video a friend once showed me that i keep coming back to- just to feel small in the best way possible. so beautiful i can’t!!!!

https://t.co/nMHJhLdN4a

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

love how my friends geek out over the most random things. last night it was the universe’s vastness, how we’re just tiny specks, and how none of it actually matters. cutest little spiral.

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

Spending the day doing what I do best - excessive yapping

We’re growing - if you (or someone you know) is looking to join a core team working closely with the founders, some cool work and a space that thrives on collaboration- we’re #hiring

https://t.co/LpzRN5KaO8

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

@notsothicccc Bridget jones diary, happened to watch it just today and now eager to watch the rest

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

@NimishaChanda Missed this but looking forward to catching you sometime!

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

But does it feel like a phase we’re all collectively in? do you feel your other sports taking a backseat or your interest levels varying too? genuinely curious- where do you see this going!

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

been playing pickle for the last few months now, and it’s been slowly pushing my other sports to the backseat. not intentionally, just… happening. and maybe that’s what’s interesting.

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

i’m still on my learning curve, but once you’re there- does it still keep you hooked? does it stay challenging? personally, i like playing with different people and switching it up, I’ve heard singles is also more rewarding and fun.

[Nishi Shah @_nishishah_]

been posting again on here for two days and already tweeted more than i have all year. love how this space fully enables my impulsiveness. deeply unserious, as it should be.