I’ve been re-reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s classics, and it struck me how perfectly they model the creative struggle in the age of AI.
In nearly every story, Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard arrives at the scene first. He quickly pieces together the most plausible story from the obvious clues, presenting a neat, logical, and entirely wrong conclusion.
Then Holmes arrives. He ignores the obvious. He looks for the dog that didn't bark, the single speck of mud on a boot, the tiny detail that shatters the plausible story and reveals the brilliant, hidden truth.
Right now, every LLM is Inspector Lestrade. It is designed, with terrifying efficiency, to give you the most plausible, statistically average answer. And we, in our rush for speed, are accepting its first conclusion.
Lestrade isn't stupid, he's just in a hurry. He's incentivized by speed and the appearance of progress. Sound familiar? He needs to close the case, file the report, and move on. He wants the plausible answer because the plausible answer is efficient.
We are becoming a generation of Lestrades, and it’s killing our work. The strategic cost of this convenience is a slow drift into a sea of derivative slop.
AI’s greatest danger is that it will make you boring.
It encourages a cognitive shortcut called “satisficing”, a portmanteau of satisfy and suffice. It’s our tendency to accept the first option that crosses an 'acceptable' threshold, stopping short of finding the optimal one.
Think about the last time you were looking for a restaurant for dinner. Did you research every single option to find the absolute best food for the best price, or did you scroll until you found the first place that looked pretty good and had 4.5 stars? That’s satisficing. It’s a survival mechanism for a world with too many choices.
Our brains are wired to conserve energy. When faced with a complex creative problem, the deep thinking required feels metabolically expensive. An LLM offers a deceptively cheap answer. It offloads that cognitive work, and our tired, efficiency-seeking brain gratefully accepts the first plausible option to move on to the next task.
This process guarantees catastrophic mediocrity.
You cannot build a formidable brand on plausible ideas. You need ideas that are defensible, contrarian, and carry a specific gravity. You need to be Holmes, not Lestrade. This five-step prompting chain is how you force your AI intern to stop showing you the obvious and start looking for clues.
We’ll use a simple example: "Give me taglines for my AI startup," and I will use my own startup, Yahini, to go through the process.
Step 1: The naive prompt (the Lestrade answer)
You start with the obvious. You ask your AI a simple question, and you get a simple answer.
Prompt Template:
Give me 5 taglines for my AI startup.Output I got:
Unlocking Potential with AI.
Smarter Content, Automated.
The Future of SEO Strategy.
AI-Powered Content Growth.
Innovate with Intelligent Content.
This is pure, uncut generic sludge. It could describe any AI company on earth. It’s what every other founder is getting from a basic prompt, and it completely misses what makes Yahini special. It is acceptable, and therefore, it is dangerous.
Step 2: The "kill the obvious" prompt
Now, you give the AI a constraint that murders the cliché. You forbid it from using the words that everyone else relies on.
Prompt Template:
These are too generic. They sound like my competitors. Generate 5 more taglines, but you are forbidden from using the words 'AI,' 'smart,' 'automate,' or 'intelligent'.My specific prompt for Yahini:
"These are too generic. My startup does the strategic planning *before* content is written. Generate 5 more taglines, but you are forbidden from using the words 'AI,' 'smart,' 'automate,' or 'intelligent.'"
Output I got:
The Strategy Before the Story.
Your Roadmap to Ranking.
From Keyword Chaos to a Clear Plan.
Expert Briefs for Content that Converts.
Build Your Content on a Winning Foundation.
Immediately, the quality improves. These are still AI-generated, and not usable in their current format but remember: the goal here is ideation, leaving the final polish and publishing to human craft.
Step 3: The "cross-pollination" prompt
Now you take the strongest idea from Step 2 and force it into an entirely new context. This is where true originality sparks. Metaphors are powerful tools for thought.
Prompt Template:
I like [A HEADLINE YOU LIKED]'. Now generate 5 more versions of this idea, but frame them using a metaphor from [pick something you want to associate your business with, like “architecture”].Not an architecture fan? Try metaphors from biology (ecosystems, evolution, symbiosis), cooking (recipes, ingredients, flavor profiles), or music (harmony, rhythm, crescendo). The goal is to jolt the idea into a new context.
My specific prompt for Yahini:
"I like 'Your Roadmap to Ranking.' Now generate 5 more versions of this idea, but frame them using a metaphor from cartography or exploration."
Output I got:
Mapping the Path to Page One.
Your Compass in the Content Wilderness.
The North Star for Your SEO Strategy.
Chart a Course for Content that Connects.
Discover Your Uncharted Keywords.
See what happened? We went from the vague "AI-Powered Growth" to the evocative "Mapping the Path to Page One."
Hate it? Don’t worry, we’re not done yet! Even if this metaphor isn't the final one, the process has unlocked a new layer of creative thinking.
Step 4: The "red team" stress test
A good idea feels good. A great idea survives an attack. Before you commit, you must try to destroy your best concept. Use the AI to play devil's advocate.
Prompt Template:
You are a skeptical brand strategist. My best tagline is [ADD YOUR CHOSEN HEADLINE HERE]. Attack this idea. Tell me three reasons why it might fail or fall flat. Be ruthless.My specific prompt for Yahini:
"You are a skeptical CMO. My best tagline is 'Mapping the Path to Page One.' Attack this idea. Tell me three reasons why it might fail or fall flat. Be ruthless."
Output I got:
Sets a risky, unverifiable promise: "Page One" is the holy grail, but it's not guaranteed by any tool, including this one. SEO is volatile. By making this the core promise, you invite disappointment and churn the moment a user doesn't achieve that specific result. It sounds like a guarantee you can't keep.
Commoditizes your value: Every SEO tool from Ahrefs to Semrush implicitly promises to get you to page one. This tagline places you in a direct, feature-for-feature comparison with giants, which you will lose. It highlights the destination while completely ignoring your unique way of getting there.
Ignores your real differentiator: The tagline focuses on the destination (ranking) while completely overlooking Yahini's unique journey: its powerful funnel-aware strategy and deep business context.
This critique is gold. It reveals the weak points in your messaging before the market does.
Now you can refine your idea. Is the promise too broad ('Page One')? Narrow it to something more unique and defensible ('A Blueprint for Ranking'). Does it ignore your differentiator?
Rework the tagline to foreground it.
Step 5: The "hook multiplier" prompt
One great idea isn't a marketing strategy. You need to be able to talk about it from multiple angles. The final step is to fracture your core concept into a handful of potent hooks.
Prompt Template:
Using the core idea of [PICK THE HEADLINE YOU WANT] generate 5 hooks for a social media post. Give me one that's a contrarian take, one that's a direct question, one that starts with a story, one that's a statistic, and one that's a bold declaration.Output I got:
Contrarian take: Stop writing. Your content fails before you type a single word. The real problem is the lack of a strategic blueprint.
Direct question: Does your AI tool give you a content plan, or just 1000 words of expensive fluff?
Story: I spent 20 hours wrestling with keyword lists and messy SERP analysis. Then I built a tool that creates a full content blueprint in 5 minutes. Here's what it looks like.
Statistic: 91% of content gets no traffic from Google. Why? Because most of it is created without a strategy. A solid blueprint is the only cure.
Bold declaration: Generic AI is dead. Instead of hiring another writer, empower your business with an expert strategist to build the plan.
Now you have a core concept and five distinct, pre-tested ways to introduce it to the world. You've moved from a single, lazy answer to a robust, defensible strategic message.
You stopped being Lestrade. You started being Holmes.
💡 A NEW CONCEPT FOR YOU
Why are our brains so willing to accept AI’s first, plausible answer? Why do we "satisfice" when we know the best ideas are buried deeper?
The answer lies in a cognitive bias: the Pie Fallacy.
The Pie Fallacy is the subconscious belief that value, ideas, and opportunities are a finite resource, like slices of a pizza. If someone else has taken the "great content idea" slice, it's gone. If competitors have covered a topic, that slice of the pie is no longer available.
Because we believe good ideas are scarce, we mistake the AI's instant response for a lucky find instead of treating it as a raw starting point. A slice of a rapidly disappearing pie. In our relief, we grab it and run, confusing speed for value.
When Basecamp published "Shape Up," they didn't steal attention from other project management content. They created an entirely new category of conversation. They baked a new pie. When Naval Ravikant published his "How to Get Rich" tweetstorm, he didn't divide the wealth-creation pie; he expanded it, creating new perspectives for thousands of others to build upon.
Lestrade operates from a Pie Fallacy mindset. He sees the obvious clues as the only slices available. Holmes, on the other hand, assumes a new pie can always be baked. He sources his ingredients from what others ignore - the dog's silence, the brand of tobacco, the time of the tide. These are the ingredients for a new explanation, a new pie.
✨ ONE MORE THING...
To get out of an intellectual rut, you need a formal system. Here are two ways to train the Holmes muscle this week:
1. The de Bono inversion. The foundational text for this is Edward de Bono's 'Lateral Thinking'. His primary technique is to deliberately challenge assumptions. Use this prompt to force your AI to do the same by acknowledging its weakness for the generic.
Generate 10 ideas for [X]. I know the first 5 will be the most obvious and generic. Your real test is for ideas 6-10 to be progressively more creative, unexpected, and even a little strange. Go.2. The thesaurus stress test. Take the weakest, most common word in an AI's output, like "effective" or "innovative." Use a thesaurus to find a more precise, potent alternative, like "resonant" or "contrarian." Feed that new word back into your prompt and command the AI to rewrite its idea around that specific concept. This is a micro-dose of forced originality.
When was the last time you flat-out rejected an AI's first answer and pushed it three or four more times?
To finding the clues everyone else misses,
Chief 🤖 at ROBOTS ATE MY HOMEWORK