Welcome to Radhika's newsletter INTENT: a guide for high achievers who want an extraordinary life. Each issue brings you real stories, practical strategies, and the intention behind how we work, lead, grow, and live.
Hiiiiiii hope you're doing well!
The last time I wrote a newsletter was more than a month ago, and I definitely missed writing…but it was important for me to take a break. The speed at which things were happening was crazy. Partially it was AI. Partially it was figuring out all the wedding details (T-3 months is wild to even type out!). And partially it was just me realizing I needed to slow down before I lost something I didn't want to lose.
Also my current obsession: a dandy latte, made with roasted dandelion root, chicory root, barley, and rye, with a splash of cashew milk and a swirl of maple syrup. I'm salivating just typing that. If you've never had one, please go find one and report back.
My last few months
For the last few months, I was on autopilot. I'd sit down to write and reach for AI before I reached for my own thoughts. I'd be hungry and pull up a recipe on my phone instead of asking myself what I actually felt like making. I'd have a free Saturday afternoon and instinctively fill it with a podcast, a Netflix show, a scroll.
I wasn't creating anything. I was consuming.
And here's the part that scared me a little: I didn't notice it happening. It just slowly became the default.
I think creativity is quietly dying
I think creativity, as a regular human practice, is dying. And I think AI is speeding it up. We are living through the strangest, most exciting, most disorienting moment in how humans relate to creating things. We’re leaning into AI to write, to give us creative ideas, to build, to create, to generate recipes, and more.
If you outsource every part of your thinking, writing, drawing, cooking, planning, and dreaming to a machine, you will become a person who can no longer do any of those things.
One day you sit down to write an email to a friend and realize you can't find your own voice anymore. You ask AI to draft it. It comes out fine. Fine becomes your new ceiling.
I started noticing this in myself. My ideas were getting more generic. My speech was getting more polished but less me. My instincts felt slower. I was so used to having a tool finish my sentences that I forgot how it feels to sit with a half-formed thought and let it grow into something.
Creativity isn't just "making art." Creativity is the ability to start with a blank page (in your work, in your relationships, in your life) and trust that something interesting will come out of you. That muscle is too important to give away.
So why not lean into the one thing left that's actually ours?
What I've been doing to tap back in
1. Ink drawings. I picked up a pack of black ink pens and a sketchbook a few weeks ago. I'll sit on my living room floor at night and draw whatever's in front of me whether it’s the plant I've somehow kept alive for two years, my own hand, or a face I saw in a TV show. It's the first thing I've done in a while with literally zero output attached.
A little store front I drew in 30 minutes
2. Walking. A lot. Walking has quietly become my favorite life hack. It unlocks creativity in a way nothing else does (every single good idea I've had this year showed up mid-walk, including the angle for this newsletter). But also: you're outside, you're in the sun, you're getting steps in, your joints love you, your gut loves you, your brain loves you, you're not staring at a screen for once, and somehow your mood is just better by the end of it.
What we lose when we outsource everything
The ability to be bored which is where most original thinking actually comes from
Confidence in our own taste when we never have to choose, we forget what we like
The patience to make something bad before we make something good
The small dopamine hit of having made a thing with our hands that didn't exist before
Our own voice the specific, weird, slightly imperfect way we see the world
A sense of being interesting to ourselves
That last one might be the most important. The most extraordinary people I know are interesting to themselves first. They have hobbies that don't make money. They have opinions they didn't borrow. They've sat with their own thoughts long enough to actually have some.
My very unsexy plan from here
I'm not deleting ChatGPT or Claude. I'm just protecting a few things on purpose:
One creative thing per week that has zero output goal. (Ink drawing. A new recipe. A walk with no podcast.)
First drafts of anything important are mine first. Newsletter, speech, big email, hard text. I write the messy version before I let any tool near it.
Boredom is on the schedule. Sounds insane. It's the most underrated practice I've added this year.
🤔 What are you going to add to your week to tap into that creativity of yours?
BTW: The accountability group is still going!
A bunch of you joined the INTENT accountability group I mentioned in the last two newsletters and it's been so fun watching people actually move on their goals. If you want in, reply to this email and I'll add you to the WhatsApp.
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Thank you so much for being a part of the INTENT community. I rely on word-of-mouth for growth. If you enjoyed this newsletter, I’d love for you to share it with a friend.
Your commitment to living with purpose is exactly why this space exists. Can’t wait to share more in the next edition!
Until next time,
Radhika
Living and leading with INTENT.
