What if we stopped telling people everything?

I don’t tell my guests much, on purpose.

Where to be. What time to arrive. Maybe what to wear, but only if it matters.

Beyond that, I leave it as a mystery.

Because the minute you tell someone exactly what’s going to happen, what they’re going to see, what they’re going to eat, who they’re going to meet and what they should expect to feel when they get there, you’ve taken something away from them.

The chance to be curious.

We’ve become very good at explaining things.

Providing full menus online. Every corner of a hotel captured and posted on socials. Theatre trailers showing the best bits. Event invitations followed by itineraries, FAQs, reminder emails and a fairly comprehensive account of exactly what is going to happen once they walk through the door.

Useful? Sure.

But I don’t think useful should be the goal.

Some of my favourite experiences have started long before I’ve actually known very much about them. That slightly giddy feeling of not knowing exactly what’s coming. Thinking about it beforehand. Talking about what it might be. Imagining. Always imagining.

That’s part of the experience.

Anticipation does something to us.

It asks us to participate before anything has even happened.

And I think we underestimate how valuable that is, particularly now, when we can find out almost anything, see almost everything and preview almost anywhere within seconds.

There’s not much room left for discovery.

When I design experiences, I’m increasingly interested in protecting some of that space.

Not making things deliberately difficult. Not withholding the information somebody genuinely needs.

But resisting the urge to explain every last detail.

Because sometimes the gap between what somebody knows and what they’re about to discover is where the good bit happens.

They imagine.

They speculate.

They look forward to it.

They become curious.

And by the time they arrive, they’re already in it.

We spend so much time thinking about what happens when somebody walks through the door.

But I think the real work is in what happens in the space between the invitation being delivered and them arriving.