Improvisation - 13 tips for life

In this newsletter:
- The Dream
- Patricia Ryan Madson
- Improv Wisdom
- 13 Improv Maxims
- Key Life Skills from Improv
- YouTube Improve example

The Dream

It was 2015. I was walking across Harvard Yard, on the way to my classroom. My heart was pounding, breathing was difficult, it was hard to walk, I was literally shaking with fear. I entered the lecture hall, one of those huge theater-like rooms where my students were already gathering, waiting for my lecture to begin.

I stood at the podium petrified. I failed to prepare for my evening’s lecture. I was scared to death.

Then I woke up. Thank god it was only a dream. Thank you, thank you, thank you God.

Unlike almost all the dreams I’ve ever had, this one I will never forget. I can still feel the fear from that dream.

The fear of public speaking, some experts say, is worse than the fear of death.

And for me, not being prepared for a large class of students was unfathomable. Worse than death and public speaking combined.

I taught Financial Accounting at the Harvard Extension School, in Harvard Yard, for four years from 2013 to 2017. Most of my students were graduate students who had full-time jobs. They were ambitious, enthusiastic about learning, and paid a lot of money to attend night classes at Harvard.

My class grew in popularity to the point where I had over 250 students per semester, both on-campus and online.

I loved teaching, I loved my students, and I could never let them down. I wanted to make all of the 120 minutes of lecture time a valuable learning experience. I always went to class well-prepared. I wanted the students to get their money's worth. 

From my earliest years as a kid, from elementary school, through high school, college, all the way through my master’s degrees, I was taught to always be prepared.

As a 12-year-old in Boy Scouts, the first thing we learned was the Scout motto: “Be Prepared”

In later years, as a student in my MBA program, I quickly learned it was a risk to attend case discussions unprepared. The professor randomly calls on students to contribute to the analysis of case details. Part of our evaluations depended on the quality of our preparation and participation.

But now, when I look back at my teaching years, I've begun to realize the very best moments, the best teaching experiences for the students, were improvised with no preparation. No script. 

Unprepared discussion of current finance topics, initiated by students, is when they came to life. My students loved talking about real-life events in the business world. That is when those student Aha! moments happened. No prepared comments. We just let it roll.

Those moments of improvisation were the most valuable for the students.

The whole concept of improvisation was something I have never really considered. And for sure, the thought of being an actor in improvised theater was way out there, just too frightening for me.

Then, recently, I came across Improv Wisdom, a book by Patricia Ryan Madson, while I was reading Turning Pro. Here is my newsletter Turning Pro.

Patricia Ryan Madson

Patricia Ryan Madson has taught acting and improvisation at Stanford since 1977, the year I graduated from high school.

In her book, she begins with the story of when she was a child, when her mother bought her a paint-by-numbers kit. It’s how she learned to paint “inside the lines.”

“I had found the way to live: Always go by the rules. Use the recipe. Follow the pattern. Rehearse the script. Copy the masters. I followed the lines in everything I did, even though I considered myself an artist, a theater artist at first. With theater, you were given your lines, and all you had to do was bring them to life. That seemed easy.”

Early in her career, she went through a wakeup call after being declined tenure as a professor at Denison University in Ohio. Speaking about her rejection by Denison:
“This made no sense to me, since I had recently won a teaching award, had chosen each career move to impress the academy, and had done everything by the book. I had painted inside the lines – well. So where had I gone wrong?” 

She answers with:
“I had never taken a chance. I had not once followed an impulse or listened to the beat of my own drum. Polonius’s instruction ‘To thine own self be true’ flashed in mind. I had not been true to my self. It had not occurred to me that there was another way of living that did not require a script. To find that way I would need to learn to listen to and trust myself.”

Improv Wisdom

Here you can learn more about Patricia Ryan Madson and her book  Improv Wisdom.

“I had tried to be worthy of receiving tenure. I didn’t understand that this worthiness could come only from honoring my own voice. Making decisions solely to please others is a formula destined to fail. The people I admired were not looking over their shoulders to see if their peers were applauding. They were heeding their inner promptings. ‘I do this because I know it needs to be done.’ My search for validation had diverted me from discerning what was uniquely mine.”

“I gave up doing things ‘for my resume.’ I took up tai chi and spent summers dancing and traveling, studying Eastern religion, and expanding my vision of life.”

“I didn’t know it at the time, but I was becoming an improviser, learning to listen and to trust my imagination.”

Two years later, Stanford University hired Madson to lead their undergraduate acting program.

In Improv Wisdom, Professor Madson encourages us to improvise our life. To take chances, do more of what’s important to you, make more mistakes, laugh more often, be adventurous. “The only real failure is not doing anything.”

She talks about “the improv world,” as a loose network of people engaged in improvised theater. She was the founder of the Stanford Improvisors in the 1980s.

“It is easy to be around these folks. They are can-do people. They have learned a way of working together on stage that commonly spills over into their daily lives. There is a spirit of cooperation. If I forget something, my colleagues cover for me.”

Madson says we are all improvisers by nature because we are human. We all make up our lives as we go along. Everyone improvises.

“Improvisation is a metaphor, a path, and a system; it is a modus operandi that anyone can learn. Imagine a life brimming with spontaneity….The world of improv is a portal into mindfulness and magic.”

She talks about her work teaching “art and wizardry of improvisation” at Stanford, as a corporate creativity consultant, and as a private counselor.

“During the rise of the dot-coms, improvisation training became popular with entrepreneurs, engineers, people in job transitions…it has come into its own as a paradigm that can be used for corporate training, team building, psychological interventions, education, and personal growth.”

Madson identifies thirteen “improv maxims” in her book that “can help us meet real-life challenges more skillfully, and with a sense of humor.”

Aging, Madson says, makes it harder for us to take risks. We tend toward known patterns, rely on conservative choices, more likely to say no, become more critical, and more likely to complain.

She says the practice of improvisation helps us be more in harmony with each other and to have fun, to express ourselves, and to connect with others.

“Improvising invites us to lighten up and look around. It offers an alternative to the controlling way many of us try to lead our lives. It requires that we say yes and be helpful rather than argumentative; it offers us a chance to do things differently. These ideas will seem familiar to those who have studied Eastern thought.”

Madson describes the “method” and “rules of conduct” for creating on the spot. Improv Wisdom introduces us to her “laws of improv – improv maxims,” as she calls them. These maxims apply to improv theater as well as everyday life. They apply to everyone. Here are her 13 improv maxims. 

Thirteen Improv Maxims
(summarized from Improv Wisdom)

1. Say yes – Just say yes, be a “can-do” person, look for the positive spin, be agreeable
2. Don’t prepare – Plan less and think ahead less, focus on the now, trust your imagination, fear is misplaced attention
3. Just show up – Begin the day with what’s important, use daily rituals, show up for others, be on time
4. Start anywhere – there is no perfect starting point, use the first words that come to you, trust your mind. When giving a lecture, instead of writing out your notes try writing questions that you will answer. The sound of someone talking is natural. The sound of someone reading is not natural.
5. Be average – Cultivate ordinary mind (Zen saying), give up on perfection, stop trying to be different, see what is obvious but heretofore unseen, ordinary to you is often a revelation to others
6. Pay attention – Zen story of the student asking the wise man for the three secrets: secret one is attention, secret two is attention, secret three is attention. Seriously. Pay attention to what’s going on.  Shift your attention from yourself to others, remember names, avoid multitasking.
7. Face the facts – Unhappiness comes from ignoring reality, accept people as they are, learn the facts, the more you surf the more comfortable you become surfing.
8. Stay the course – What is your purpose? Emotions are fleeting, what would not get done if you were not here? Purpose = Passion + Expertise + Need. See Finding Meaning.
9. Wake up to the gifts – The glass is half full, appreciate the details, thank everyone starting from the bottom, give back.
10. Make mistakes, please – Lighten up, take a bow when you screw up, mistakes create character, focus on what comes next after a mistake
11. Act now – It’s the essence of improvising, do the hard thing first, put the difficult tasks on your calendar, act now to discover what comes next
12. Take care of each other – Share control, turn positive thoughts into words, listen carefully, overdeliver
13. Enjoy the ride – Thich Nhat Hanh said joy is the source or your smile, and your smile is the source of your joy. Play is essential to human growth. Have fun. Laughter is medicine.

Improv is less concerned with outcomes and more about the process, and the quality of our relationships.

Key Life Skills from Improv

Here are some key life skills we can gain from improv and how they can benefit us in everyday life:

- Creativity and Innovation: Improv helps us think on our feet, promotes coming up with ideas in the moment. This is good for problem-solving and for generating creative solutions.

- Adaptability and Flexibility: Improv teaches us to embrace uncertainty and adapt quickly in unexpected situations. Every day we encounter unforeseen circumstances; the ability to cope with grace contributes to Well-Being.

- Effective Communication: Improv hones our listening skills and boosts our ability to communicate clearly and concisely. Exercises like “Yes, and…” promotes better listening and how to build upon others’ ideas, fostering better communication and collaboration in life.

- Confidence and Self-Expression: Improv pushes us out of our comfort zones, builds our confidence, makes us trust our instincts. Performing without a script translates to greater confidence in public speaking, social interactions, and expressing ourselves creatively.

-Resilience and Risk-Taking: Improv teaches us that failure is a natural part of learning and helps us recover from setbacks. Taking risks outside of our comfort zone, in a supportive environment, helps us develop resilience without fear of judgement.

- Teamwork and Collaboration: Improv is inherently collaborative, requiring performers to work together spontaneously. It teaches trust and support for fellow improvisors that extend beyond the stage into our personal and professional lives.

- Embracing Failure: In Improv, there are no mistakes. Only learning opportunities. By letting go of perfectionism, we become more open to taking risks, leading to personal and professional development.

- Mindfulness and Presence: Improv forces us to be fully present in the moment, focused on our scene partners and the unfolding narrative. In improv, there is no focus on the past or the future. This practice of mindfulness enhances our ability to stay grounded and centered in life.

I'm learning that watching improv theater makes me feel more adaptable, more loose, more relaxed. 

Check out this short (less than 2 minutes) improv video for an example of live improv theater. It will make you laugh.

Perhaps we don't need to run off to the nearest improv theater and jump on stage. 

But for sure we can all learn important life lessons from the gurus of the improv world.

Thank you for reading! 

Be well,

Peter Pavlina

My first class was held in this building in Harvard Yard: