Chapter 4
I don't believe that ideas hit you like a lightning bolt, pouring out of you fully formed like some sort of mystical vision or 3‐D printer. Even when it seems like it does, the reality is that your subconscious has been influenced every step of the way since you popped into this f'd up world.
Whatever you are thinking or creating at that moment has been molded and shaped by millions of different stimuli, seen and unseen. What that means is that creativity is inherent in all of us, even if you work in insurance. Since nothing comes out fully formed; the trick is not to capture this blazing vision in its entirety but rather to identify the spark.
The spark. The lightbulb. The aha moment. The quickening. The fingersnap, the head slap, the “By George, I think I've got it” moment. This is what we are looking for. This is what our mental radar is constantly sweeping back and forth in search of, trying to identify those blips of inspiration splayed across our neural pathways, and somehow bring them to life as something concrete.
Identifying those moments when we can say to ourselves, “You know what, that is not a half‐bad idea” is the starting point for making shit up. And really it can be the easiest and most fun part of the whole shebang. Completed and executed ideas? Scary and hard. Short bursts of inspiration with no real outcome? Easy and fun!
So in my perpetual quest to make my life as easy and as fun as I possibly can, I spend a large part of my creative process looking for those moments.
So how does one go about finding the spark? Or does it find you? Honestly, I have no idea. What I can tell you is that there are a few commonalities in my life that have consistently led to new and interesting ideas and opportunities. Let's take a look at them.
CURIOSITY
Curiosity has been one of the main reasons that I have been fortunate enough to live such an interesting and creative life. Allowing ourselves to be curious opens our mind to receiving new information. Diving into the how or why or where of something will immediately return dividends of new knowledge. Allowing yourself to pursue interests for no reason other than the fact that something intrigues you or delights you or confuses you is reason enough to go down the rabbit hole of whatever subject you are exploring.
When you allow your curiosity to drive you to explore new concepts, you create new data points in your brain. You may consciously retain some of those data points but you will invariably dump a whole bunch of them, consciously or not. It doesn't matter. What you are trying to do is fill your “subconscious thought well” with thoughts and feelings and snippets of ideas that your brain can reference on its own.
When we speak about ideas coming out of nowhere, that is never true. They come out of that subconscious “thought well” that you have been filling up throughout your life. The more curious you are, the more and different experiences or pieces of information you pour into the well, making them available at some later date.
We will only draw from the well what we put into it, so if we just sit around on our asses doing basically the same old thing and thinking the same old thoughts again and again, we can expect to get the same results.
DO SHIT
I am a lousy spectator. I have a hard time being interested in anything that I can't do or at least try. That tactile, tangible experience helps me to be able to thoroughly process information. If something captures my curiosity, invariably I want to try it.
I have always found that by doing the things that I am curious about, I have been able to get a deeper understanding of whatever subject I am exploring. Moving from a passive role to an active role activates the entirety of your body and ingrains whatever it is that you are doing in a far deeper way.
You like flowers? Go out and actually pick them. Like watching rugby and don't know how to play? Buy a rugby ball and play catch with somebody. Interested in military history? Go walk, or better yet ride a horse, on a battlefield.
Clearly your ability to do something will be dictated to a degree by what you are physically able to do. The point is that when you actually go out and physically experience whatever you are most interested in, it becomes a part of you in a way that it can never be if you are just watching.
The unexpected benefit that comes from doing things is the circumstances that surround any activity. It is on the edges and in the fringes that the magic and unseen connections start to happen. By choosing to go “do shit,” you put into motion all the things around that activity.
If you decide you want to take up bicycling it will eventually lead you to a bicycle shop, where you will meet people with your same interests. Meeting people with similar interests means you will be connecting with a certain number of those people who have more knowledge and information about bicycling that they will share with you.
From that information you will learn about events centered around bicycling. This may lead to you wanting to participate in a charity ride. By joining that ride, you may find a whole new cause that you want to support. That cause may become one of the most important things in your life and bring great value and joy to yourself and those you help.
And all this occurs because you became curious about bicycling after watching a few hours of the Tour de France and decided to explore it.
Far‐fetched? Hardly. The fact that you set something in motion can't help but have a ripple effect, because nothing happens in a vacuum. Each decision made has many different side effects that ultimately open up more doors and windows to be explored. So the trick isn't to try to open up many different doors and windows, but to make one decision to do something, anything, and then pay attention to what happens off to the sides. There on the side streets are where you will find the fascinating and unexpected connections.
OBSERVE
I consider observing to be very different from spectating. Observing is a purposeful activity where you are consciously focusing on what you are seeing, hearing, or feeling. When we are observing an event, we are actively taking in information and processing it for later use. Spectating is a more passive form of receiving information, more conducive to enjoyment or entertainment. One is not necessarily better than the other, they just facilitate different functions.
When we observe an activity we tend to see both the micro and the macro of the event. If we go to a football game and observe what is going on, we see the players on the field, of course, but we also see the thousands of people in the stadium, the flashing signage, the TV cameras, where security and police are positioned, the cheerleaders and the beer vendors and the drunk dudes two sections away fighting with each other. We take in the entire scene in the macro, yet also pick out specific details in the micro.
When spectating, on the other hand, we tend to focus on a specific thing: the players on the field, the ball, and the score of the game. We tend not to notice or be overly caught up in all the other things that are going on around us because our attention is directed toward the activities that are entertaining us. This specific focus is what allows us to lose ourselves in the moment, be it getting caught up in the excitement of the football game or lost in a particularly moving piece of art. The focus on what is happening in front of you becomes so specific that you don't notice, nor do you need to, the environment around you. You are caught up in the moment, which in and of itself can be immensely pleasurable.
Observing is important to the process of making shit up because you are again taking in various different data points. You are consciously and actively receiving new information. When you start at the macro level and then slowly begin to focus the lens on the micro details, you start building that subconscious database where bits of information can swim around and potentially knock into each other.
While observing, you aren't necessarily trying to make connections, but in receiving this new information it allows potentially unrelated concepts to collide. The idea of beer vendors and policemen might seem unrelated. Yet if we allow those concepts to collide, maybe something new happens.
Maybe the idea of having undercover officers walk the stadium dressed as vendors is a way to increase security. Or maybe the beer vendors have a direct line to the security staff so they can alert them if trouble is brewing. The security staff can then make their presence felt prior to things getting out of hand, and hopefully diffuse the situation before it blows up into something bigger.
By consciously observing what is going on around us we have yet another way to capture the raw material that will be turned into ideas. Observing doesn't take a ton of effort and it takes no money. It is another simple thing we can control and is incredibly helpful in stocking the larder of the mind.
FAN THE SPARK
So we are following our curiosity, which is leading us to do shit, and we are observing what is happening around us, which is leading to sparks.
Now what? In very simple terms, sparks will die out if you don't capture them and fan them into something bigger. I do not claim to have any special ability to identify good ideas or have any singular talent that allows me to do things others can't. The one ability that I do have that so many people I encounter do not, is the ability to recognize a spark when I see it
Every day, people come across sparks of inspiration. An idea comes to mind and a small flash of excitement courses through them as they say to themselves “Hey, that's a pretty good idea.” And then they never do a damn thing and the spark dies out like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. All you are left with is a flimsy piece of wire and second‐degree burns.
The ability to jump on the spark is the single most important thing for making shit up, in my not‐so‐humble opinion. Look, every asshole has ideas, it's the assholes who do anything with the ideas who can make a difference in their lives.
The ability to identify and then act upon the initial surge of inspiration is what puts all things in motion. So the question is, how do we identify the spark, and then how do we have the courage to grab it and fan it into a fire?
For me the key to identifying a spark is when I get unabashedly excited about something. When I have a positive emotional reaction to an idea, that usually means there is something there to take a look at. I try not to judge or feel embarrassed by this emotional reaction. If for some reason I am now superexcited about looking for mushrooms in the woods, I try to embrace the excitement for what it is, a flash of interest that makes me feel good. If it makes me feel good or is intellectually stimulating I'll continue exploring the idea.
Once it no longer feels good or stops being intellectually stimulating, I let the idea fade away. I do this over and over again, allowing myself to become excited about something, and exploring it a little bit, and then letting it die. Some people will say that this is a lack of focus or a needless exertion of creative energies. I say these people are idiots. I say this for a couple of reasons.
First, exploring what brings pleasure or intellectual stimulation is usually a worthwhile pursuit. If something makes me feel good (and isn't unhealthy and doesn't hurt anyone else), why not pursue it? If it is intellectually stimulating, meaning it makes me think and grow on a personal level, then what would be the reason not to explore the idea?
Second, in following the little inspirations even a short way down the path, I'm practicing my ability to create momentum for potential ideas. What others consider lack of focus, I consider it to be a practical way of finding inspiration.
One hundred sparks will die out for every one that flickers to life. That is perfectly okay and acceptable. I'm sure there are more talented people than I who have a higher spark‐into‐flame rate. For me it is all about volume. I firmly believe that if I allow enough sparks to start, eventually one will catch. Or, I will freeze to death, alone and unremembered except by those closest to me. Either way, I will have enjoyed myself.
If one hundred sparks die out for every one that ignites into a small and fragile flame, how does one know which ideas to pursue and which ones to give up on? While this of course will be different for each individual, in my case what I end up identifying as ideas worth pursuing are the ones that show themselves in a couple of different ways. The first and the easiest way is when the excitement just doesn't die. When a concept grabs a hold of me, digs in, keeps me so excited that it just seems obvious that I need to jump on it and see where it goes, I follow it as far and as enthusiastically as I can.
This most recently happened to me in New York City. I learned that a former improv theater in Manhattan was vacant and available. Following my ethos of “curiosity” and “doing shit,” I immediately scheduled a visit with some key members of my team. Upon seeing the theater and the opportunity it presented, I was immediately struck by the excitement of what Improv Asylum might be able to do in this space. It took me no more than a few minutes to decide to pursue the idea of creating Improv Asylum New York in this theater.
There were many times along the way that the concept could have fallen apart. Yet I didn't worry about any of that. I concentrated on following the idea to its next logical step, in this case contacting the landlord and seeing if they would be willing to rent the theater to my company. Each decision led to the next, to the point where we officially launched Improv Asylum New York in November 2018.
The second way is the “zombie” way. This is when an idea just keeps coming back again and again. These ideas just keep clawing their way back to life, no matter how many times I bury them or put them on the backburner or send them to bed. If the concept keeps coming back into my consciousness no matter how far I move away from it, then I decide there must be something that is worth exploring.
When an idea keeps resurfacing, I begin to believe that my subconscious is telling me that there is something here, so pay attention. For me, this was China. For years I had been boring my staff and anyone who would listen to me about my belief that the biggest frontier for improv is in China. A culture with a deep history of creativity and an immense population hungering to once again move to the forefront of originality and innovation, China seemed to me to be the perfect place to bring the concepts and ideas of improvisation and the theories of modern collaborative creation. My staff would humor me, listening to my wild speculations about bringing improv to China and waiting for my current passion to subside.
Year after year the idea of developing a program in Chinese gnawed at the back of my head. So much so, that I pitched the idea year after year to one of our colleagues at Harvard Business School, where we run an annual program. Knowing that HBS had a campus in Shanghai, I would offer the idea of developing our corporate improv training techniques in Chinese. Each year I would get the polite “That sounds interesting” response and be sent on my merry way.
Until one year when the organizer of their global leadership group said “Do you think you can really put something together like this in Chinese?” This lead to Improv Asylum developing an entire program in Mandarin with some fantastic Chinese improvisers who are now our partners in bringing our philosophies on improv, creativity, and culture to growing companies and universities in China.
Unlike the New York theater, which came about incredibly fast, our Chinese program was the result of an idea that just wouldn't die. It kept coming back to me and reigniting my interest to such a degree that I had keep pushing and exploring the idea, even when most everybody else thought that I was a bit nuts.
Like everything I have talked about up to this point, the ability to identify the spark and then grab it and fan it can be practiced. Start small. When something excites you, immediately explore the concept. This might mean just researching it online to start.
It doesn't matter how strange or arcane others may think it is. If it excites you, then immediately pursue it just a little way down the path. Keep doing this with many different ideas. Have fun seeing where and how far your explorations go. Most interests will die a natural death, and that is okay. What you really are doing is strengthening that muscle that allows you to make connections and let things seemingly spontaneously combust.
Allow yourself to be unselfconsciously curious, get out and do shit, and observe the world around you. If you do this, you will start to experience the feeling of inspiration finding you instead of you finding it.
I want to be clear here that this is just one way of creating and finding inspiration. There are one million ways to create, and if somebody claims that there is one singular way or right way to find inspiration, pack your bags and head for the hills.
What I am describing is a process that works very well for me and may also for you. You most certainly can create in a methodical, disciplined, and well‐thought‐out way. In fact it ends up requiring quite a bit of discipline to keep exploring ideas when you categorically know that most will go nowhere. Yet the ability to identify and fan the spark is, for me, the cornerstone of making shit up and getting shit done.