Improvise – Commentary

Improvise, that’s our topic. This can be summed up with one sentence. Decisiveness generally beats

over planning. That’s what we’re talking about.

There’s a tendency in most people to over plan, especially when something’s important and the more

important something is the more we tend to over plan, to over think, to over analyze, because we’re

worried or scared. But, especially now in our modern world, things change very, very, very quickly.

Situations change. The world changes. Everything changing, changing very fast.

We need more decisiveness, because often things change too fast for our plans. We can’t plan fast

enough, because we finish our plan and now the situation is different so our plans not gonna work

anymore. So we must learn to improvise, to flow, to make good decisions quickly, again and again

and again and again, as the situation continues evolving and changing.

There’s a nice phrase in English - ‘paralysis by analysis’. Paralysis means you can’t move, you’re

frozen, you’re stuck. Analysis means thinking about something a lot.

Thinking about all the little details, analyzing. What this whole phrase means paralysis by analysis, it

means that often when we think too much we become frozen. It means we don’t make decisions. We

don’t take action. We just think and think and think, analyze, analyze, analyze.

I saw this in big companies all the time when I worked in a big company in the past. It didn’t happen

often, I didn’t like those jobs, but I had a few jobs where I worked in large companies. One very

large company, IBM, and then another large hospital. In both cases I saw, within those organizations,

paralysis by analysis. They were such big bureaucracies that no decisions could be made quickly.

Every decision was analyzed and analyzed again and then sent to someone else and then sent to

someone else to analyze. And then they sent it to another person or group to analyze.

Everything had to be analyzed and planned for weeks and weeks before any decision was made.

As a result, many times these organizations were too slow to change. I was working for IBM back

when I was quiet young, in university still, and at that time they were the big computer company.
They were the masters of IT. They were the masters of the personal computer. But because they were

so slow to change they eventually lost, they’re not the biggest anymore. Google, Apple, Microsoft,

first Microsoft then later Google and Apple and many others beat them, because those other

companies were faster to change.

IBM had paralysis by analysis. See, when you take action and you make decisions you create a faster

learning cycle. We’ve talked about this long ago in another VIP lesson.

You take an action and then something happens and then you see, you learn something. It worked or

it did not work. So you learn something very quickly. Then you take another action and then you

learn again. That new action it worked or it did not work. So when you take actions and you make

decisions quickly, you tend to learn much faster. You don’t’ learn so much by analysis. When you

analyze and analyze and plan and plan and plan too much, you actually slow down the learning

process.

We can’t do that anymore, especially in our economy now where technology and economic

conditions change too quickly. So we personally cannot have paralysis by analysis it’s not good. It’s

also not good for our teams or for companies either.

So let’s review, how can you learn to improvise? Because improvisation is a skill, in fact. Some

people think that improvisation is just randomly doing stuff but that’s not true. It’s a skill. It has

principles. Let’s talk about those. Let’s review those again.

• Principle number one, don’t try to be clever.

Meaning, don’t try to be perfect. Improvisation is not about perfection. It’s not about trying to be

great or super smart or super clever all the time, but rather to be good enough, to make a good

enough decision for right now. Will it always be the best possible decision? No. But a good enough

decision is fine, because you’ll be making many, many, many decision. You’ll be improvising.

You’ll be constantly flowing and changing with the circumstances.

By making lots and lots and lots and lots of good enough decisions, you will do better than another

person who’s always trying to make the one perfect decision. They’ll be paralyzed and when they

finally make their decision it’ll probably be wrong, because they took too long and things are now

different. When you make lots and lots and lots of fast good enough decisions, then you stay with the

circumstances. You stay with the situation. You learn faster. You’ll actually have a better

performance by doing that.

• Another principle of improvisation is to just keep moving.

Keep flowing. Keep making decisions. Keep taking actions. Don’t stop That’s probably the main

principle of improv.

On the stage, we talked a lot about on the stage in the main lesson, people who actually perform

improvisation, that’s a big, big, big thing with them. Those actors have to keep moving. They have to

keep talking. If everyone just stops to think about what they should do, then the whole stage would

be silent and the audience would think, what’s happening? It would be very boring. So even thought

they might not always say something super funny or super interesting, those actors they keep talking.

They keep everything moving constantly, never stop. That’s an important rule.

• Another principle of improvisation is that you must trust your feelings. You must trust your

instincts.

This is hard for some people. For some it’s easy, for some it’s not. Trusting your instinct means you

trust the first feeling or the first thought that comes up, and you immediately take an action from that

thought, from that feeling. Now when you first start, maybe your first thoughts won’t be so good,

you’re not used to doing this. It feels strange. You hesitate. And so maybe your first thought might

not be a great one, it might be so-so. That’s okay, because the more you do this the more the thoughts

will come and the faster they will come.

As you get used to improvising you get used to making fast decisions, fast decisions, fast decisions.

You get used to trusting your first thought, trusting your first feeling. As you do that the quality of

the thoughts get better. The decisions become better. You develop it, almost like a muscle where

you’re making it stronger and better. So just trust your feeling, don’t think about it. Don’t analyze it

and think oh no, this is my first feeling, this is my first thought. Oh, but is it good, not good, oh I

don’t know. Should I do it? I don’t know. Maybe I should try something else. No, no, no, no, that’s

not improvisation.

Instead, a thought comes into your head, yes do this and you immediately go with it.

You immediately do it. You immediately say yes. Or maybe your first feeling is no, so you just say

no I’m not gonna do it, I’m gonna do this instead, whatever it is. The feeling comes up, you do it. But

as we discussed, generally it’s best to say yes not no.

In improv if you say no you stop all the action, you stop the decisions. So it’s better to accept the

situation as it is, and say yes to your first feeling. Say yes to your first thought. Say yes to your

instincts.

• Finally, the last principle is speed.

Do this as fast as possible. Make decisions as fast as possible. Choose the first feeling, not the second

or the third. Choose the first thought, the first decision, not the second, third or fourth. And when it

comes up act immediately, don’t think about it, don’t wait, don’t hesitate. It comes up and you act.

The decision comes and you act.

The feeling comes and you act. Try to do that faster and faster and faster. Speed, speed, speed. The

faster you go the better you’ll become. It’s interesting. You have to trust your own brain is what

you’re really doing.

Trust your own instincts, your unconscious to be smart. In many ways your unconscious is smarter

than your conscious. You could say your brain is smarter than you are. This reminds me of a scene in
Star Wars. I love the movie Star Wars. You’ve probably seen it, if not go rent and watch it, the

original. In that movie the hero, Luke Skywalker, he’s driving a plane. He’s flying a plane, a

spaceship and he wants to destroy the big evil fort, the big evil planet.

He’s flying along and there’s a target, a very small target. He must hit this target and in the movie, in

the scene, the computer is on and the computer tells him when to shoot.

So he’s looking at the computer and the computer is beeping and it’s going to tell him when to shoot,

but then suddenly, Luke the hero, hears a voice in his head. He hears the voice of his master, his

teacher, his trainer. The trainer is dead now in the movie, but still he hears the voice reminding him.

The voice says, ‘Luke trust your feelings.’ So the voice tells him to trust his feelings, don’t trust the

computer. Don’t think about it too much, just trust your feelings and shoot when you feel it’s the

right time.

So Luke turns off the computer and then he trusts his feelings and presses the button.

He shoots and the big evil spaceship blows up, it explodes.

What was the message of that?

What was the message from that movie? What

was the message of that scene?

The movie was saying, trust your feelings. Trust your instincts. Trust yourself to improvise, don’t

analyze too much. Don’t think too much. Trust yourself. It’s exactly what we’re talking about in this

lesson. Trust your feelings and make fast decisions.

You can do it you just have to get used to it, just practice it.

That’s what you’re going to do this month. That’s your assignment, your homework, whatever you

want to call it.

Number one, pick an area of your life that’s tough, where right now it’s tough you’re struggling. It’s

difficult. Maybe things are changing for you in this area of life and you’re having a hard time.
Number two, decide that you’re going to practice improvisation in this area of life and start making

fast decisions and taking fast actions.

You’ve probably been thinking about it too much. If there’s an area of your life that’s difficult you’re

probably thinking about it too much, because that’s what we all do. If you’re having trouble with

money, for example, you’re probably thinking about it, analyzing it, what should I do? So much, too

much probably, so what I want you to do this month is not do that. Instead, notice what your first

thought is, your first feeling and take an action. Make a decision immediately and then do it again

and again and again.

All this month in this area of life make fast decisions. Trust your instincts. And, no matter what

happens keep going forward, keep making fast decisions. Maybe your first decision will not be good

maybe it’ll be bad and you’ll get a bad result. Don’t stop and say oh no, now I have to analyze my

bad result, this doesn’t work. No, whatever the result, trust your next feeling and make another fast

decision. See what happens.

Then make another fast decision and another, keep moving forward, just like improv.

Don’t stop. Don’t get paralyzed. Don’t have paralysis by analysis, keep moving forward as fast as

you can. Speed, speed, speed is important. Trust your instincts. Don’t analyze. Make fast decisions

and keep moving forward.

Of course, share your experience on our VIP social site. Other members want to hear about your

experiences, even if they’re difficult and especially if they’re successful. I look forward to reading

about your experiences to. See you on our VIP social site and on our forum.

Bye for now.