Comedian, facilitator and event producer. I love jokes and how they can help us move through hard stuff. Sign up for the Cathartic Laughs newsletter for tips on how to joke about the curve balls life throws our way.
π¦’ A Stanford Prof's Best Tip for Better Creative Ideas
Hey funny people,
There is a myth that you hear in comedy (and every other area of life), that some people make something from nothing.
We love to throw around words like 'genius' and put some folks up on a pedestal. While I can ignore this thinking to an extent, I find if I am tired or down on myself, (or looking at other people's successes on social media), it is easy to think that I need better ideas for jokes or projects.
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So it was very motivating to stumble across Jeremy Utley via the You Are Not So Smart Podcast. Jeremy is a professor at Standford's d school (the 'd' stands for design) and recently wrote a book called Ideaflow. He reframes how to think about solving problems; whether it is about how to write a better joke, get some more people to join your newsletter, or how to get a job at SNL (but make them air earlier because you like to get a good night's sleep).
In this talk, he walks through how the thing you need to have a great idea, is...
More ideas. (but, like, waaay more than you think).
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Some key takeaways:
- Having more ideas is the most important predictor of having good ideas.
- Ideas are like most things, a few will be silly, most will be ordinary and a few will be great.
- Having meh or even silly ideas is necessary to getting to the great ideas because if you self censor for fear of having bad ideas, you will likely censor out the great ones.
Anyone who writes knows this on some level; you have to have two different modes to write.
One mode is open to anything and more playful. This is the mode that writes the draft or jots down the initial idea for a premise. In our brains this is called the Default Mode Network.
And then there is the more focused, editing mode, where we sift through ideas, refine and throw some of them out. This function happens in the Executive Control Network.
I only know the names of the networks because I am binge-watching The Mind Explained, which is a series on Netflix that Vox partnered on. The episode on creativity was really neat and touched on the different brain modes.
I'm really trying to watch everything on Netflix before I cancel my account this month. My eyes hurt...wish me luck!
How to stay in the creative mode for longer?
One way to make yourself stay in the playful mode is to make a rule to generate a certain number of ideas.
One famous way of doing this is The Onion method of writing jokes. At The Onion, each writer on the team comes up with 15 headlines for stories and pitches them. They have a process to sort through all the ideas and whittle them down until the group works on just a few stories.
You don't have to use this method just for satirical news headlines. Here is the draft list of ideas I generated for the last bit of this sentence from the newsletter:
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"He reframes how to think about solving problems; whether it is about how to write a better joke, get some more people to join your newsletter, or how to get a job at SNL (but make them air earlier because you like to get a good night's sleep)."
Draft jokes/ideas
- or how to make friends and influence people
- how to get on the tonight show but get them to change the hours because you go to bed kinda early
- how to become a famous renaissance painter
- how to star in the next marvel movie
- how to bring Eddie Murphy out of retirement
- how to be cool in front of teenagers.
- how to introspect.
- how to remember birthdays
- how to run a small biz through the revolutions and changes
- How to grab a gopher by its tail
- How to never offend anyone
- How to run a marathon
- How to be a comedian in 2023 without social media
- How to perfect Tik Tok dances so your comedy career can take off
Yeah, they are not great, but that's the point. Normally people don't, and shouldn't, see all of your ideas.
Next Workshop
We will see you tomorrow, Saturday Feb 18 at 10:00 AM PST, on Zoom for our informal joke writing meetup. You can come even if you don't have goals or jokes you are actively working on, you can join in and give feedback to others. Can't make this one? Next one is on March 4th, so mark your calendar.
Jokes we wish we made...
February 17th 2023
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Stay funny and warm and see you tomorrow!
Em
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Em Cooper
Comedian, facilitator and event producer. I love jokes and how they can help us move through hard stuff. Sign up for the Cathartic Laughs newsletter for tips on how to joke about the curve balls life throws our way.
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