You Can't Start a Fire Without a Spark
Greetings dear reader, it has been just a minute since I wrote to you, but I will continue with the theme of taking the aphorisms and advice that will help you be a great improviser and taking them into your personal and professional life. This week's aphorism is “if this is true what else is true”. This aphorism works well for the type of doctor that I am, however I think it applies to most professions and is definitely helpful in improving communication with those in your personal life. In one sense this piece of advice sounds like suggesting everyone make assumptions about everyone they are around, but I assure you there are some large differences between the suggestion to “make assumptions” and the suggestion that “if this is true what else is true”. I will also explain how these differences are highlighted under the conditions of the improv stage and how the practice of improv provides the opportunity to get better at this skill.
If any of the readers are regular improv performers, they have no doubt had a conversation with a friend where the friend first asks them to tell them a joke that they stay on stage. Then once the difference between improv and standup comedy is clarified, they say I could never think of things to say on the spot like that. It is at this point where the improv performer can explain the idea of “yes and” and the idea that all you do on stage is say “if this is true what else is true”. When you step out onto an improv stage you have limited information and must rely on your scene partner to clearly communicate ideas that you both are trying to convey. “Yes, and” is often the first piece of advice and people focus on the yes portion and what it means to agree with your scene partner's reality. The idea of “if this is true, what else is true” can provide guidance to what an improviser should say for the “and” portion of “Yes, and”. This will also help these scene partners create a reality together as information is gradually added to the scene. The hallmark of seasoned improvisers in my eyes is how they can take a simple idea and explore what is fun about the idea. The hallmark of beginning improvisers is the tendency to move quickly from one idea to the next that often creates confusion for the audience as well as the people on stage.
South Park anyone?
In Will Hines's book How to Be the Greatest Improviser on Earth this advice is described as “you can go to crazy town but you have to take the local”. This is why the best improv is silly but not too silly. The best shows are only experienced by those who are in the audience because if it is explained to someone else, it makes little sense and seems too silly. These are shows that really utilize and have fun with the advice of “if this is true, what else is true” to build a world that everyone on stage and everyone in the audience can connect to. The idea of “Yes, and” helps you connect with your scene partner, while the idea of “if this is true, what else is true” will help connect the audience more clearly to the premise. This is explained well in this video
So how does this idea live in society? Let us review a couple of examples…
I think this is a great way to look at the world. I wonder if anyone has had an occasion to systematically update their beliefs and act on the new beliefs over the last five years? (Hopefully the sarcasm came through in that last sentence. Everyone needs to do more of this, the author included!). Practicing Bayes’ Theorem is understanding that you don’t have all of the information and never will have all the information, so pick what is the best option for what is known. Then don’t forget to update as more information becomes known. Improv becomes a way to practice using Bayes theorem. Jocko Willink has referred to this as Iterative Decision Making. Again this is what you are forced to do in improv. You have to make a decision. There will be uncertainty, but a decision with imperfect information is better than no decision at all. This relates to the last entry about not worrying you are making a mistakes but is more focused on thinking about jumping off of what you know rather than going in any direction that is easiest. Enjoy the discussion below…
I mention her work all of the time, but Lisa Feldman Barret discusses how emotions are just our brains predicting outcomes based on information at hand combined with our past experiences. In an article from 2019 in Current Directions in Psychological Science, she wrote
“How does a human mind emerge within a human brain as it navigates within an uncertain world while attempting to efficiently regulate its body within hard biological constraints? Recently, a hypothesis has emerged that offers a possible answer: Actions, and their accompanying mental events, begin as top-down representations in the brain, fashioned from past experiences that are tested against the state of the world”
…which is quite literally what I am talkin bout. She says one way to become more emotionally intelligent is to get better at these predictions. That is what you are forced to do on the improv stage. You are forced to answer, “If this is true, what else is true” and find out if your prediction was correct nearly every moment on the improv stage.
I think the first video should explain how this idea is related to my job. I am an Internal Medicine Physician and it is my job to diagnose and treat patients. It is usually better if I do that accurately and effectively. Thus, the idea of “if this is true, what else is true” is practiced every day in the hospital and in the clinic with every patient that I see. It is also relevant to how I interact with patients because I often think I know enough of the clinical presentation, and as I discuss it with the patient, I can often tell by their body language if my understanding of the story is not completely correct. My initial understanding of the patient's case is based on imperfect information and then as the patient provides more information, I am able to update my assessment of their health conditions. The idea of “if this is true, what else is true” can provide a framework for me to dig deeper into the patients’ health history to try to understand why a particular condition developed as well.
My other academic activity is organizing a hospital medicine mystery case of the week every Wednesday to go through with learners at various stages of their health care training. We use a rare case presentation to go through how we systematically approach our patient care, so it is not really important that the learners get the correct answer to the case. It is more important that they develop their thinking skills to not fall into tunnel vision when they have a patient with an unknown diagnosis in real life. This is a rare moment that I do not try to teach them improv, but I do encourage them to employ the principle of “if this is true what else is true” using different language.
Does anyone else have any examples of using this thinking from improv class out there in the real world? Comment below. I think many people do this in a limited fashion all the time, but I think there is benefit to understanding when this principle is being correctly applied!
See you all soon! The picture is of a car that I saw on fire and went to help until there was a big explosion right by it and there weren’t any humans in it while it was on fire. I include this because I drove over a small flame in the road on the way home and thought, “hmmm, that is strange that little fire in the middle of the road is out of the ordinary!” Then I kept driving down the road and sure enough there was an entire car on fire. Great work to the fire department because they put it out shortly after the title picture
