Improvisation – the art of being spontaneous

Sridhar Rajan Jagannathan on how improvisation can help you navigate everyday problems.

Imagine that you are stranded on a deserted island and you are allowed to bring one object with you that can help you survive. What would you choose and why would you choose that? Sounds a little farfetched? How about scrambling to solve a crisis in your workplace or for that matter babysitting for your four-year-old nephew. Everything involves some sort of improvisation and adaptation in an emerging situation.

The Gates Cambridge Learning for Purpose programme recently organised a workshop to highlight the importance of improvisation in our daily lives. We invited Domeka Parker, an instructor in improvisational theatre, to lead us through activities and techniques to learn about improvisation. So, the next time when you are faced with a sudden challenge, whether looking to turn your mistake into a miracle or be it just being ‘present’ in the current moment, follow these basic tenets to adapt and overcome.

Observe and absorb – living in the present

The first step in improvising is to closely observe the environment and to absorb cues that help us in solving the problem. In short, ‘Stop living in the future and be present in the present’. But how do we go about this?

Scenario 1: Imagine that a friend of yours is talking with you about something. Most often we want to say something clever and start thinking about it, instead of listening to what our friend has to say. In such a situation, try simply repeating in your head what your friend is saying. This will help you focus on the present and retain relevant information for you to process!

Scenario 2: Let's say that you are in a conference and you are invited to give a talk impromptu. You feel nervous, though you are competent enough on the subject matter. Just before you give the talk, focus on your breath and try to feel the air that you take in and let out, slowly! This will help reduce your anxiety and focus on the present moment.

Delete and discard – the undesirables

The next step is to recognise information that is not useful and to discard them, so they don’t interfere in solving the problem. Let's see a practical example.

Scenario: Imagine that you play a game with your friend, wherein he does an action and says a word. For example, he can raise his arms up and say ‘up’ and do the same while putting his arms down and say ‘down’. Your task would be to simply mimic your friend. Sounds like a piece of cake, right? But now think of a situation where he raises his arms up and says ‘down’, now you have to only listen to what he says and ignore what he does, so you need to put your arms down and say ‘down’. Most often we get confused and end up raising our arms up and saying ‘down’. The trick in this case is to simply focus on what you hear and not what you look at!

The human brain always tries to create coherence in order to process less information, but when the information coming is non-coherent, confusion reigns. So the idea is to devote more of our attention to his words and not his action. If you make this as a conscious decision you can perform well on this task.

In short, if you want to discard useless information: don’t try to actively discard it, but rather put more of your intentional focus on the useful information.

Accept and add – change your reality

The next step is to actually accept the current situation without any judgment.

Most of the time, when something goes wrong or contrary to our plans we refuse to accept the reality and resist it. The solution in this case is to apply the ‘Yes and’ rule. It states that you accept any current situation and say ‘Yes’ to it. Further you add bits of your own reality to that situation and say ‘and’ to it. Let's see an example.

Scenario: Imagine that you are travelling to the US from London. Unfortunately, the flight is delayed by a few hours. Our usual reaction in this case would be to curse our current situation and blame the carrier for poor service. But the solution would be to say ‘Yes’ to the current situation of the flight getting delayed. You accept the situation without any judgment. Now you say ‘and’ and add a part of information that conforms to your reality. For example, it could be that you never had the opportunity before to explore the shopping area in the airport and this current situation has presented yourself with an excellent opportunity to explore.

Dare to risk – fail forward

The final step is to actually ‘act’. For most people, the fear of failure keeps them away from trying something new or engaging in something unprepared. The mindset that we need to have in this case is to imagine that we are navigating the rough seas. It would be nice to have calm waters, but in reality it is never the case. If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done.

Once you have diligently followed all the basic tenets, you enter into the state of ‘relaxed readiness’. You are relaxed, as you know you are prepared to handle any curveball that life throws at you. You are ready to launch your sails and to navigate the rough sea. This is the state most creative people aim to attain.

So the next time, you are faced with an unexpected challenge, I dare you to improvise!

*Sridhar Rajan Jagannathan [2015] is a Gates Cambridge scholar and is currently a PhD student in psychology at the University of Cambridge focusing on consciousness. Picture credit: League of improvisational theater by Aude Vanlathem. Picture credit: Aude Vanlathem / www.audevan.com, via Wikimedia Commons