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LCN 138: Lower Your Standards

LCN 138: Lower Your Standards
The Creative Sandbox Way™
LCN 138: Lower Your Standards
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LCN 138: Lower Your StandardsI’m standing on the edge of the stage, bright lights shining in my face, so I can barely see the 20 or so people in the audience.

My three teammates and I have just walked out from the wings, and my body is buzzing with start-of-show excitement.

We’re improvisers, so we don’t know yet what our show is going to be about, what characters we’re going to play, what world we’re going to inhabit.

All we know is that we will start off at an office holiday party. And this is what we tell the audience.

“So what kind of a business is this, that’s having the office holiday party?”

“A pet adoption agency!” someone cries out.

“Great — thank you! And what is the name of [Read more…]

LCN 135: Kat Koppett – “Improv is the Gym for Life”

LCN 135: Kat Koppett – "Improv Is the Gym for Life"
The Creative Sandbox Way™
LCN 135: Kat Koppett - "Improv is the Gym for Life"
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LCN 135: Kat Koppett – "Improv Is the Gym for Life"I met Kat Koppett at the Applied Improvisation Network World Conference in August, but I’ve actually been a fan of hers for a long time.

Kat is the author of a “bible” in the world of applied improvisation, Training to Imagine: Practical Improvisational Theatre Techniques for Trainers and Managers to Enhance Creativity, Teamwork, Leadership, and Learning.

Kat got into improv rather accidentally. She trained as an actor, and fell in love with improv because, ironically, there were rules for being spontaneous!

(Remind you of anything? Yours truly had to [Read more…]

LCN 124: There’s No Competition & You’re Not Selling Snake Oil

LCN 124: There's No Competition & You're Not Selling Snake Oil
The Creative Sandbox Way™
LCN 124: There's No Competition & You're Not Selling Snake Oil
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LCN 124: There's No Competition & You're Not Selling Snake Oil“You should meet Ted,” I said, “he’s also into mindfulness and improv.”

It was lunchtime at the Applied Improvisation Network (AIN) conference this past weekend, and I was talking with another first-timer to the conference. I felt rather pleased that I was connecting people that I didn’t even know!

But the guy — let’s call him A — seemed skeptical.

“Yeah, I met Ted,” he said. “But I don’t know… We live in the same area, so aren’t we competitors? And really, aren’t all of us here at the conference competitors?”

It was a valid question. 200 improvisers, who use improv in our work in an applied way — i.e. Applied Improv — convening together for four days.

Aren’t we competing for clients? Competing for business? Competing for scarce resources?

Well, as I said to A, that’s certainly one attitude to take. You could look at the 200 people at this conference as competitors, competing with you for scarce resources. End of story.

But is that a useful perspective? [Read more…]

I Failed

Scribble doodle by Melissa DinwiddieIt’s been All-Book-All-The-Time around here, as my book launch looms closer.

(November 15th! That’s less than two months away! Ack! Click here for more info.)

But, of course, life doesn’t slow down just because you’re writing a book. No, sir-ee!

That’s why I got ruthless a few weeks back, and cut out a bunch of activities I’d been doing regularly which weren’t directly helping me get the book done.

Like making [Read more…]

LCN 075: 3 Lessons from Leaping Without a Net 4 Times in a Week

LCN 075: 3 Lessons from Leaping Without a Net 4 Times in a Week
The Creative Sandbox Way™
LCN 075: 3 Lessons from Leaping Without a Net 4 Times in a Week
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LCN 075: 3 Lessons from Leaping Without a Net 4 Times in a WeekThey say when it rains, it pours, and that is certainly how the past week felt to me. I’m intensely focused on my book, feeling the pressure of a tight deadline, because the launch date is November 15th — just two months away — so I want to pour as much of my time and energy into it as possible.

But life doesn’t stop or slow down for us, of course. And last week I had a two-day trip to San Diego on Sunday and Monday, and when I got home I had no fewer than four shows with my improv group, All That Jazz, because we had been accepted into the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Yay!

And oh, no! Four shows, four drives up to San Francisco in rush hour traffic, meant something like twenty hours out of my week!

But I still managed to get almost nine and a half hours of work done on my book. Considering that my goal is at least two hours per day, and I was gone for two days, that’s not too bad.

And, having four improv shows in one week was quite a learning experience. So I thought I’d share with you some of the lessons learned from leaping without a net four times in a one week.

[Read more…]

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