I’ve been reading some books about improvisation over the past couple of years. My interest was originally sparked by experiments with taking a more improvisational approach to tabletop roleplaying games, but the idea of applying improvisational techniques more broadly appeals to me too.
The book Life Unscripted has the idea of taking an improvisational approach to daily life as its overall theme. I particularly liked how the authors of that book noted that there is a lot of value in routine – it helps us get through life and get things done. However, too much routine can feel restrictive and deadening. We can view all sorts of opportunities (big or small) that we notice in the world as “offers” we could choose to accept. Accepting some of those offers is a natural way to break out of routines.
But which offers should we choose? In a theatrical improvisation scene, there’s often only one other actor, and therefore only a limited number of offers. In daily life, the world presents an enormous range of possibilities, some that are easy to accept and many others that will be a lot more challenging.
Life Unscripted contains an insight into one way to make choices between offers: the book argues that good improvisers have empathy. And this linked in my mind to Carl Rogers’ claim that true empathy requires courage because it contains an inherent risk of being changed by understanding other people’s beliefs, opinions and emotions. So I suggest that if we’re hoping to break out of some routines, we should look for opportunities that broaden our worldviews.
Travelling to a place with a different culture and not making many plans in advance would be an excellent way to break routine and learn new ways of thinking. But that requires substantial time and money. For quicker, cheaper ways to interrupt routines, we could:
- have conversations with people who have different interests from us
- borrow library books on topics we don’t know much about
- visit a free exhibition by an artist whose work seems challenging
- tune into a different radio station and listen for a while
- walk around a nearby location we haven’t visited before and see what we notice
However, my reflections on Impro by Keith Johnstone made me wonder if all of the above is only the first half. Maybe there’s additional value to be gained by deliberately analysing the new experiences afterwards. Consider questions such as: What was surprising about that conversation? How did that weird artwork or unfamiliar music make me feel? Did that book reference any other books that could contain new and interesting ideas?
Some people who find it relatively easy to take an improvisational approach to life may find the idea of analysing experiences afterwards uninviting or even discouraging (and vice versa). All the same, perhaps trying it out (even just a few lines in a journal… or on a website) could provide unexpected insight and benefit.