Putting Useful Boundaries on Our Thinking

In my organization-development practice, I often conduct an improv-based activity I call What’s In a Name?

In Round One, I have participants walk around the room, point to objects, and call out each object’s name as they point (“table,” “white board,” “light switch,” etc.). Most participants, of course, can do this with no problem.

In Round Two, participants are again told to walk around and point to objects, but this time they must call out a name other than the actual name of the object to which they’re pointing.

Invariably in Round Two, you can almost hear the mental gears grinding as participants strain to think of a name from the whole universe of possibilities available to them. During the debrief, many participants attribute their hesitation to the pressure they feel to think of something “creative” or “clever.”

However, occasionally in Round Two, a participant will rattle off object names just as easily as he did in Round One. When asked to share his strategy, the participant will often let the others in on the “secret”: Think of another category – like “barnyard animals” – and assign names from that category (“chicken,” “horse,” “pig,” etc.) to each of the pointed-to objects.

I use this activity to illustrate the value of placing useful boundaries around our thinking, in order to avoid becoming – like most of the Round Two participants described above - paralyzed by the tyranny of unlimited choice whenever we’re contemplating a course of action. Useful boundaries help us frame our thinking so that we can focus our mental energies on the most promising possibilities and options, eliminating red herrings and irrelevant considerations right upfront.

For the Daily Improviser, useful boundaries can take many forms:

• Her own experience, and the experience of others (aka “advice” and “mentoring”);
• Checklists to help her prioritize actions and avoid having things fall through the cracks;
• Templates to help her compose documents (and thereby avoid the dreaded “blank page”);
• Structured processes for carrying out certain procedures, most notably the processes associated with Project Management practice.

But wait! If “Daily Improvising” is all about applying the skills and attitudes of performance improvisers to everyday life, why am I suggesting that the Daily Improviser put boundaries on her thinking? Don’t performance improvisers keep themselves open to the universe of possibilities and make up everything anew on the spot?

Well, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, then you’re probably way ahead of me. As I mentioned in an earlier article, performance improvisers themselves commonly place useful boundaries on their thinking to facilitate their actions. By using catchphrases, clichés, accents, and pre-set scene structures, they are able to put a loose framework around their scenes and provide focus for their in-the-moment choices.

I’ll continue next time with some further examples of useful boundaries as described by the improv guru Keith Johnstone in his book Impro for Storytellers.