5 Ways to Live Life Like an Improv Game

Scott, the podcast camera guy, and I are both on Laser Squad Bravo, the LMU improv team. While not performing with UCSD's Foosh, racing go karts and partying to no end this past weekend (thanks guys), we got to thinking: many rules in good classic improv are generally good rules to follow in everyday life. Enjoy.

5. Observe the Scene Before Contributing and Listen

Don't be that guy who always interrupts a conversation because he doesn't know exactly what people are talking about. If you don't know what I'm describing, chances are, you're that guy.

Once approaching a conversation, stay shutted the fuck upped. Listen for once. After about 30 seconds you should be able to join the conversation with some substance rather than a "Hey guys! Whatcha' talkin' about?"

This is a key rule in improv. Short form scenes are short. Long form scenes are also short. Time cannot be wasted answering "What's up?" Also, it's annoying and not funny.

4. Yes, and...

One of the most important rules in improv is to rarely negate, or negate someone with good reason. Saying "no" to an offer can stop a scene in its tracks. What do you mean you don't want to board this alien spaceship with me? What else are we going to do?

Obviously, Yes-and-ing all the time will get you in trouble. You don't want to be taking out the trash and doing the dishes, do you? It's the mentality that counts: when you're doing something, do it well. Do something extra that's unexpected. Go the extra mile. Invent a new colloquialism.

But in improv you can always Yes-and. There aren't rules regarding what you can and can't do.

3. Choose a Strong Character

"Hi, I'm Mr. Self-help telling you to be yourself." Mr. Self-help is right. Don't be a poser-poop.

In a scene, strong characters are essential. Strong characters allow the audience to relate (in whatever way) and provide conflict. Strong characters are almost always not impersonations. Dane Cook may be funny to you (I'm sorry), but you impersonating him impresses no one. Don't just play a doctor, be a doctor that must party.

2. Make Your Teammate Look Good

Guys listen up. That male-dominance thing you do at parties is not getting you anything save the label of "tool." Many guys might not be aware that they do it. Don't make every social situation into a dick-measuring contest. While you may be able to impress the ladies, you just alienated any potential admission into the prestigious Tuesday beer-drinking club.

And girls, don't talk shit if you can't back it up.

Before each show that Laser Squad Bravo does, it's customary to hear a few of us walking around to all of our teammates saying, "I'm going to make you look good tonight." It's along the lines of Yes-and-ing and listening. Add to a joke, but don't steal it. Be aware of your teammates and their goals. Don't railroad the scene (determine exactly where the scene is going early on). Whether on the stage or off the stage, people will be more impressed if a group is "the funniest set of persons alive" rather than that one guy who did that Dane Cook impression.

1. Go With It

Don't bail out. Go with the flow. More colloquialisms.

In an improv scene, anything can happen. It's also easy to make an improv scene mundane and unfunny. Novice players often attempt to railroad a scene as soon as they enter; they've got an idea and they are going to run with it. It doesn't quite work like that. Three or four players each doing with they think is best ends up being a Charlie Foxtrot of a scene and more like four attention whores competing for microphone space.

So go improvise your life.

Old Dorm? Avoid Lead in Your Tap Water

All a college student needs for a sumptuous feast is some boiling water. This is the essential ingredient for Easy Mac, tea and of course, Raamen noodles. But if you live in an older dorm -- or anywhere in Los Angeles -- you don't want to die of lead poisoning. No matter what they try to tell you about the bottled water craze, you can tell them -- at least it doesn't run through lead pipes.

Though the water might come out of the faucet scalding hot -- or even just warm enough to mix up some hot coaca -- invest in a boiler instead. Immersion boilers, though failure-prone, are cheap, easy and small enough to hide from an RA. Or, just invest in a plastic boiler kettle. They run about $10 and it'll be gross in less than a semester. But it won't be as bad as:

Reduced cognitive abilities, or nausea, abdominal pain, irritability, insomnia, metal taste in oral cavity, excess lethargy or hyperactivity, headache and, in extreme cases, seizure and coma.

[via Wikipedia

]

(Those things are also caused by alcohol, so try not to get confused.)

Remember this from chemistry?: Heat causes solvents to become aqueous more quickly. They dissolve easier. So, only use hot tap water to wash things or for making baby formula (please don't take that seriously). And don't cheat -- hot water won't boil that much faster than the cold. And boiling surely doesn't remove lead content.

And if you think it's an old wive's tail, you can check out my source here.

A Slim GTD for Students: Keeping Yourself Organized

Chris recently wrote a post for Lifehacker about Getting Things Done for students. Check it out!

First off, I have never read David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity that's the go to productivity organizing method. And from what I've talked with Chris about and for how much I've read regarding the book around the Web, I do know a few things...

Overhead

Dealing with bureaucracies is never fun. I'm still surprised no one has found out a better solution for managing everything. The most common complains of bureaucracies stem from too much overhead in relation to the work that gets done. Why does replacing a light bulb require 4 different departments?

GTD, to me at least, feels the same way. Why complicate things with a tickler folder, an extensive filing cabinet, and many other fabrications? (There are important lessons to be learned from the concepts, I just don't care for the implementation that David Allen suggests.)

(Dis)organization

David Allen suggests that any GTDer try to minimize the number of inboxes/homebases/HQs. It's tough to get work done if you can't check up on all projects all at once. He's on the right track (and I'm being pretentious). I've widdled the my inboxes down to 2: GMail and a PocketMod. Anything that I ever learn or any responsibility I ever receive goes onto one of those.

The Solution

I don't have no fancy iPhone. Maybe I'm bitter. I still rock my 5-day-battery-life LG VX6100. It's that phone every Verizon Wireless customer had 3 years ago. But honestly, I realize anything more than this would be a waste. Let me tell you why:

Any hard or soft dates that I receive, I punch into phone. Thanks to Google Calendar SMS, I don't have to squint at my screen when I get home while meticulously-removing-my-calendar-information-by-hand-because-Verizon-doesn't-include
a-syncing-program-without-paying-more-than-you-did-for-the-phone. Any meetings or appointments--if I was ever important enough to have them--would be entered into my GCal within seconds. No iPhone-iCal sync (suckas!).

I do keep the GTD mentality close to my heart though. One of the most important things to staying organized (for me) is to write every single G'damn thing down in my PocketMod (or put it in my GCal). One of the key points of GTD is to write everything down. Again, write everything down. One more time: write everything down. Whether it's as trivial as doing laundry or as important as cleaning up a resume, write it down. Hardcore GTDers will tell you to make the task "action oriented." Just write it down. If the tense and wording of a task determines whether or not you will actually do the task, organization is not your biggest problem.

Perfect for Students

Most students are still on their parents' cell phone family plans (don't lie to yourself, I still am). The love-texting back-and-forth from GCal will be a minimal cost, even moreso if your parents never notice. If not, texting plans are ultra cheap these days. I've got 500 or something for $10 a month, which I pay for indirectly through my parents.

If you can't afford a PocketMod, you probably can't afford food. Again, if this is the case, being organized is not your greatest priority right now.

Let us know of your own GTD modifications in the comments!

Update on Wednesday, September 2, 2009 by HackCollege

I was perusing the archives and came across this old gem of a post. While it's not exactly GTD for students, it was a good organizational system that I had going.

Back in the day, I was using PocketMod to jot all of my tasks down and GCal via SMS. The system worked pretty well and--at the very least--was always a conversation piece. Today, more and more people are searching for GTD for students. While Chris has already spelled out the best GTD system for students, I figured I would give an update on the system that I'm currently using.

One System to Rule Them All...

A little while back I switched to Remember the Milk, an online task organization system. After investigating my options, Remember the Milk has been perfect for my needs.

A few selling points for RTM were the slick online interface, the Quicksilver plugin and the native iPhone application. A little about each of those.

Online Interface

RTM has one of the best online interfaces around. It's very fast, can be used offline and has plenty of hotkeys. It's yet to fail me.

Quicksilver Plugin

Quicksilver is a little application made for OS X that makes you look like a ninja. You can do some pretty advanced stuff without your hands ever leaving the keyboard. It's a very cool little app. It also has an RTM plugin, allowing you to quickly add tasks to your inbox. Love it.

Native iPhone Application

Since my time since writing the last post, I have ditched my old LG VX6100 and upgraded to the infamous iPhone. This is working out a lot better for me because I now have my todo list wherever I go. I can also add tasks to my list, even if I don't have a network connection. Ballin'.

Hope this update helped!

If you're not a true blue GTDer, what system do you use to keep yourself organized during the school year?

Introducing: The HackCollege Newswire

We like free stuff just as much as any other college student. We're going to try to do our part to give back to all college communities everywhere, especially those without Internet access. We are offering all HackCollege content for free to reprint in any college newspaper. We're calling this the HackCollege Newswire. We may not be any Associated Press or Reuters, but we love what we do and we want other people to love us too.

We also dislike institutions just as much as any other college student, so we tried to be honest with ourselves. Here's our reasoning on why we're giving our stuff away for free:

1. HackCollege is not a money-making venture.
   
2. Our content is not currently syndicated in print.
   
3. It's 2008, not 1957.
   

We know what we're doing is weird, new and untraditional. We won't change the way people think about media (we're not that pretentious), but we might sway a few. We know what it's like to struggle for content and we want you to fill your space with quality, not house ads and irrelevant national news.

If you are on on staff for sort of college media publication, please visit the HackCollege Newswire homepage for more information. As with anything on HackCollege, if you ever have any suggestions, please email us straightaway.

Treat Yourself: Register Your Name's Domain Name

One of the best ways to control your first-page Google hits is to register a domain name under your own name. If yours isn't available, try adding your middle name as well. For example, mine is michaelkellysutton.com.

Once you've registered your personal web page, you need to decide where to redirect it. It might be a little expensive to get buy hosting for this site if you're not going to do anything with it. Here are a few ideas on where to redirect your resume site:

• Your LinkedIn profile


• Your blog


• Your Facebook/MySpace profile (be carefule about this one)
or

• a random lolcatz website

So hop over to GoDaddy and register yourself.

HackCollege Podcast Episode 15: Maple Syrup

It's back to the couch with a fancy new HackCollege "product" release and some extra hilarity.

Topics this episode include:

• HackCollege Newswire


• Lifehack.org front page


• Scott's Facebook invites


• Twitter


• Maple Syrup


• Mozes


• MPAA and students


• Farts


• Sake Bombing

This episode's music:




• "Date Game" by Christopher Wade

Outside HackCollege: A Students' Reaction to the MPAA

From time to time, I write for Portfolio.com's tech section as a junior correspondent of sorts. My most recent post, published today, is a reaction to the MPAA overestimating the effect of student piracy and the rest of the web media--in turn--hastily criticizing the MPAA. The point of my quick post is that people are looking at the wrong parts of the argument. Check it out:

"We're Not Thieves Just Cash Poor Consumers" [Portfolio.com]

Student Leaders: Implementing Twitter and Mozes for Student 2.0 Communication (Part 2: Mozes)

This is the second part of a two-part post about using mobile technology on campus. Check out yesterday's first part here.

It's the night of your campus' "battle of the bands" where the students vote on the best band. The last band plays and leaves the stage. Out come the paper ballots of 8.5x11 crudely paper-cuttered into fourths or halves. Or you'll need to rush back to your dorm room and vote online. I have just received a transmission from the years 1964 and 2002 that kindly requests their voting methods back. What your student organizers need is Mozes.

Mozes doesn't have anything to Red Seas, prophecies, or animated Disney movies but it's so awesome the only adjective suitable is "biblical." It overlaps a little with yesterday's topic of Twitter. I first saw Mozes in action at an Ignite! Seattle event last summer; their execution was flawless. You'll see why

Here We Go (Now)

Mozes is an SMS-based system that allows anyone to send texts to an address to communicate some information. The Mozes backend gives the people receiving these messages a great way to organize the hundreds of texts received. What does that mean if you don't like reading technical manuals in your spare time? With Mozes, your student organization can conduct polls and display their results in real time. Hello, 2008.

Display the results in right away. Avoid voter fraud. Reduce the amount of work for yourself. Save paper. Save trees. Save the world from mass extinction. Use Mozes.

For This Recipe You Will Need

If you're using Mozes at a live event, here's what you would need and what you would do:

• Laptop with WiFi


• A Projector

Configure your event before the first band starts playing. Once the bands leave the stage, fire up the projector to the event page with large directions, e.g. "Text 'EMOBAND' to 40987 to vote for EMOBAND." Once you close the poll, you have your results.

Get Jiggy With Mozes

Mozes can go much further than just a one-time battle of the bands application. Like I encouraged in yesterday's part 1, get creative. Don't forget to let us know how you've worked it in the comments.