40 Ways to Improvise, Adapt and Innovate (40 Thoughts from 40 Years…)

Happy birthday to me!

Yes, today I turn 40 years old (wow, a milestone!).

To celebrate my 40 years on this planet, below I have listed “40 ways to improvise, adapt, and innovate.” Hopefully they will help you take your life or business to the next level – and beyond!

If you want to give me a birthday present, why not pick your one or two favorites from below and copy and paste into your Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/Google+ feed, along with a link back to this post (Short link: http://goo.gl/lnfzD)

Improvise: How to React to Ding Moments

1. Great creativity comes not from being full of ideas, but from being empty, observant, and in the moment
2. When Ding Happens, saying, “yes, but” is whining. “Yes, And” leads to proactive solutions.
3. You can laugh or cry; your choice won’t change the situation. So why not laugh?
4. High emotion blocks creativity. So take a minute to calm the heck down before you take stupid action out of fear.
5. To increase productivity, decrease stress, and improvise effectively, focus on what you can control and let go of the rest.
6. The ultimate goal of the improviser is artistic self-expression (paraphrased from BruceLee)
7. Improvising quickly about training reflexes; anyone can do it. It just takes practice.
8. By being willing to fail you greatly improve your odds of success.
9. When Ding Happens, get to work fixing the problem. Stop wasting time freaking out, assigning blame, or worrying what others might think.
10. Creativity is a muscle, not a set of tactics. Build the muscle over time and it will be there for you when you need it.

Adapt: How to Take Advantage of Ding Moments

1. You will learn more by taking a small step and analyzing the results then you will by taking hours and days of “thinking.”
2. When Ding Happens, ask yourself, “how can I get to a place that’s better than where I was before?”
3. Wisdom is knowing when to stick to your plan and when to be flexible
4. Adapting to new situations often means letting go of your plan and stepping off the ledge into uncertainty.
5. A positive attitude doesn’t guarantee success. But a negative one almost always kills your ability to adapt.
6. Compromise is meeting in the middle so both parties are a little happy and a little sad. Collaboration is jointly creating new ideas that make both parties happy.
7.  Stop thinking of Dings as things to be gotten around. Start looking at them as opportunities to become more efficient, effective, and successful.
8. Two ways to adapt: 1) Same goal, different path 2) New goal, same path
9. Flexibility comes from realizing that there is usually a much big picture than your “really good idea.”
10. Ego, pride, sunk cost, and an unwillingness to be wrong are common, but stupid, reasons people struggle to adapt.

Innovate: How to Create Your Own Ding Moments

1. “Yes, And” gets you out of your comfort zone, which is the only place real innovation can occur.
2.  Constraints may seem annoying, but they create the field within which your creativity can play.
3. To innovate and break through barriers, find ways of increasing, not decreasing, complexity (for you, not your clients)
4. To increase innovation and creativity, practice connecting two seemingly un-connected ideas.
5. The best ideas are often buried under the worst. Explore the stupid, impossible, ridiculous, and uncomfortable so you can get to the good stuff.
6. Periodically throw away everything you have known and believed (about your life, business, goals, etc.) and start over with a blank canvas.
7. The seed of innovation is panted with discomfort (yours or others). Explore, rather than avoid, the discomfort to grow the innovation.
8. If you never fail, stop patting yourself on the back and start taking more chances…
9. There is a limit to how long and hard you can work. There is no limit to how may times you can innovate and improve a process.
10. Stop trying to conform to other’s normalcy. Start getting others on board with your ridiculousness.

Business/Life/Motivation

1. ‘Be So Good You Are Impossible to Ignore.” One of my favorite quotes, and what I believe is the first step to business success.
2. Difficulty can be your competitive advantage. Be willing to put in the time, effort, and skill to push past that difficulty and you will leave most of your competition behind.
3. Bosses who berate, demean, flip out, and rip employees apart are horrible. You are directly reducing another person’s (or a group of people’s) quality of life because you don’t know how to communicate or deal with your own insecurities. Get over yourself.
4. Laugh. Everyday. It’s healthy, makes you happy, and keeps you focused on the positive.
5. The more “you” you can be, the easier everything else becomes.
6.  Stop wasting times on things that don’t matter. Identify the few things that do, and become a rock-star at those.
7. I can’t think of a valid reason not to build more and better relationships with quality people – especially once you learn the art of graciously saying, “no.”
8. If no one criticizes what you do, you are probably playing it too safe to be unique, relevant, or distinct.
9. Nothing succeeds like success. If you’re struggling, reduce the goal so you can build momentum.
10. Anyone – yes ANYONE – can perform improv comedy. Even great improv comedy. They just need to learn a few skills and be willing to practice. Have fun, and be willing to make mistakes. The same rule applies to almost anything in life.

Your Turn!

What would you add to this list? What have you found to be simple but powerful advice to improvise, adapt, and/or innovate? Please share in the comments below!