Before the tour... we have a free workshop this Tuesday. How to Be the Most Memorable Person in the Room, August 4 at 12pm ET, about an hour, live on Zoom. Three mechanics, and you’ll use each one on something real before we’re done. Save my spot →

Can’t make it live? Register anyway and the replay comes to you.

Since Tuesday, the most common email I’ve gotten is some version of “congratulations on launching.” (Thank you. My mom is also proud.)

But the most useful reply was a question. A reader who writes a newsletter on personal transformation asked whether the course would let him get feedback on his actual writing... could he try adding humor to something real and have someone tell him what’s working?

Yes. On two levels, actually:

1. An AI coach that responds to what you write, every single day.

2. Me, live, every week.

And his question made me realize I’ve told you why I built this and what it costs, but I haven’t laid out the complete list of what you get. So here’s the full tour of what’s happening.

The 10-week course

While this launch is driven by the release of our app, the heart of what you’re getting is a 10-week course with me. It’s not AI-generated or repackaged blog posts, it’s the hands-on deep dive material I deliver to clients like Microsoft and NASA.

Week 1 is the setup week, where you take or upload your Humor Intelligence Assessment, get an analysis of where your humor currently stands, and land one small real-world win so the skill stops being theoretical.

Then for eight weeks, we go through each of the competencies that make up Humor Intelligence, in the order the framework teaches them... Appreciation, Consideration, Curation, Creation, Performance, Facilitation, Application, Empowerment.

Finally, Week 10 is the capstone, where you re-take the assessment and see, in numbers, what changed.

The daily practice

In between, you get daily reps on building your skill in just five to ten minutes. There’s a 30-Second Lesson from that week’s material, one rep the coach actually responds to, and a quick entry in your Humor Notebook (the running log that trains you to notice what makes people lean in).

Plus there’s a real-world challenge each week that takes the lessons out of the app and into your actual job... your morning standup, next presentation, or that one email you’ve rewritten four times.

Content advances when you complete it, not when the calendar says so, which means falling behind for a few days costs you nothing.

The coach

The coach is trained on my material and my standards. I named him Drewbot, partly because it’s accurate and partly because a humor app with a coach named “Coach” felt like a missed opportunity.

Drewbot personalizes everything to where you want humor to work (presentations, meetings, leading a team, writing, tough conversations), references your goals in his coaching, and gives feedback that’s encouraging without being dishonest.

He has been specifically instructed not to praise bad jokes and has repeatedly told me my puns could be better. Like “Did Drew buy? Yes Drewbot.”

The founding cohort

The first group through goes together, live with me. Ten weekly sessions starting Tuesday, August 11 and running through October 13... 12pm ET, 60 minutes, every session recorded (so travel and time zones cost you nothing but the live Q&A).

We work through each competency as the app serves it, which means you’re never practicing alone. I’ve also got a couple of extras planned for this group that I’m deliberately not announcing yet (founding members get the good surprises).

The founding cohort happens exactly once. If I ever run another cohort, it won’t be the first one, it won’t get this rate, and it won’t be the group that shapes what this becomes. Future members get the recordings. Founders get the room.

After the ten weeks

Once the curriculum is done, the daily practice continues, personalized to whatever you’re building toward... a big talk, a new team, a wedding toast you’ve been quietly dreading. The subscription is for the ongoing coaching, not just the course.

The price and the fine print

$249 a year is the standing price, or $89 a quarter. The founding rate is $199.20 a year, and it isn’t a first-year teaser... it’s 20% off every payment for as long as you keep the subscription, renewals included. Enrollment closes Friday, August 7 at 11:59pm PT, because the cohort starts the following Tuesday and there’s no joining late. Studio’s standard 7-day full refund applies... if you get in and it’s not for you, you get your money back, no interrogation.

Enroll at the founding rate →

What it isn’t

Just as important as understanding what it is, you should know what it’s not.

First, it’s not a comedy class. The goal is not to turn you into a comedian. We’ll study comedy and borrow its principles and strategies, but this is about being more effective at work, not funnier at parties.

Second, it’s not the same as pasting your email into ChatGPT and asking it to “make this funnier.” I’ve trained and tested Drewbot on my frameworks, my examples, and my standards for what actually works at work, and rebuilt him every time he got it wrong. Generic AI hands you a pun and applauds.

Drewbot knows which competency you’re building this week, remembers what you’re working toward, and tells you when something won’t land... which is the feedback that actually builds the skill.

And finally, it’s not a content library you’ll abandon in a folder next to the meditation app... it’s a coach (Drewbot) that expects to see you tomorrow, and a person (me) who hopes to see you every week.

Join the founding cohort →

If there’s a question this didn’t answer, hit reply and ask it. I’d rather answer it today than have you still wondering on Friday. And if you already know this one’s a no for you, I’d like to know that too (wrong time, wrong price, wrong product)... those replies shape what I build next.

Wit regards,

-Andrew

P.S. The question I’m expecting most between now and Friday... “do I have time for this?” You need about ten minutes a day. If you had time to read this email, you have time for Tuesday’s lesson. (This was the long one. The lessons are shorter, I promise.)

One quick thing before the story. Next Tuesday, August 4 at 12pm ET, I’m running a free hour on how to be the most memorable person in the room. Live, free, and you’ll leave with a line you can actually use.

Save your spot for August 4 →

For fourteen years, I’ve told people that humor is a skill you can build. And for fourteen years, when someone asked me how, my honest answer was they just had to “start.”

Then I wrote a book they could read and later an assessment they could take, but never anything that actually got them “doing” instead of “learning.”

The question shows up after almost every keynote. Someone waits out the line at the front of the room, waits for the handshake photos to finish, and then asks some version of the same thing. “Okay, but how do I actually get better at this?”

For years I gave them a real answer that wasn’t all that useful. Read the book. Take the assessment. Pay attention in meetings. Notice what lands.

All of that is true... but none of it is practice.

The people I’ve watched actually get better at this weren’t the ones who read the most. They were the handful I coached one-on-one. What they had in common wasn’t talent or a good tip. It was that they showed up every week, and somebody told them the truth of what worked and what didn’t.

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What took me so long

But there are limits to one-on-one coaching. Cost, availability, and my introvert energy levels.

I’m also just one audience member. I usually have a good sense of what will land, but I can never know for sure.

So the obvious answer was to build something where people could get feedback that didn’t depend on my schedule, or on me suggesting clients sign up for an open mic with a bunch of new comedians making jokes about bodily functions. Something that had the right mix of instruction (so you know what you’re supposed to do), practice (so you actually get to try it out), and feedback (so you know what actually works).

But I never had the right solution because every version I imagined was worse than nothing.

The trouble with AI that gives you feedback on humor is that AI is a people-pleaser. It wants you to feel good. Ask ChatGPT whether your joke is funny and it will tell you it’s wonderful, then offer to write you three more that are somehow worse. Positive encouragement is needed, but false flattery doesn’t make you better. I didn’t want to ship a golden retriever.

What took the time was building a tool that would tell you your second idea was the better idea and why. A coach trained on my material that pushes back instead of applauding as you grow through the eight Humor Intelligence competencies, all in 10 minutes a day.

All of that became the Humor Intelligence app.

Ten weeks, one competency at a time, with a coach named Drewbot who is more honest with you than I would be to your face.

Drewbot handles the daily reps. The part a bot can’t do is still mine, so the founding cohort meets with me live every week for ten weeks, an hour at a time, all recorded for whoever can’t make a Tuesday.

The founding cohort starts Tuesday, August 11.

If you want in

Enrollment is open through Friday, August 7 at 11:59pm PT.

The founding rate is $199.20 a year instead of $249. It’s a 20% discount that stays with you through every renewal, not a first-year teaser. Ten weekly live sessions at 12pm ET, an hour each, all recorded. Seven-day refund if it turns out this isn’t for you.

Enroll at the founding rate →

Come join me on ten weeks of hilarity.

Wit regards,
-Andrew

P.S. If you’re on the fence, I’d rather know why than not. Hit reply with whatever’s holding you back and I’ll answer it straight, no chaser.

P.P.S. If Tuesday’s free hour is more your speed than a ten-week commitment, that’s a completely reasonable place to start. Same link as the top.

Humor Intelligence, the coaching app I’ve spent months building with Studio, is live as of this morning. You can enroll right now...

Enroll at the founding rate →

What it is, in three sentences.

1. A 10-week course through the eight Humor Intelligence competencies, taught by me in weekly live sessions starting Tuesday, August 11 and running through October 13 (recorded, if you can’t make one).

2. Around it, a daily practice app... one real-world exercise a day, five to ten minutes, with honest feedback from Drewbot, the AI coach I trained to skip the applause.

3. A chance to build one of the most underrated skills at work.

Who it’s for: Ambitious professionals, people who are looking for “more,” or anyone who’s ever left a meeting knowing their idea was better than the reaction it got. You don’t need to be funny to start. That’s the point of the ten weeks.

Who it’s not for: bears. They can be a bit grizzly.

The founding offer: $199.20 a year (20% off the standard price of $249), and the founding rate locks for as long as you keep it. Early people get the permanent discount.

Enrollment closes Friday, August 7 at 11:59pm PT because the cohort starts the following Tuesday, and you can’t join a first cohort late. There’s a 7-day full refund if it’s not the right fit.

Questions? Hit reply. Excited? Me too.

Get the founding rate →

Wit regards,
-Andrew

P.S. The founding list got their link this morning, a few hours before this email. If you like being early to things, remember that for whatever I build next... but preferably enroll in this one first.

Before the story, one quick thing. Next Tuesday, August 4 at 12pm ET, I’m running a free hour on how to be the most memorable person in the room. Save your spot for August 4.

A few years ago, I stood on a stage in front of a few hundred professional speakers and watched the whole room fall for someone else.

She had no material, wasn’t even on the line-up, and... was two years old.

It was a comedy night, and I was the one performing. Pretzel (my wife) and Pineapple (my daughter) were in the audience, which was rare, since they’re not usually in the room when I work. Pineapple got excited watching me up there, the way two-year-olds get excited, with her entire body. So she climbed on stage to join me.

I picked her up. She grabbed the microphone and held it for me like a tiny, unbothered stagehand, and we did a few minutes together. I have performed that set a hundred times. I have never gotten that response.

Then she decided she was finished, slid down, and on her way off she collected the host’s notes from the stool (which she clearly needed, for reasons known only to her) and toddled away with them. The room lost it.

As a father, I was incredibly proud. As a performer, I was miffed. Because afterward, not one person came up to talk about my set. Nobody cared about me. They wanted to talk about her. How comfortable she looked. How adorable she was. Whether I was bringing her back next year.

I have sixteen million views on a TEDx talk and fourteen years on stage. She had a baby smoothie and no plan. Guess which one that room remembered.

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Adorable isn’t a strategy (for most people)

Kids have an unfair advantage. They’re adorable by default, and nobody expects them to have a point. Unless you happen to be an unusually impressive five-year-old who reads this newsletter (in which case, hi, tell your parents they’re doing great), you can’t build a career on that.

So take the adorable away and look at what Pineapple actually did. She was completely present. She committed to the bit. She grabbed the one real object on that stage and made it part of the moment. None of that requires being two, and none of it requires being naturally funny.

Being memorable looks like personality, so we treat it like it’s something that happens to a few lucky people. It isn’t. It’s a handful of small, specific moves. The reason the “naturally memorable” people look effortless is that they’re running moves the rest of us were never taught or picked up.

I was standing in a room full of professional speakers, people who are paid to be memorable, and the person everyone quoted for the rest of the weekend didn’t have a single credential. She had presence and a “toddle.” The first thing is more learnable than the people who have it ever admit.

Learn to be (more) memorable

Influence, that same conference, is happening again this weekend. I’m not there this year (scheduling, plus a talk early next week), which feels strange after all this time. But it has me thinking I’d rather teach the moves than watch from the audience.

So next Tuesday, August 4 at 12pm ET, I’m running a free hour, How to Be the Most Memorable Person in the Room. I’ll walk through three of these moves, and you’ll try each one on something real from your own work. You leave with a line you can actually use the next day, not a page of notes.

Save your spot for August 4 →

If you already know you want the bigger thing this hour leads into, the coaching app opens for enrollment July 28. Get on the founding list and you’ll get the link first, at a founding rate that locks in for good.

Wit Regards,
Andrew

P.S. Pineapple just turned five and remains, to my knowledge, the most memorable act I have ever shared a stage with. She is not available for corporate bookings. I've asked.

None of that was an accident. Comedians call it a setup. In engineering we called it requirements gathering. Either way, this is where it pays off.

The question I get most after keynotes isn’t about the keynote. It’s some version of “okay, but how do I actually get better at this?” And for years, my honest answer has been a simple “you just have to start.”

But that’s not SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timebound). So I tried to create easy next steps but they were clunky. Read the book. Take the assessment. Practice on your coworkers (ideally with their knowledge).

The people who improved fastest were the ones I coached one-on-one, and not because of any magic on my part (okay, maybe a tiny bit). It was because they had a place to practice and someone giving them honest feedback every week. That’s it. An iterative feedback loop for humor.

The problem is that one-on-one coaching doesn’t scale, my calendar has opinions, and I have a soon-to-be five-year-old, Pineapple (my daughter), who I’m slowly turning into a joke machine.

Not to mention, most people don’t need a full coaching engagement anyway. They aren’t giving multiple keynotes or preparing for a TEDx talk. They need ten minutes a day and a way to know if it’s working.

The solution came 3 months ago

So when Studio reached out back in April about building an AI-augmented coaching app for humor, I immediately said yes... after contemplating it for two weeks. My hesitation might be the same one you’re having right now.

AI, left unsupervised, is a terrible humor coach. It laughs at everything you say and praises how brilliant you are no matter what. Even my mom lets me know when something is too cheesy.

An AI that tells you every joke is a winner may make you feel better, but it doesn’t help you get better.

Two things won me over.

1. Studio makes the official coaching apps for people like Mark Rober and Idina Menzel (so yes, I double-checked they meant to email me).

2. And this wouldn’t be a chatbot with my book stapled to it. The app is trained on my material, some you’ve seen and a ton I’m custom creating for it. The eight competencies, the frameworks, the exercises, are built into a full course with honest feedback along the way.

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So here’s what’s happening on July 28

On Tuesday, July 28, the app launches.

The first 10 weeks are a full structured course (a setup week, then the eight competencies one week at a time, then a debrief week) with daily exercises, plus a coach in your pocket giving you feedback the whole way.

After that, the daily practice continues, built on your results from the first ten weeks and the new material I keep adding.

And if you’re in the first group through it, you won’t go through it alone.
I’m going through it with you. Live.

We start Tuesday, August 11 and spend ten weeks working through it together, a live session every week, everything recorded as we go. That’s the founding cohort, and it happens exactly once, because you can’t re-run the first time.

Which is also why the enrollment window is real. It opens July 28 and closes Friday, August 7 at 11:59pm PT, because the cohort starts the following Tuesday and there’s no joining late.

The price is $249 a year. Join during the founding window and it’s $199.20 a year, locked in for as long as you keep it. (The twenty cents is Studio’s math, not mine, and as an engineer I respect it too much to round.)

Want in first?

I’m still putting the final touches on the content, so I’m not opening enrollment today. That happens Tuesday, July 28.

Today I’m opening the founding list.

Put your name on it and you’ll get the enrollment link the morning of the 28th, before I announce it anywhere else. No deposit, no obligation, no seventeen-part email funnel. Just the link, first.

Join the founding list →

Wit regards,
-Andrew

P.S. Not sure if this is for you? Hit reply and ask me anything about it.

P.P.S. If you were in last November’s Live Lab founding cohort, keep an eye on your inbox. I made you a promise back then, and I’m keeping it with interest.

P.P.P.S. The app has been instructed not to laugh at the ladder joke. It’s the first thing I tested.

New around here? You’re getting this because you opted in at a recent event or after taking the Humor Intelligence Assessment. Every Friday I send one short piece about humor as a professional skill you can actually build.

This one picks up a thread I started three weeks ago, so if you’d rather have the beginning, start here. And if it turns out this isn’t for you, the unsubscribe link at the bottom works perfectly. My brother tested it (he claims it was on accident...)

A reader named Karen hit reply to last week’s post and opened with this.

“Today, I’m actually hitting reply rather than just answering your questions, vaguely, in my own head.”

She told me there’s one friend she feels like a comic genius around, and with everyone else it’s fifty-fifty. Then she asked what workout she could design to get better at that. She signed off with best wishes to Pretzel (my wife) and Pineapple (my daughter), and added “see, I do read your stuff.”

Thanks for the thoughtful email, Karen (Pretzel always appreciates a shout out).

There are two things that stand out to me about what she wrote.

1. The power of appreciation

The first thing that stood out was that she has one friend she feels like a genius around. I’d venture to say the reason that’s true has less to do with Karen’s comedic skill and more to do with the friend’s level of Appreciation and Empowerment (two of the 8 humor competencies).

When you’re generous with your laughter and encouragement, people are far more likely to use humor around you. That means they get better and you get more joy.

2. Working out humor

The second thing that stood out is the desire for a workout.

For three weeks I’ve handed you the same rep in different variations. Notice the funny thing. Write it down. Add a sentence on why it worked. No need to tell it to anyone, it’s just for your own enjoyment.

I chose that rep because it’s the easiest place to start… because it’s the only one you can do alone.

Then the replies came in.

• Dave, a funeral director, wrote about knowing exactly when he can break the tension in a room and when he shouldn’t try. He also mentioned that in other settings he’s made jokes he should have thought twice about first.

• Judi wrote on her way to her first World Cup match, saying funny doesn’t automatically pop into her head (sarcastic, maybe) and that she sometimes shares with the incorrect audience.

• Pretzel replied saying, “I think the way you run is cute. Also can you pick up some milk later?”

None of them learned that from a notebook.

Dave knows the temperature of a funeral home because he has stood in hundreds of them, beside people on the worst day of their lives, and occasionally said the wrong thing anyway. Judi knows about the incorrect audience because she found one. Pretzel learned about the milk from the fridge.

All of that education happened out loud, in front of somebody, with a result they got to experience live.

Karen has been practicing in her head. Three weeks of excellent notes, and no idea whether any of it works.

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The skill with no scoreboard

Most skills grade themselves.

Play the wrong chord and the piano tells you before you’ve finished hearing it. Shoot a basketball and it goes in or doesn’t. Cook dinner and you can taste it.

The “scoring” is built into the activity, which is why you can practice alone in an empty room for a year and walk out better than you went in.

Humor has no such mechanism. Whether something is funny isn’t a property of the thing you said. It’s a reaction that happens inside somebody else, and you have no access to it until you put the thing into the air and watch what their face does.

Your notebook can’t grade you. It holds your material and tells you nothing.

Noticing is absolutely the first step to improving your humor. It’s also where almost everyone stalls. It’s the only rep with no witnesses, which makes it the only rep that costs nothing. You can do it for thirty years and never once find out.

It reminds me of how I felt when the BBC show Sherlock came out. I absolutely loved it and soon became convinced that I, too, was a master of deduction.

I’d sit on the subway and come up with elaborate stories about people based on the smallest of details.

“Judging from the dirt on that man’s shoe, he must work in construction. Given the color of the dirt, it’s likely a job in the Bronx.”

I would assume I was right without ever trying to confirm. Never mind that we were on the 4 train leaving the financial district and this man was in an immaculate suit.

Everything past noticing needs a second person. Saying the thing. Timing. Reading the room. You cannot get better at “reading a room” in your own head, because the room is the feedback.

Your rep this week

If you really want to build your skill of humor, take one thing out of your notes and say it out loud. To one person. Once.

It doesn’t have to be an entire bit, elaborate story, or theatrical performance. One line, one human. Your family counts. The barista counts. The coworker who asks “any updates?” at every single standup absolutely counts.

It might land. It might earn the polite nod Pretzel has perfected over the course of our marriage. Either way, you will know something by Friday that no amount of writing it down would have told you.

Karen asked what workout she could design for this. She can’t design it alone, and neither can you, which is why I’ve spent the last few months building the thing I’d want to hand her. I’ll tell you about it next week.

Until then, say the thing. Then hit reply and tell me what happened. What you said, who you said it to, and what their face did.

I read every response. I’d love for a few of them to come from people who have never sent one.

Wit regards,
-Andrew

P.S. Faith wrote in to say humor is a muscle that needs to be exercised. She’s right. I’d only add that it’s a muscle you can’t work without a spotter.

My high school soccer team was watching film of a recent game (a thing we did to get better, in theory). At some point I noticed a player sprinting down the field with his hands bent down at the wrists, arms up, like a mantis chasing a bug across midfield. I laughed. Then I recognized the jersey number.

I turned to the guys next to me and asked, “Do I always run like that?”

“Yes.” No hesitation, like they were waiting for me to notice. Apparently everyone had known for years and nobody thought it was worth mentioning.

The summer I got better by not playing

Still, I felt lucky to even be in that room. Only the Varsity team watched game film, and I had finally made the cut.

My junior year, I was one of only two juniors still on the JV team. Every other kid my age had made the top team.

So, naturally, I decided the summer before senior year was going to be different. I practiced every single day in our backyard. And because we didn’t have a goal, I couldn’t practice the fun stuff (scoring, celebrating, being carried off on my teammates’ shoulders). I could only work on the unglamorous pieces. Juggling. Dribbling. Low, accurate kicks. Running. Lots of running (hands presumably in full mantis position).

I didn’t play a single game all summer. And yet I got dramatically better. I made Varsity my senior year, scored 4 goals, and got to see myself on the game tape.

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Nobody gets good at soccer by only playing soccer

Watching the US advance at the World Cup this week brought all this back. Because when you watch a match, you’re seeing the smallest slice of what those players actually do.

The vast majority of their training isn’t games or even scrimmages. It’s drills. First touches. Passing patterns. Set pieces. One specific skill, over and over again, until you don’t even think about it.

Nobody watches a striker bury a goal and says, “I bet he came out of the womb like that.” We understand the goal is the visible end of a thousand invisible drills.

And yet that’s exactly what we say about funny people.

“Funny” isn’t one skill

Last week I made the case that nobody is born funny. Which raises the obvious follow-up... if funny is practiced, what exactly are you practicing?

Because “funny” isn’t one single thing. It’s a handful of separate, trainable skills wearing a trench coat. Noticing what’s absurd. Timing. Reading the room. Knowing when NOT to make the joke (perhaps the most criminally underrated humor skill today).

The people who seem effortlessly funny are good at several specific things they each got better at separately, whether they realize it or not.

Which means “I’m not funny” is the wrong conclusion. The more useful version is “which part am I missing?”

Maybe you notice funny things all day but never say them out loud. Maybe you commit to the joke but occasionally fire it into the wrong room. Those are different problems with different drills.

Just like my summer... I didn’t need to get better at “soccer.” I needed juggling, dribbling, and low, accurate kicks.

Your turn

Which part of funny comes easiest to you, and which part is missing? Are you a great noticer who never says the thing out loud? A committed joke-teller who sometimes misreads the room?

Hit reply or leave a comment and let me know. I read every response, and my money’s on a lot of secret noticers out there.

Enjoy the long weekend if you’re celebrating the 4th (and the regular weekend if you’re not). Feel free to practice your humor (or soccer skills).

Wit regards,
Andrew

P.S. I’d like the record to show that praying mantises are ambush predators with lightning-fast reflexes. So really, my running style was intimidating.

It’s a common belief. It’s also wrong. And it might be the single biggest thing standing between you and a skill that would make your work noticeably easier.

Why the myth survives

You only ever see the finished version of a funny person. You see them land the perfect line in the meeting, the one that breaks the tension the exact moment when everyone needs it.

What you don’t see is the attempt they made last week that went nowhere. You don’t see the three other things they considered saying and threw out. You don’t know they took improv classes in college, and you (almost certainly) weren’t around for the awkward teenage years that sent them looking for humor in the first place.

So what looks like natural talent is usually just practice you weren’t there to see.

People who do this for a living are proof. The joke you hear in a comedy special has been workshopped hundreds of times in tiny rooms you’ll never sit in. You get the highlight reel, not the hours that landed on the cutting room floor.

The “naturally funny person” is often the most rehearsed person in the building.

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I’m an engineer. I was not born funny.

I went to school for computer science and engineering. I’m wired to optimize a spreadsheet, not command a room. So when I started doing stand-up in 2004, I was bad at it, and I knew it. By my fourth show I could see I was nowhere near the people going up before and after me.

I nearly gave up, resigning myself to the belief that some people had it and some, like me, definitely did not.

Then I watched Comedian, the documentary that follows Jerry Seinfeld building a brand-new act from scratch. There he was, one of the most successful comedians alive, forgetting his lines and dying in small clubs, night after night. He wasn’t born with that set. He was building it one rep at a time.

The myth has a price

Believing humor is innate gives you permission to never try. You decide, somewhere around age fourteen, that you’re “not a funny person,” file it next to “not a people person” and “not a morning person,” and never touch it again. You stop trying in the exact moment trying would have helped.

And the cost is real. This is the skill that makes you, the person people want in the room, the one who can bring the temperature down when a project is on fire, the breath of fresh air in the middle of a meeting of “blah.”

Deciding you don’t have it means doing without all of that, permanently, on a snap judgment your younger self made with incomplete data.

Your rep for this week

So here’s one rep. Once this week, write down something that made you laugh AND one sentence on why it worked. The unexpected word. The true thing nobody else was willing to say out loud. The cheesy pun that’s actually more clever than you’ll ever get credit for.

You’re not performing it and you’re not telling anyone. You’re starting to notice the mechanics, the way a musician starts hearing the chord changes in a song they’ve heard a hundred times.

Noticing is the first rep. Talent is just the word we use for people who started before you did.

Wit regards,
-Andrew

P.S. Yes, “do your reps” makes humor sound like a workout. It mostly is because both get better with more sets.

They’re smart people sharing useful ideas, little scripts for hard moments, and frameworks for raising a tiny human who will never not make me laugh by “booping” my belly button.

I watch them. I nod. I think, “Oh, that’s good, I should try that.”

Then I close the app and do exactly none of it.

The ideas are in my head but they’re not in the room.

So now I have a head full of solid parenting frameworks and a daughter who hasn’t benefited from 99% of them.

Don’t get me wrong. The good ideas floating around in my brain are better than the alternative (better than doom-scrolling, better than the outrage clips and half-true takes the algorithm would rather hand me).

But “better than nothing” is a low bar, and my kid doesn’t grade on it.

For many, the same thing happens with humor.

They might watch the clip that breaks down why a joke works or listen to a podcast about a comedian talking about their process. Heck, they may even be reading this post right now (ahem).

As a result, they feel a small glow of productivity, like they made progress. And they did, sort of. It’s better than nothing. It’s just nowhere near as effective as actually doing the thing.

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“You’ve either got it or you don’t” is doing a lot of damage

Most of us believe humor is a fixed trait. You’ve either got it or you don’t. The problem is that the belief sabotages you no matter which side you think you’re on.

1. If you’ve decided you don’t have it, you never practice, because why train for a game you’re sure you can’t win.

2. If you’ve decided you do have it, you also never practice, because why train for a game you’re sure you’ve already won.

Either way, the reps never happen. And humor, like every other skill, only moves when you practice and put it out in the world.

The hard part is that there aren’t obvious places to practice your humor.

If you want to learn golf, you go to a driving range or golf course. Languages have classes or Duolingo. There’s even meetup groups for people who want to get better at growing Dragonfruit (shout out to my friend Denise Richards who recently went to one).

Every one of those has an obvious place to do it (a range, a mirror, an app). Professional humor doesn’t. You could try a stand-up open mic or an improv class, but the goals are a bit different.

There’s no court, no gym, no standing Tuesday slot for being funnier. So even the people who want to improve have nowhere to put the work.

Which is why measuring your humor, or learning your “style,” or reading one more breakdown of why a joke lands, can feel like progress without being it.

None of that makes measuring a waste. Learning your strengths is a real starting line (it’s exactly why our Humor Intelligence Assessment ends with action items, not just a score). A starting line just isn’t the same as moving down the track.

Knowing your humor is a fact about you. It isn’t a change in you. The number doesn’t make you funnier. The reps do.

Your first rep

Here’s the smallest possible place to start (it’s smaller than you think).

Challenge: This week, every time a funny thought or observation crosses your mind, write it down.

Notes app, scrap of paper, whatever’s closest. The joke you thought of three seconds too late, the absurd thing a coworker said, the email subject line that made you smirk. You don’t have to do anything with it yet. Just catch it.

That tiny act is the real first rep, because humor starts with noticing long before it’s about delivery.

If you feel like it, hit reply with your best catch of the week. I read every response.

Leave a comment

Wit regards,
-Andrew

P.S. I did finally try one of those parenting frameworks this week. My daughter was deeply unimpressed with my airplane-made-out-of-a-toilet-paper-roll… but I’m still counting it as a rep.

It’s the skill of noticing how something lands and whether it actually fits the moment, the thing that keeps a well-meant joke from turning into a trip to HR. For about one in five professionals who take the assessment, Consideration is their single strongest competency.

Last week, I had to aim that same competency at my own work. What it showed me was... uncomfortable.

Over 1,000 people have now taken the assessment. That’s enough responses to stop guessing and start looking at what the instrument is actually doing. So I looked.

Under the original scoring, a “Strength” was anything 70 or above. That seems reasonable on paper. After all, there are three tiers and 70 is over two-thirds of the maximum score. Then again, a 70% in school is a C- (in the US), slightly below average, which isn’t a strength at all.

In practice, it meant 57% of people walked away with a Strength label on their overall humor score. On Appreciation, the friendliest competency to score well on, it was 75%. Three out of every four people qualified as a Strength.

But that’s not what a strength is. A Strength that 75% of people earn is a participation trophy with better formatting.

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So I considered my own assessment

Parsing through the 1,000 entries, the honest question became whether the tier labels were representative of what the data was actually showing. The answer was no. The cutoffs needed to change.

The tricky part was not overcorrecting. It would have been easy to set the bar so high almost nobody cleared it. But a Strength doesn’t mean you’ve perfected the skill. It means it’s something you can rely on and build from.

• Challenge used to be 0-39 → now 0-50

• Opportunity used to be 40-69 → now 51-80

• Strength used to be 70-100 → now 81-100

Under the new system, about 25% of people land in Strength on their overall score, roughly the top quartile. That feels closer to what a strength should be.

On Consideration, 30.1% of people now land in the Strength tier, above an 80. High enough to mean something, common enough to be real.

None of this is because v1 was wrong. The v1 cutoffs were our best guess before we had data, made in partnership with the researchers at the University of Northern Colorado who validated the original design. Now there’s data, and a good instrument is supposed to move when the evidence says it should.

If you got bumped a tier

So if you already took the assessment and you’ve gone from “Strength” to “Opportunity,” it doesn’t mean you’ve gotten less funny... though if you’re a Spurs fan (basketball or “football”), I understand if recent events drove away your humor.

It just means you’ve got a little more practice to do before you can readily rely on your humor. And if you haven’t taken the assessment yet, this is a decent moment to. The eight competencies haven’t changed, only the line that separates “reliable” from “still building.”

You’ll get an honest read on where you actually stand, which is the whole reason we created the humory thing.

Take the Assessment

Mostly, though, I’d love to hear your reaction to this. Where would you have drawn the line? If you took it under the old tiers and the change shifts how you think about your result, tell me. Reply to this email, I read every one.

Wit regards,
Andrew

P.S. If you bought the deep-dive report, I’m regenerating it under the new tiers and I’ll email you directly when yours is ready. Same eight competencies, more honest lines in the sand.

He was the opener (musically), I was the opener (keynote-wise). We had about ten minutes before the show started and instead of talking about the event, we spent the whole time workshopping one of his comedy bits.

No, Mat isn’t also a stand-up comedian. He’s just learned, as a musician, adding humor to his live shows is a great way to engage the audience (and there’s something special about getting a room full of people to laugh).

In fact, he told me one of his biggest focus areas for his last tour was working on the bits between songs. Not the music, but the moments in between.

In particular, Mat had this story he’d been telling on stage about one of the first times he heard his own song playing out in public. He was at Home Depot. His song came on over the speakers. So he turned to the guy next to him and said, “Hey, that’s my song playing.”

The guy looked at him for a second and said, “Do you know if this 3/4-inch pipe fits a toilet flange?”

It’s a great bit that already works. But Mat said he always felt like there was more there. So we kicked around a few ideas backstage using a concept I learned from UCB: “If this is true, what else is true.”

What if he follows the guy around the store, helping him shop, but really just trying to get him to acknowledge the song? What if he goes up to other shoppers and they all just want his help finding things? What are other places he’s heard his song and how did people react there?

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What a musician can teach you about humor at work

What I love about this story is the approach Mat took to the craft. He already had a bit that worked and he could have left it alone. Most people would have.

But he treated it the way he’d treat a song. You write the first version, you play it live, you hear what lands, and then you go back and make it better.

That’s what practicing humor actually looks like. It’s not sitting in your office trying to come up with jokes from scratch. It’s noticing the thing that already got a laugh (the comment in the meeting, the line in the email, the observation you made at lunch) and asking yourself, “What if there’s more there?”

If this is true, what else is true?

That question is one of the most useful tools in improv and sketch comedy. And it works just as well in a conference room as it does on a tour bus. You don’t have to invent something from scratch, you’re simply building on what’s already working.

Mat didn’t become funny overnight. He noticed that audiences responded to the moments between songs, and then he started treating those moments like they were worth practicing.

After our impromptu writing session, Mat kicked off the conference with a beautiful song. Then I went on to teach the audience some of the same skills Mat and I were just using backstage.

The skills aren’t different. Whether you’re a musician trying to connect with a crowd between songs or a project manager trying to keep a team engaged during a status update, the process is the same. Notice what gets a reaction. Ask what else might be true. Try it out. Refine.

So here’s what I’m curious about. Hit reply and tell me: what’s something you’ve said at work that got an unexpected laugh? The offhand comment, the accidental joke, the thing you didn’t plan that landed anyway.

I want to hear it. And I bet if we applied “if this is true, what else is true,” there’s an even better version waiting.

Wit regards,

-Andrew

P.S. If you’re not familiar with Mat Kearney’s music, do yourself a favor and check him out. I’d start with “Ships in the Night” or “Nothing Left to Lose.” You’ve probably heard his songs without knowing it, possibly while in a Home Depot.

I don’t mean rhetorically. I mean literally. The version of you that makes your friends snort-laugh at dinner, drops the perfect line into the group chat, and laughs off the tension after accidentally trying to get into the wrong car for 5 minutes (totally not me yesterday...).

Where does that person live between 9 and 5?

Conversationally Funny

I’ve been thinking about that since a conversation I had at a reception a couple of weeks ago.

I’d just finished giving my Humor That Works keynote and was milling around the conference reception with a hot cup of tea I was drinking out of a wine glass because there were no mugs left.

While walking around, I met Brandon. He was easily the funniest person in the room. Quick, dry, perfectly timed. The kind of conversational humor that makes you want to keep talking just to see what he says next.

So at some point I asked him how he uses that humor at work. He said he didn’t.

I was surprised... but also not. He really didn’t bring humor into his job. When I asked why, he gave me an answer that I’ve heard time and time before.

He said during my keynote was the first time he’d ever considered humor as a thing he could, or should, do in the office. Nobody had told him not to so he’d never thought to bring “that side of himself” to work.

That’s the phrase that’s been sticking with me: “that side of himself.”

Like he was leaving an entire part of his personality, of who he is, at home.

There’s a lot of conversation these days about authenticity (especially in the world of AI). If you want to be authentic at work, humor has to be part of the equation. Because humor is part of who we are as humans.

But Brandon isn’t alone in leaving part of himself at home.

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Is humor personal or professional?

I was recently going through the data from the Humor Intelligence Assessment and noticed that the vast majority of people sign up with a personal email address, not a work one.

There are probably some practical reasons. People check personal email more often. Corporate spam filters get suspicious of anything with the word “humor” in the subject line. You might be considering leaving your job soon but want to take some levity with you…

But I also think the email choice points to the same thing Brandon was pointing to. People file humor under “personal life.” It’s how they show up at receptions, with friends, in group chats. Not how they show up at the all-hands.

My journey into using humor at P&G was similar. As I shared in my first TEDx talk years ago, “No one ever told me to use humor at work but no one ever stopped me either. So I just... started.”

Brandon and I had the same blank slate. Same absence of explicit permission but also the same absence of explicit prohibition.

The only difference is I treated the silence as an opening, and he treated it as a closed door.

Most of us aren’t being held back by a rule. We’re being held back by a habit. The habit of deciding, without ever really thinking about it, which parts of ourselves get to come to work.

So this week, the question I’d leave you with is the same one I keep asking myself.

What part of you didn’t make it through the lobby this morning?

And what would change if it had?

Wit regards,

Andrew

P.S. If you want a structured way to see where your humor already shows up at work (and where it doesn’t yet), the Humor Intelligence Assessment is the closest thing I’ve built to a map. Takes about 5 minutes, and the questions tend to surprise people more than the score does.

P.P.S. Brandon, if you’re reading this, you have permission. Go be funny in your next meeting.

After each joke I sat in silence longer than felt natural because there’s a delay on virtual calls. Two, sometimes three seconds between the punchline and the laughter coming back through your speakers.

If you cut yourself off early to fill the silence, you train the audience to stay quiet. If you wait too long, the audience thinks you froze (literally or figuratively).

So you sit there. Smiling. Not flinching. Trusting it’s coming.

The only reason I knew how long to wait was from practice and repetition. Not because of natural talent, a perfect script, or counting 2 seconds after each joke (“one one thousand, two one thousand” or for the Brits, “one Piccadilly, two Piccadilly”).

It was because of reps. Close to two decades of them, on stages big and small, live and remote, some that went great and plenty that went sideways. They all taught me something I couldn’t learn by reading about humor, watching it, or thinking about it. I had to do it. Repeatedly, often poorly, in front of other humans.

Stage time is the ultimate skill-builder

If you want to get funnier, you have to get on “stage.”

The data backs this up. The lowest-scoring question on the Humor Intelligence Assessment is “I regularly take time to work on funny ideas.” About 57% of people score themselves as rarely or never.

The same group scores high on noticing funny moments. So this isn’t about whether you find life funny (you probably do). This is about whether you ever take that noticing and put it through reps.

That’s the primary difference between those who are funny and those who aren’t. It’s not a personality trait, innate talent, or a “vibe.” It’s stage time.

You can’t read your way to funnier. You have to try a line out loud. You have to watch it not land. You have to adjust and try again (and again (and again)).

Side note: this is why I think humor is becoming even more important in a world of AI. Currently AI is pretty terrible at writing humor, but even when it gets better, you’ll still need the skill to know how to deliver it. You get that through reps.

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What stage time actually looks like

Now, most people hear “reps” and assume it means a comedy club, improv class, or turning your daily stand-ups into daily stand-up. Those all count, but they’re not required. As Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage.”

If you want to improve your skill of humor, you have to get “stage” time. But that can come in many forms:

The named stages

• Improv class. The single best investment you can make in this skill. Low-stakes, group setting, and you stop thinking in your own head after twenty minutes.

• Toastmasters. Builds the foundation of being comfortable on your feet without notes.

• Open mic. The most uncomfortable, the most effective. Five minutes in front of nine strangers will teach you more about timing than ten books.

• Skill of Humor Live Lab. A combination of all of the above in a safe space where you can try new things and get expert coaching on what works and what doesn’t.

The stages you already have access to

• The next meeting where you choose the funnier opener over the safe one. You don’t have to commit to a bit. You just have to risk one line.

• The Slack message you almost deleted because the joke might not land. Send it and see what happens. (You can recover from a flop. You can’t recover from never trying.)

• The 1:1 where you say the more candid version of what you actually think. That also counts.

The stages you didn’t know were stages

• The networking event where you introduce yourself in different ways to see what gets people to laugh.

• The bedtime story you read with different voices.

• The dad joke at the dinner table, even when it bombs (okay, especially when it bombs).

Life is the stage and you’re already on it. The question is whether you’re practicing or just standing there.

My next stage is virtual

Next Thursday, May 28, I’m doing a stand-up comedy set in VR! That’s right, an avatar with this nasally voice is doing a live comedy show in VRChat.

So come join us. It’s free. You can watch from your laptop or phone (no headset required).

Date: Thursday, May 28
Time: 9pm EDT, 6pm PDT
Link: Find Details and Learn How to Join Here

It’s another rep, whether it goes well or it bytes (Get it? It’s VR so like computer byte… anyway).

Wit regards,

Andrew

P.S. If you want to know which humor competency would benefit most from your next round of reps, the Humor Intelligence Assessment will tell you. Five minutes, eight competencies, surprisingly specific results.

Her name is Emily. She attended my session last month at NSA Carolinas. A few weeks later she wrote me a LinkedIn recommendation, most of it the kind of generous you’d expect when someone wants to be supportive. But one line in particular stood out.

“I learned more from him in two hours than I did in a full semester of grad school. I’m not exaggerating. I wish I were.”

I should clarify the kind of grad school we’re talking about. Emily has both a master’s and a PhD in philosophy. The discipline built on careful argument, clear thinking, and noticing what people actually mean by what they say.

So either Emily had a strange semester... or something about studying humor is doing more than people realize.

How I became a better presenter

About a year into my career at P&G, I had my weekly check-in with my manager when he asked if I’d been taking a presentation skills class.

I said no, a bit surprised at the question.

He asked if I’d joined Toastmasters or hired a coach. Same answer. I asked why.

He told me my presentations had gotten noticeably stronger over the past few months and asked what I was working on.

It took me a moment to realize the only “practice” I had been doing was stand-up.

I’d been hitting up open mics a couple of times per month, working on material that mostly didn’t work. I wasn’t trying to become a better presenter. I was trying to become funnier.

But it turns out that my general presentation skills were improving and my manager spotted the change before I did.

That’s the same shape as Emily’s experience. She didn’t sign up for a humor session to sharpen her thinking. I didn’t take stand-up to become a better speaker. We both got something we weren’t expecting.

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Which is the thing I keep coming back to.

The Skill of Humor isn’t a separate set of capabilities sitting next to your professional skills. It’s a wrapper around them. Pacing is pacing. Observation is observation. Confidence is confidence.

Humor just happens to be the most concrete way to practice them, because every attempt gets immediate feedback. Laughter or silence.

You can fake your way through a status update for years. People will nod politely or stare at your slide deck. You can’t fake your way through an open mic. The awkwardness when it’s not going well is visceral.

Comedian as Observer

I’m not the only one who has noticed this. Diana Kander told a story on LinkedIn that makes the same point harder than I could.

Diana is a working speaker. Sharp on stage, comfortable with audiences. She wanted to add a few jokes to her keynote, so she hired a stand-up comedian to write some.

The comedian sat through her entire performance, taking notes the whole time.

When Diana finished, she asked what the comedian had written.

It turns out the comedian hadn’t written any jokes, only observations like Diana was bad at breathing and had what she called “googly eyes” on stage.

This happens a lot when I’m working one-on-one with speakers. Years of speaking coaches and self-tape reviews might not surface an issue. But someone trained in comedy can see it right away. Why? Because comedians spend their professional lives noticing what other people miss. The same attention that finds the funny finds everything else too.

The same logic applies, even if you don’t speak professionally. Joke writing is intense training for written communication. Improv exercises are repetitions in active listening. Humor notebooks are the starting point for self-awareness.

Two ways to learn the same thing

You could take a presentation skills class. Grind through your filler words under fluorescent lighting, work through a packet of exercises, leave with three things to fix. It’s a worthy effort and it works for some people.

Or you could take an improv class. Laugh your way into the same skills, with people you’ll actually want to see again next Tuesday.

Both can make you stronger, but one of them is significantly more fun.

The point isn’t that humor is the easy path. It’s the path that doesn’t get abandoned, which means it’s the one that actually compounds.

What’s your take? Have you found any transferable skills from what you’ve learned about humor? Hit reply and let me know. I read everything.

Leave a comment

Wit regards,
Andrew

P.S. Emily, if you’re reading this, thank you for the kind words and the puzzle. (And thank you for not actually quitting philosophy. We need clear thinkers in there.)

There were a lot of highlights from the past month (here’s a 15-minute recap if you want the full tour). Humor Heroes recognized, live events run, more puns punned than is probably medically advisable.

But the Humor Awards are always my favorite part, because they’re not about me or anyone on a stage. They’re about the people out there using this skill in their actual lives, every day, where it matters.

This year we had 24 finalists. Every single one of them earned their spot. But there was one nomination in particular that got me right in the feels. It came in from a reader named Nancy Sue, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

What Nancy Sue Wrote

For the first time in over six years, I signed up and attended an event via Zoom with Andrew Tarvin after I took the Humor Intelligence test. This is significant because I knew that I was at a point in my grief recovery where I actually felt like I might be able to know HOW I am funny or to notice things that I think are funny and why.

Since my dear husband died six years ago, NOTHING was funny any more. It seemed permanent... until Andrew reminded me of his Pretzel and Pineapple; then about his silly brother who proclaimed with great importance that he farted in class, or Andrew’s statement about “It’s NUN of your business,” and in his little ending statement, “Wit regards.”

I love birds and talk to them regularly, so I am not constantly talking to myself. I Especially love Quails. My favorite is Papa Quailie, with his ever bouncing top knot and superior strut. So the change is gradual, but steady and I am so appreciative.

The Metric That Matters

As a creator, it’s easy to get caught up in the numbers. Views, likes, comments, opens, conversions. The metrics that everyone agrees count as “impact.” I track all of them. They’re useful.

But Nancy Sue isn’t a number. She’s a person who lost her husband, found six years of silence afterward, and is now noticing Papa Quailie’s bouncing top knot and finding it funny again. No dashboard captures that. No quarterly report has a column for it.

I got into this work because of a small nudge. My best friend in college wanted to start an improv group, needed people, and “forced” me to join. I almost said no. I said yes for reasons I don’t fully remember, and that one yes is the reason I have a career, a TEDx talk, a wife I call Pretzel, and a daughter I call Pineapple. The nudge took about ten seconds. The ripple is still going.

I started Humor That Works so I could be that nudge for other people. Most of the time I have no idea if it’s working. The numbers tell me something, but they don’t tell me the thing.

The thing is Papa Quailie.

You never know what small thing turns out to be the big thing. For someone else. Or for you.

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Your Turn

I’d love to know about a nudge in your life. Not a big one. The small kind.

The friend who suggested a class, the colleague who forwarded an article, the stranger who said the right thing at the right time. The kind of moment that probably didn’t seem like much when it happened.

Hit reply and tell me about it. I read every one, and if you’re game, I might share a few next week. Names off, unless you tell me otherwise.

Wit regards,

Andrew

P.S. Nancy Sue’s story started with the Humor Intelligence Assessment, which helped her notice what she actually finds funny. If you’ve been curious about it, it’s right here.

P.P.S. I’ve decided I’m going to start talking to birds too. That way I’m not talking to myself, I’m a Disney princess.

The question is, “I regularly take time to work on funny ideas.”

Compare that to another question, which asks whether you notice something funny in everyday moments. Professionals average 3.93 out of 5 on that one, one of the highest scores anywhere on the assessment.

What that means is that professionals are good at spotting humor in the wild. There’s no shortage of inspiration. The problem is that it just sits there, untouched, until the idea disappears or the moment has passed.

People are building up raw material for funny that they never refine. Then they conclude from the silence that they must not be funny.

Humor is a practice, not a personality

The myth about humor is that funny people are born that way. A quick wit, natural timing, something innate. The data shows the opposite.

Many funny people have a process. They catch a moment, write it down, come back to it later, try a version, cut a word, try again, test it on someone, revise, file it away, pull it back out three months later when it finally fits.

Humor that feels spontaneous is often the output of that loop. The comedian referencing an observation they tinkered with the day before. The keynote speaker who has tested the same line in five different rooms. The friend who has been mentally editing a story since the moment it happened.

Where most professionals are lacking is exactly where the data points. They notice humor in everyday life. They almost never work on it.

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What the practice actually looks like

This is why I’ve found that the fastest way for someone to improve their humor is to keep a humor notebook.

Keep a running list of observations, half-jokes, odd sentences, and weird framings that might be something in a place you can go back to. Most of what you write down may never be anything more than that. But some may end up in your presentations, conversations, or the opening of a Substack email (ahem).

Noticing is where it starts. Working on what you noticed is where the funny actually gets built.

Give it a shot

So use this email as an excuse to try it. Hit reply or leave a comment with a recent observation, moment, or half-formed thought that struck you as funny. Don’t overwork it. Don’t polish it into a joke. Just get it out of your head and onto a screen where it exists.

That’s the entire practice. Notice, capture, return to it later. The returning is where the funny gets built, but it only works if the noticing makes it out of your head first.

I’ll read every reply and help you workshop it if you’d like.

Wit regards,
-Andrew

P.S. If you haven’t taken the Humor Intelligence Assessment yet, you can here. Five minutes, eight competencies, and a profile of where your own humor skills actually sit.

A little while back, I keynoted to 2,000 people. I didn't hear a single laugh.

Not because it wasn't funny (I hope), but because it was a livestream. Cameras off. Chat disabled. No emoji reactions. For 45 minutes it was me, a webcam, and the immediate realization that I couldn't tell if a single thing was landing.

So I took the advice I give to my clients whenever they have a virtual meeting: assume you are crushing it. Because to assume anything else doesn't help when you've got nothing to go on.

A comedian's feedback loop is the laugh. Or the smile. Or the glance sideways at a coworker to see if they caught it too. Take that away and you're left with the professional version of shouting into a well and waiting to see if the well giggles back.
(It did, eventually. The client sent great feedback the next day. Nice messages trickled in from attendees throughout the week. It went well.)

But the feedback arrived after. In the moment, I had no idea. And I know I'm not the only one who knows that feeling.

Many people who use humor well at work use it in exactly the same conditions.

Quarterly reviews. All-hands meetings. Slack threads. Client presentations where everyone has their camera off and their coffee cup up. You make the joke. You drop the one-liner. You reframe the tense moment with something lighter. And then... silence.

Which is why the Humor Awards exist.

This is the sixth annual Humor Awards from Humor That Works, and the whole point is to recognize people who make work more human through humor.

Specifically the people whose work almost never gets recognized for it. Including by themselves.

That’s the part I want you to hear. If you read this newsletter, there’s a decent chance you’re the kind of person who uses humor well at work without thinking of yourself as someone who uses humor well at work.

You make the meeting 7.2% less tense. You send the Slack message that breaks up the Monday fog. You land the callback joke three days later that reminds the team they’re still a team.

These are the people the awards are for.

There are eight categories, each tied to one of the eight competencies of Humor Intelligence.

• Humor Appreciation Award (you notice and reward other people’s humor)

• Humor Consideration Award (you read the room and know what fits)

• Humor Curation Award (you find and share the good stuff)

• Humor Creation Award (you make the jokes, puns, and callbacks)

• Humor Performance Award (you talk in a way that gets people to listen)

• Humor Facilitation Award (you get the room laughing together)

• Humor Application Award (you put humor to work on real problems)

• Humor Empowerment Award (you make it safer for others to be funny)

Pick whichever one feels most like you, or just tell us the humor thing you did and we can decide.

Now, the awkward part. You’re going to have to nominate yourself. I know, I know. You might say you feel awkward for patting yourself on the back, or may not want to toot your own horn. But if you don’t do it, there’s no guaranteeing anyone else will. So get to tootin’.

And if it makes it easier, feel free to make up someone else as your nominator and submit the form in the third person. I’ll never know!

Nominations close Monday.

Nominations close on April 20th at 11:59pm ET (with winners announced on Wednesday April 29th). The process only takes about 2 minutes.

Nominate Today

And if you genuinely can’t bring yourself to do it, forward this email to the coworker who’s seen you in action and let them handle it. Subject line suggestion: “Apparently I’m supposed to toot.”

Wit regards,
-Andrew

P.S. Yes, “get to tootin’” is now something I’ve said to 12,000 people. No regrets.

I’ve been playing tennis since Pretzel (my wife) and I first started dating in New York City. I wasn’t particularly good but we had fun playing together.

When we moved to Panama, we decided to take it more seriously. Individual lessons at first, then a joint setup once Pineapple (my daughter) arrived: I’d do thirty minutes, Pretzel would do thirty, and whoever wasn’t on the court would wrangle the toddler. I’m still not “good” per se (there’s a 50/50 chance my serve ends up in play or outside the court). But I’ve slowly gotten better.

Recently I picked lessons back up after a bit of a break. Early in the session, things were going okay. Not great (at one point the coach felt it necessary to remind me the goal was to get it over the net), but okay. Warming up.

Then the instruction started.

Eyes on the ball. Fine. My contact got a little better.
Now swing through and rotate the wrist. Okay. Marginal improvement.

Off hand out in front. Rotate it as you swing. Bend the knees. Watch the seams on the ball. Pivot the foot on follow-through.

Each new instruction landed right after the last. And with every addition, I got worse. Not plateau-worse. Actively, visibly, confusingly worse than when I had no instruction at all.

I could feel the frustration building. Not at myself, but at him.

He was giving me too much to think about. After yet another ball directly into the net, I told him I needed a water break and was fully intending to pretend like I got a message that I needed to go home just so I could put an end to the stupid class.

But after a sip of water and a few deep breaths, I decided to try again, but with a caveat. In my best broken Spanish, I told him: “Una cosa. Quiero pensar solamente una cosa.”

One thing. I only want to think about one thing.

He paused. “La mano. Y los ojos.” The hand out front, and watch the ball.

That’s two things, but way better than the 87.5 I had in my head before. So that’s what I focused on.

And I got better. Still sending some balls into neighboring zip codes, but consistently, noticeably better. Once that felt natural, I added a third thing and improved. Eventually he tried to give me a fourth. I said, “no gracias.” That’s for next time.

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The Problem With Too Much (Good) Advice

The thing about my tennis coach is that he wasn’t wrong. All of those things he told me to do? Correct. Bend your knees. Watch the seams. Rotate the wrist. If you asked any tennis instructor anywhere, they’d give you the same list.

The problem wasn’t the advice. It was the timing and the volume. There’s a version of “helpful” that becomes decidedly unhelpful.

Many of us run into the same problem any time we’re trying to learn something new, like humor. “Be more intentional.” “Don’t try too hard.” “Read the room.” “Leave a pause for laughter.” “Don’t dwell on it.” All technically accurate.

None of it particularly useful when delivered all at once to someone who just wants to feel a little less wooden in a meeting.

What I’ve found through the research is that humor isn’t one skill. It’s eight distinct competencies. And the reason most advice falls flat is that it treats everyone the same, hands them the full list, and says good luck.

That’s the equivalent of my coach rattling off seven corrections while I’m mid-swing.

What actually works is finding your “una cosa.” The one or two competencies where you already have natural strength, so you can build from there instead of trying to fix everything at once.

And that’s what I want to help you figure out.

Find Your Una Cosa

Next Wednesday, April 15th, I’m hosting a live workshop as part of International Humor Month. It’s called “What Kind of Funny Are You?” and the whole point is exactly what we’ve been talking about.

We’ll walk through all eight Humor Intelligence competencies together, and you’ll leave knowing which ones are already your natural strengths. Not a full list of things to fix. Your una cosa (or two).

If that sounds useful, I’d love to see you there. You can grab a spot here:

What Kind of Funny Are You? >

Wit regards,
-Andrew

P.S. If you have questions before Wednesday, just hit reply. I’ll try not to create too much of a racket, but if I do, it’s not my fault.

For those who don’t know, I’m the Director of International Humor Month (through the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor aka AATH). It’s now in its second year under AATH’s leadership, and the idea for the month is simple:

30 days dedicated to celebrating, spotlighting, and building the skill of humor.

In practice, “simple” means coordinating Humor Hero Spotlights, curated events from humor practitioners around the world, skill-building workshops, podcast interviews, and a humor awards show. All in one month.

Fun, but stressful.

But I genuinely love it. Because Humor Month gives people something that’s surprisingly hard to come by... an excuse.

The power of a good excuse

Think about it: New Year’s gives you an “excuse” to set goals. There’s nothing magical about January 1st. You could start a new habit any day of the year, or even any time of day (you could choose to start a new diet literally right now).

And yet we use the thought of a “new year” as the prompt and permission to invest in ourselves.

It’s the same thing with Valentine’s Day. Can you dote on a loved one any day of the year? Yes. Has the day been overly commercialized to the point that “Meathearts” are a thing (that’s the Sweethearts candy with messages like “Luv U” but instead it’s on meat)? Also yes.

Is it still a good excuse to show you care? Also also yes. It’s not necessary but it gives you permission to be sentimental.

April is the same thing but for humor. It’s the excuse you need to give yourself permission to actually invest time in building your skill of humor. Not just enjoy humor passively, but work on it intentionally.

And I’m taking my own advice. This month I’m teaching longform improv to a group of improvisers here in Panama, setting up a comedy writing workshop, writing new stand-up material in Spanish, and performing a show in virtual reality. (Yes, really.)

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So here’s your excuse

If you’ve ever thought “I’d love to improve my humor” and then immediately not done that... April is your month.

There are things happening all month long as part of International Humor Month. Special open house events, interviews with humor experts on the AATH LaughBox podcast, Humor Hero spotlights, and workshops from humor practitioners around the globe. You can check out the full calendar at humormonth.com.

But if you want a place to start, I’m hosting a free virtual workshop on April 15th at 12pm ET called “What Kind of Funny Are You?”

It’s a one-hour live session on Zoom where we’ll dig into the different ways people are “naturally” funny and you’ll discover your natural style. The goal is to help you unlock your specific sense of humor so you can actually use it, at work, at home, wherever.

Register for Event

Whether you use April as an excuse to attend an event, try writing a joke, or just send a pun to a coworker who didn’t ask for one... I hope you use it.

Because the best time to start working on your sense of humor was years ago. The second best time is right now. And the third best time is all of April, because there’s a whole month dedicated to it.

Wit regards,
-Andrew

P.S. Speaking of excuses to celebrate humor... nominations are now open for the 6th Annual Humor Awards. Know someone whose meetings actually keep people awake or a team that believes in the power of puns? Nominate them today.

Take it now →

If you’ve ever taken DISC, the Enneagram, or Myers-Briggs, you know the drill: answer questions, get a type, read your description, nod along, maybe share it with your team, then put it in a drawer.

The core message of every personality test is the same: “Here’s what you are.”
The Humor Intelligence Assessment does something different. It tells you what you can DO.

Traits vs Skills

Personality tests measure traits. Traits are relatively fixed. If you’re an introvert, you’re an introvert. If you’re a D-style on DISC, Dominance is your wiring. Useful to know, but hard to change.

Humor Intelligence measures competencies. Competencies are learnable. If your Creation score is low today, it doesn’t have to be low six months from now. If your Facilitation score is high, you can learn to leverage that strategically instead of just doing it instinctively.

One person who took the assessment said it was

“better than personality tests because it’s a tool for connecting with others, not just categorizing who you are.”

Another said:

“I’m not a good creator, but I have OTHER skills that are equally as valuable, if not more.”

She only realized that because the assessment broke humor into 8 separate competencies instead of giving her a single label.

Which means it’s not a question of whether you’re “funny” or “not funny.” You have a specific profile across 8 skills, and every one of them can be developed.

If you haven’t taken the assessment yet, it’s 5 minutes and you’ll get your full profile immediately:

Take the Humor Intelligence Assessment

If you’ve already taken it, I’d love to hear what surprised you. Hit reply and tell me.

Wit regards,
Andrew

PS. For the record, I’ve taken every personality test listed above. Apparently I’m a Type A blue square, conscientious INTJ with the sign of Aquarius. I have no idea what to DO with any of that, other than take long walks on the beach... by myself.