Why I Haven't Hit Send
And the evolution of teaching the skill of humor.
Hey there, humor enthusiasts!
It’s been a whirlwind five weeks since my last newsletter. I’ve done 10 events plus 2 stand-up sets and 3 improv shows in 8 cities, logging 18 flights, and far too many hours playing Spider Solitaire.
It’s my go-to game while traveling where I’m now a Diamond Grandmaster 47, which really just means I’ve spent ~340 hours of my life in that game… Holy cow, I need a new hobby.
It would be really easy for me to say that the reason I haven’t sent a newsletter in the last five weeks is because of all of the travel + family time with Pretzel (my wife) and Pineapple (my daughter)… but that’s not actually true.
I’ve had the time to write a newsletter. I’ve even wanted to. But I’ve been procrastinating.
Because, for a while now, I’ve been talking about launching the Skill of Humor Masterclass, and… it still hasn’t happened yet.
There are two reasons, one we’ll talk about today and another we’ll save for the future if I ever get the nerve to be brutally honest with you (well, really, myself).
So why the delay?
Realizing When You’re Wrong
Have you ever believed something for years, only to find out it’s not quite as true as you thought? You know, like that old statistic that 93% of communication is non-verbal (turns out, not exactly).
Or that reticent is pronounced “ret-eh-cent” and not “re-tie-cent” (hi mom :).
Or when a favorite MythBusters episode convinced you that running in the rain gets you less wet than walking… and then they later retracted it.
It’s natural that our understanding of the world is going to evolve and change and that it’s all part of the process.
Evolving How I Talk About Humor
Well, over the past five years, I’ve been framing your personal brand of humor around the 7 Humor Personas: the Enthusiast, Curator, Inventor, Entertainer, Engineer, Advocate, and Skeptic.
It’s the framework for our Skill of Humor Playbook, we have an entire Essentials Course Series, and my bro and I even did a TEDx talk on the topic (with over 170,000 views!).
For the next evolution of the program, I decided to partner with the Social Research Lab at the University of Northern Colorado to validate my assessment and add a bit of rigor to the research.
So, imagine my surprise when they came back suggesting that the data didn’t fully support the framework. It’s not that what I’ve been teaching is wrong, per se, but rather there’s a stronger way to teach humor.
They aren’t just humor personas, they’re actually humor competencies. In other words, they’re not roles you can play but skills you can learn.
Yes, you are still naturally skilled at certain competencies, but you can 100% learn all of them, as opposed to living your life thinking, “I’m a curator.”
The result is that the quick launch I imagined turned into a deeper dive into making sure we get it right. Because I’m on a mission to help 1 billion people improve their work and life through mastering the skill of humor, and that means making it as accessible and meaningful as possible.
And that’s why the Masterclass hasn’t debuted just yet (well, one of the reasons).
Humor Competency Workshop
What that means, though, is that I need your help. Because, yes, I want the data to support the methodology that I’m sharing, but I also want it to make sense to the humans that I teach it to (that’s you all).
So, on Friday September 5, I’m hosting my first humor competencies workshop where I’m going to share our current framing of these competencies and what they mean… and I’d love your feedback.
Are you game to learn what it takes to master the skill of humor and give me feedback on whether it makes sense?
And don’t worry, we’ll have some fun in the process (including watching one of my favorite videos I’ve seen on social media recently).
Now that the mini-procrastination vacation is over (maybe it was too much Spider Solitaire), we’re back to our weekly cadence. I hope to see you next week.
-Andrew
PS. I’ll also be testing out some new virtual event techniques I’ve been learning, it’s going to be fun. So come join us.