Is it true that I write six articles a week?
No it’s not.
Many days I’ll write six articles a day.
And that’s not bragging.
And it’s most certainly not talent.
So what’s the story: How did I get so darned prolific?
I was forced by others to write at least twice a month (well, persuaded). One of the early persuaders was Allen Weiss, from marketingprofs.com.
Today, Marketingprofs.com has hundreds of writers, but back then, it was Allen and probably ten or twenty of us (I don’t know). What I do know was that he was keen on me writing at least twice a month. And he’d publish the articles. And I’d get subscribers. So it was good for all of us.
Then I think I was still writing, and they wanted articles more often
So I started writing once a week and I’d publish the articles on Psychotactics.com and Marketingprofs.com.
Oh, did I struggle?
But it was easier writing once a week, than once a month.
Then in 2002, I started up 5000bc.com
But I was still writing less than I am now. However, in the year 2004, I revamped 5000bc.com. At the time, I was a member of another membership site. That owner of the site was writing about 4 articles a week, so I thought, ok, I’ll write about 4-5 articles a week for 5000bc.
And so I moved up to about 6 articles a week.
Now all this writing may sound horrific to you.
How do you get the time to write 6 articles a week?
But the converse is true. The more you write, the more you ‘discover’ the secrets of writing (because you have to be super-efficient).
The more you ‘discover’, the faster you get at the darned thing.
And that’s not all. If you write once a week, you have to warm up. Writing almost six articles, means that you’re writing almost every day, if not at least 2-3 days in a week.
That of course, is only part of the writing.
At Psychotactics.com we have courses. And workshops (Most of our courses have about 200 pages of notes each). And I had to write for that.
And forums on the courses. More writing.
Started up a blog and asked who wanted to read it. A few put up their hands. More writing. Started up a second, and third blog. More writing.
If it’s beginning to sound insane to you, it’s not.
I probably spend less time writing than most writers.
Through NO MAGIC PILL and sheer writing, day after day, I’ve become good enough to write 2-4 articles in about 2-3 hours. Most people never go past the first paragraph in that amount of time.
And how do I know that?
When I first started, it used to take me 2 days to write an article. And often, that article never made it to the finish line. I’d trash it, and start over again. Most people think I’m exceptionally good at writing. I am. But it’s not because of the breakfast I’m eating.
It’s because of persistence, and practice. And those little secrets I learned along the way.
Susan Polgar is the world’s first female chess grandmaster.
In fact, before Susan’s ‘sudden’ arrival on the chess scene, people believed that the female brain was somehow inferior to the male brain.
Especially when playing chess.
And then Susan kinda burst that sad bubble of male superiority.
But we’re not here to talk about male or female brains.
We’re here to talk about measurement.
Because Susan is such a genius, the kind scientist folk decided to look inside her brain.
And they found something quite startling.
But to understand how startling it is, we have to understand how your brain and mine works, in the first place.
Here’s how our brains work
When we see a person, or meet a person, we remember their faces.
We do so, because our brain stores this information in a place called the ‘fusiform gyrus.’
So though we may not remember the person’s name, we sure as heck remember their faces.
Susan remembers faces as well
And she too stores these faces in the ‘fusiform gyrus.’
But she stores something else there too.
She stores thousands of chess games in the ‘fusiform gyrus’
So to her brain, the entire chess game, with all its moves, is like a face of a person.
Which means she can recall thousands of games, just like you and I can recognise a face.
But was Susan born with this unusual brain?
She certainly doesn’t think so. She believes that her brain needed to store the information. And since there was so much information to store, it just found a store room that was handy. That storeroom happened to be the ‘fusiform gyrus.’
Her brain is no doubt different from ours
And so was Albert Einstein’s brain. The legend goes that Einstein’s brain was far more developed than most other brains.
Now there’s absolutely no debate that the brains of geniuses are different from our brains.
But did they start out that way?
Were they born with a superior brain?
Or did the sheer discipline of learning increase their brain capacity and function?
No one measured baby Einstein’s brain.
Or baby Susan’s brain.
Or the brain of millions of babies who turn out to be geniuses.
But here’s what I’m guessing.
That there are a hundred billion neurons in your brain (remember the fairy lights?).
Even if one brain is bigger than another. Or different from another, it doesn’t count for much.
Having a hundred billion neurons or a hundred and twenty billion neurons counts for little—if they don’t light up.
The lighting up of your neurons is what sets your brain aglow.
It’s what creates the intelligence.
We are so focused on believing that some people are more talented than us.
We are so focused on how un-creative we are.
That we let most of those billions of neurons lie dormant.
Unlit.
Like a Christmas tree with billions of bulbs and most of the bulbs without any power.
If you want to become a genius, it’s relatively simple.
You’ve got about a hundred billion neurons in your head.
How many are you going to light up?
Light up many of those neurons and some day soon they’ll put you in a lab.
And measure your brain activity.
And call you a born-genius. 😉
What’s funny about it?
Nothing.
It’s a guy on a boat. And an island in the distance.
Now don’t think of a funny line.
Instead think of something disconnected.
What’s the last thing you’d expect to see in a scene like this?
Put it down in the comments.
If you think of a great caption, that’s fine.
If you don’t, let’s just put down something that’s disconnected to this scene.
Making ‘funny’ work for you, is simply a matter of three core steps
Step 1: ‘Recognising disconnection.’
Step 2: Then putting the ‘disconnection’ down on paper.
Step 3: Then finding a connection that makes it funny.
Ok, over to you. Let’s have a disconnection in the comments.
Let me get you started.
Link ‘guy on a boat’ and ‘food’.
Close your eyes (This is important)
What picture do you see?
Yup, make sure you close your eyes when you think of ‘guy on a boat’ and ‘food.’
What picture do you see?
Post your comments. Whatever they are. (Doesn’t have to be funny).
How does ‘funny’ work?
Let’s look at few cartoons to begin with.
Then let’s look at a comedian in full flow.
Then let’s look at a video.
And we’ll do the impossible.
We won’t just analyse ‘funny.’
We’ll replicate funny. We as in you and I.
Yes, both of us.
You’re ready?
Let’s start out with the cartoons
Is this funny?
Sure it is. So why are you suddenly so amused?
A guy with bandages isn’t funny. A guy on a snowboard isn’t funny.
And yet, a guy on a snowboard with bandages is funny.
It’s the disconnection that makes things funny
Or creative.
Or whatever you want to call it.
Example 1:
So if we look at an air-hostess serving muffins and coffee on a flight, it’s not funny.
But an air-hostess serving muffins and coffee on a canoe is funny.
Example 2:
A man saying to another man: “I’d like to be a prince, but I hate paparazzi ” is not funny.
A frog saying to another frog: “I’d like to be a prince, but I hate paparazzi” is funny.
But notice what’s happening?
It’s not just the disconnection at work, is it?
No it’s not. If you don’t know what an air-hostess does, or can’t refer back to the story of the Frog Prince, then there’s no joke at all. Then it’s just a string of words, and a well-drawn picture.
The core of what comedians use is a complete disconnection
But if you go up to a comedian and ask him/her: “Do you use disconnection?,” they may not know what to answer? They don’t know what to answer, because they haven’t analysed what’s happening. And right now, we’re in analysis mode.
So let’s head over to see how comedians use disconnections, shall we?
Let’s look at this clip by Jon Stewart, on Comedy Central.
Feel free to see the entire clip, but note than in about a minute and thirty-five seconds you’ve laughed twice or thrice already.
(Note that if you go past a minute and thirty-nine seconds, it stops being funny).
So watch the clip, and then let’s do the analysis.
So what was funny?
Tea? There’s a president of a country sitting on your show, and you bring out tea? Oooh, nice disconnect.
For exactly thirty-eight seconds in the video, you watched the video seriously.
Then the tea came out. So did your smile. 🙂
Then a whole bunch of disconnects crop up. Till the Osama Bin Laden joke.
Now imagine if Jon Stewart had asked that Osama Bin Laden question about ten minutes into a serious discussion.
Would you have laughed?
Maybe. Maybe not.
What made the joke hilarious was that Jon asks the question right in the middle of the first sip of tea.
Now that’s funny.
And of course, let’s look at a video
This video cracks me up every time I see it. And by now you can tell what’s really happening in the video. And why it’s funny.
But let me not spoil it for you. Watch the video first. (NOTE: It has some “adult” language and “swear words” so yeah, if you’ve got kids around, you may want to watch this one with the headphones on, or later when they’re not around).
And what was funny?
Sure it’s the disconnect.Why would Darth go to the canteen?
Why would the canteen guy associate Darth with his boss?
Why does Darth get hassled for an autograph?
At each of those specific points you laughed.
But what’s funny about someone going to a canteen?
What’s funny with someone mistaking you for their boss?
What’s funny about getting hassled for an autograph?
It’s not funny at all.
Except if Darth Vader is involved.
The whole craziness of the situation is what makes things funny.
The disconnection is what causes the laughs.
You want to create laughs?
Take a perfectly ordinary situation. And create a disconnection.
Of course, you won’t make anyone laugh.
Your jokes may not appear funny at all.
And there’s a reason.
You’ve just started to train your neurons to dance in a new way. You’ve just started to teach your neurons to look for a disconnect.
And when you first start to dance (even if you’re a neuron) you look a bit nervous and ungainly.
But if you keep at seeking out and putting disconnections together, you’ll strike up a neuron string of bulbs.
Then you’ll do what every cartoonist does.
What every comedian does.
What every funny video does.
You’ll simply put two disconnected objects or situations together, using your vast database of learning and memory.
And create laughs.
So remember I told you that we (yes, both of us) could create funny cartoons or situations?
Well, we will. But not just yet. Because this post has taken enough of your ‘work time’ already 😉
So let’s wait for the next post, ok?
Yes, we’ll do the impossible. We’ll get you to be funny, even if you have no history of being funny. 🙂 Until next time…
Have you ever seen fairy lights on a Christmas tree?
Each bulb is connected to each other.
Yet if one bulb fuses…
The next one seems to fail.
And then the chain seems to break.
So if you started out with five hundred lights on your Christmas tree, the failure of one bulb could take away the glow of about fifty bulbs.
In your brain you have about a hundred billion ‘bulbs’ called neurons (give or take a few zillion)
These neurons are pretty darned useless by themselves.
But turn on a memory, or a skill, and these neurons light up.
Now what’s really important is the understanding of how ‘talent’ and neurons are connected
Let’s say you can draw really well.
When someone gives you a pen and a sheet of paper, and asks you to draw something, a set of those lights fire up. And when you look at the firing up, it seems that all the lights fire up at one go.
But in reality there’s a gap.
The neurons fire up in different sequences for each thought or skill
So if you’re drawing a cat, it’s firing one set of lights.
If you’re drawing a dog, it’s quite another set.
If you’re drawing a girl in a bikini. Heck yeah, it’s a whole different set. 🙂
But the firing up of the neurons depends on the database in your brain
Which is why ten thousand cartoonists can look at the same political drama unfolding, and can draw ten thousand political cartoons that are totally different from each other. The cartoons still reference the same drama.
But the cartoons differ in terms of gag timing, in style, in size etc. And that’s because of the pathway that each cartoonist’s brain is following.
So what’s really happening in their brain?
Think of the fairy lights on the Christmas tree.
And imagine they were not all yellow lights.
Imagine instead that the lights had the ability to mix (like you mix colours on paper)
So as you turn on the switch, a set of red lights ignite and race to turn on.
At the very same time, the yellow lights ignite their sequence.
And at one point, the red and yellow lights meet at a junction.
And you get an orange.
This is the genesis of an idea
Bulbs of different colours mixing at one specific point.
It’s how the neurons in our brain work.
Now instead of just red and yellow lights, think of millions of shades of lights (millions of neurons).
And they’re all racing, and meeting at different junctions.
And mixing
Mixing and creating different shades.
Red mixing with blue.
Blue mixing with yellow.
Yellow mixing with green.
Suddenly there are millions of shades. Shades that all culminate to create a neuron dance.
And the neuron dance ends up with you saying “Eureka!”
Which is why ten thousand cartoonists can look at the same drama
And each draw one, two, even ten funny gags.
It’s because of how their bulbs light up.
But the question remains.
We can indeed fire up millions of neurons in our brain. We can reference vast memory banks.
But why can’t we come up with gags?
Why can’t we be funny too like that cartoonist or comedian?
Maybe it’s just that we’re not talented enough.
Maybe it’s just that cartoonists think in a different way.
And it’s true. They do think in a different way
In fact, somewhere along the line, their brains worked out a neuron dance with one added combination: the combination of how to make something funny.
So what’s happening here?
Remember that fused bulb?
The bulb that prevents about fifty lights from coming on? That fused bulb prevents the lights from igniting in your brain. When we replace that bulb, suddenly all the lights are aglow.
All the fifty bulbs come alive.
What we have to do then, is to find that darned fuse bulb. And make sure we replace it pronto.
And when that bulb is replaced, then we have a new dance.
A neuron dance that enables us to think ‘funny.’
Pretty cool, huh?
So how do we start to think ‘funny?’
Let’s find out, in the next post, shall we?
