Oxygen For Ideas
It's stage time.That's the other thing with standup as opposed to writing. I've realized now that I think stage time to writing is about 90/10 you can write all the things until you get out there you don't know if it's any good.
If you wrote a stage show now right went out there I reckon you'd have about a 20% hit rate right whereas just going on stage every night that's where it all happens - it either works or it doesn't it's as simple as that.
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You think some oh that would be amazing you go out there you say it and the audience goes no it wasn't amazing and they're right, you know what I mean? You can't be: no you're wrong you should find that funny.
Usage is like oxygen for ideas. You can never fully anticipate how an audience is going to react to something you’ve created until it’s out there. That means every moment you’re working on something without it being in the public it’s actually dying, deprived of the oxygen of the real world.[...]
By shipping early and often you have the unique competitive advantage of hearing from real people what they think of your work, which in best case helps you anticipate market direction, and in worst case gives you a few people rooting for you that you can email when your team pivots to a new idea. Nothing can recreate the crucible of real usage.
Most ideas don't survive first contact with the real world.
Usage is oxygen for ideas. And the audience is evidence.
Not always sufficient evidence. Not always flattering evidence. But evidence all the same.
And in a world of attention deficit, surplus content and performative progress, evidence is precious.
Culturematics are stage time for strategy. Little machines for getting ideas out of your head and into their hands.
If an idea survives first contact with an audience, you do not have certainty.
But you do have something to work with.