Dancing in the Dark: Instincts, intuition and improvisation

Show Notes - Journal Jam #14

Jun 16, 2025

Improvisation has been swirling around me for a few months. It all started with a book on digital organisation.

‘Building a Second Brain’ encourages people to get their sh*t together by streamlining the ways we consume, store and use digital files. Its author, Tiago Forte, is sort of like Marie Kondo for your digital life.

Tiago often writes in the language of techno-productivity (this is a book about digital knowledge management, after all). However, the book is littered with moments of philosophical insight, like when he mused on the “improvisational cultures” of his parents’ home countries, Brazil and the Philippines.

Rather than venerating structure and order, Tiago considers improvised solutions as examples of ingenuity, resourcefulness and creativity. He urges readers to consider their own improvised solutions to digital mess as equally valid as tightly managed systems of organisation.

For me, this was a surprising reframe.

I often think of an improvised solution as ‘Plan B’. I’ve run out of ingredients for dinner, so I’ll improvise a meal with eggs and frozen peas. I haven’t prepared for a meeting, so I’ll just wing my way through it.

What might life look like if we approached improvisation as Plan A?
What skills, capabilities and instincts might we tap into with a more improvisational approach to life?

I brought these questions to the Journal Jam crew. Through a beautiful, meandering conversation last Sunday, I was surprised to discover we’re all natural improvisers. Improvisation isn’t just something for theatre kids and jazz musicians. Improvisation is all around us, calling us into a heightened state of responsiveness, receptivity and collaboration with the world.

The magic of improvisation is that it opens up new opportunities. Through active experimentation in the moment, we’re brought into dialogue with life, using the raw materials around us to create new relationships, opportunities and solutions.

As always, thank you to the brilliant, brave and curious folk who came along to muse all things improvisation with me. Here are our tid-bits, brain farts and nuggets of wisdom for the month.

Happy journaling!

Improvisation = making things happen

Off the bat, improvisation isn’t something many of us carried a strong association with. It feels like something other people do - standup comics, jazz musicians, artists. But at its heart, improvisation is simply getting from point A to point B without a pre-determined roadmap. Often, this looks like paying careful attention, taking note of your surroundings, collaborating with others and being okay with taking wrong turns.

While I’ve often thought of improvisation as a frantic scramble, improvisation actually calls upon a heightened state of awareness, perceptivity and responsiveness. Jazz musician Axel Lindstrom describes it as a zen-like meditation; “When you’re improvising, it’s the instinct, you’re training your subconscious through your practice, the discipline of your practice, to respond in the most fluid and visionary way” (check out his interview in the show notes 🎧). At its best, improvisation feels like a flow state - fluid, slippery and embodied - far from a frantic scramble.

Question: In which areas of life do you find it easiest to improvise? Which areas are hardest?

We’re never empty handed

Our first impressions of improvisation churned up some uncomfortable feelings: Fear, embarrassment, confusion, panic, cringe, sheer terror.

I think the fear factor is just our evolutionary tendency towards certainty - people like a plan! While improvising can feel like being out in the wilderness without a map, it’s important to remember we carry so much wisdom, memories, patterns and instincts inside us. We’re never really empty handed. Many of us were surprised (and kind of invigorated) to recognise the ways we’re already improvising - whipping up a meal, planning holidays on the fly, striking up conversations with strangers, navigating a new part of town. In an ever-changing world, we’re always making our way in the dark. Life is an endless series of improvisations. Deepening our awareness of the ways we’re already improvising encourages trust and self-confidence, we all have an innate capacity to be creative and responsive in the moment.

Question: What qualities or characteristics are activated when you improvise?

Improvisation takes time (and happens spontaneously in the moment)

We often think of improvisation as an instantaneous response that happens directly in the moment. While that may be true, improvisation can equally take its time.

The areas of life where we felt the most comfortable experimenting were those we’re most familiar with. For some of us, this was the kitchen (for others, it was definitely not the kitchen.. ) Here, people talked about being effortlessly guided by an innate familiarity with ingredients and methods they’ve used over and over again. For others, experimentation came most naturally in their professional or creative lives - writing, painting, teaching - skills they’ve honed through years of practice. While improvisation happens in the moment, the confidence to experiment freely seems to emerge from the embodied knowledge we’ve developed over days, months or years.

Even in less familiar scenarios, improvisation can be enhanced by time. A brief moment of pause can strengthen our improvisational instincts: it’s taking a single breath to get your bearings, take in your surroundings and soak in some feedback from your environment before making a move. I find these kind of pauses essential to improvisation, and my creative practices more broadly. To think on my feet and trust my gut, I need to be attuned to the moment. The deeper I listen, the stronger those instincts become.

Question: What might happen if you consciously made time for improvisation?

Directing, controlling and harmonising

So, what gets in the way of improvisation? We mused on a couple of factors: the perceived 'riskiness’ of a situation, the weight of the outcome, our level of stress, the fear of embarrassment. It seems when the stakes are high, we’re at our least improvisational. Reflecting on her first improv class, Cian noted that even as a trained actor, “it’s actually really hard to let go”. Similarly, Sigurd noted that in professional life “it’s my job to stay in control”. So much of modern life is structured around maintaining ‘control’ and pursuing pre-determined outcomes (which segues into a fantastic article about the hidden power of chaos, mess and disorder..)

This got us thinking..

Do we need to have a plan to be in control?

While it can be scary to let our intuition direct us, untethering from our tightly managed plans can open us up to a deeper engagement with the people, opportunities and raw material around us. It’s here that surprising, fluid, dynamic outcomes arise. As with everything in life, it’s about balance. If you’re a natural planner, what might a more improvisational approach open up? If you’re a natural harmoniser, what would it feel like to assert more directive approach?

Make a move, let go

For our resident impro queen, India, an essential aspect of impro theatre is its ephemeral nature. As she put it, impro is a process of trying things out, seeing what happens, and moving on. It’s liberating to know each piece will only happen once! We pondered whether it’s harder to experience this kind of ephemerality in a time of social media. Does the omnipresence of smartphones (with their ever-vigilant Big Brother eyes 👁️) make it harder to fully commit to experimentation in the moment? This led Tuva to question:

“What would you do if no one remembered anything you did?”

This part of our conversation reminded me of something my favourite yoga teacher told me in Bali last year. After every class she teaches, no matter how peaceful or unruly, she quietly tells herself: “It was what it was, move on.” It’s an important discipline for all of us, especially when you’re in the sticky business of trying/making/creating new things. We’re going to screw up. It’s going to get messy. Giving ourselves the grace to mess up and be a bit cringe is like rocket fuel for learning and growth (case in point - this newsletter!) I’m curious if any professional improvisers out there have a technique for this??