We’re faster than any other animal at forming habits and routines about “how” we do new stuff, so we can quickly develop a skill we no longer need to actively think about.   You don’t think how to use the remote, ride a bike, dance at a wedding, open the fridge, catch a bus or operate the washing machine – if you had to think about everything, you would grind to a halt.

This mechanism of developing mental routines to develop skills for day-to-day life is familiar and makes life easy to navigate – but it leaves us prone to a lot of shortcomings:

1. Manipulation – We can be influenced by context and surroundings without even knowing it, because it’s easy to manipulate stuff we learned already and don’t actively think about.
2. Sticking to what we know – We prefer to stick to our routines (especially when we doubt ourselves) rather than seek alternatives.  And if we feel stuck with something, most of us will learn routines to live with it, rather than do something about it – an experiment proved between 64% and 83% of the time we do it the way we’ve always done it – rather than a new more obvious, easier way.
3. Instant Gratification – It’s easier to get gratification from the familiar.  For example watching a comedy now is easier to imagine over a period drama because it’s easier to get a good dopamine “feel good” release from the way you think of comedy over a complex drama plot.  But it’s OK, you think you’ll watch the drama next week – I believe you
4. Our reality = everyone’s reality – What we think is important, isn’t as important for others.  In fact, it’s most likely you’ll only be noticing new stuff in your life – you won’t notice a load of routines you’ve already learned and bedded into your sub-conscious.
5. Storytelling – We only re-tell 50% of a story.  Because we remember meaning rather than words, we’re wiring a story it into pre-existing routines we learned already.  That’s how comedians make you laugh – they poke around familiar routines you have of human behavior.
6. Story telling – We’re also prone to another kind of story telling, a study established that we’ll add, omit, exaggerate or minimise information 61% of the time when we recount a tale onwards.  That’s how comedians make ordinary stuff funny.

Thinking about the 6 traits above, watch how Peter Kay takes advantage of your mental routines to use what you’ve learnt about yourself, and others, to create laughter:

Think that comedians don’t consider the 6 human shortcomings outlined above? Whilst they might take advantage of the mental routines you’ve developed to navigate life effectively in order to get a laugh, comedians are incredibly rigorous when working on new material – they take their own human shortcomings very seriously.  I recently went to see Stephen Amos practicing new material at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith… he had a clipboard and made notes throughout – he prototyped gags and got feedback that led to new ideas!  Here he is without the clipboard:

So whether you’re preparing a great comedy routine or just starting a new project, follow what the comedians do to avoid a comedy of errors on your next big project:
•    Lots of feedback (from the solution, from colleagues, from customers)
•    Lots of practice (domain expertise, iterative design, prototyping)
•    Find constraints/boundaries (scope, effective data organisation)