When Preparation Becomes A Liability
Knowing When to Abandon the Plan (Comedy Mindhacks #130)
Back when I was in high school, Friday nights during basketball season felt like their own little universe. By the time the JV game ended, the gym was packed. As soon as the game started, parents and coaches were yelling at the referees, the pep band somehow knew exactly when to get louder, and the concession stand smelled like popcorn, nachos, and hot dogs that had probably been rolling under a heat lamp since lunch.
During the game, every possession felt enormous, even though I couldn’t tell you who won most of those games today. I wasn’t a star player and, in some games, I never played a second. But there were parts of it I loved. I enjoyed the intensity of gathering around our coach before tipoff as he sketched the opening play onto a grease board that looked like it’d survived decades of basketball seasons.
And in the run up to our games each week, we’d spend hours rehearsing our plays until every screen, every cut, and pass became second nature. But there was something that used to confuse me: Our coach would draw up the play, send us out onto the court, then sometimes we’d barely get the ball across half court before he started shouting from the sideline, waving his arms and calling out a completely different play. Like, we worked on this play all week and you just used the time out to tell us what to do. Now, within seconds, you’re changing it to something we barely practiced? Why in the world would you invest so much time on a plan only to abandon it a few seconds into the game?!
Years later, I finally understood what our coach had been teaching us all along: The play was never the goal. That particular play was simply one possible solution to a problem we hadn’t encountered yet. Once the defense revealed what it was actually going to do in real time, clinging to the original plan would’ve not only been stubborn but stupid. Or, to put it another way: Good basketball players and coaches don’t fall in love with the play; they learn to recognize what the defense is giving them and adjust based on that.
Fast forward twenty five years to this morning. As I was reflecting on last night’s comedy show, a comedy competition in fact, that high-school memory came rushing back to me. Like I always do, I walked into the venue last night with a carefully prepared set, complete with an opening joke and a closer I’d rehearsed enough times to perform without thinking. In my mind, the work was already finished before I ever stepped on stage. Then I sat down, watched the audience respond to the comedians ahead of me, and realized they were showing me something I hadn’t known while I was preparing because, well, I didn’t know them.
As comedian after comedian took the stage, I started noticing patterns. The audience wasn’t laughing equally at every style of joke. It’s wild but every audience has its own personality as it were. This particular audience seemed to reward shorter punchlines more quickly than longer stories, and they responded to certain rhythms with a type of enthusiasm they never quite gave to others. Without realizing it, they were telling every comedian in the room exactly who they were. This crowd liked clever one-liners. Tonight’s crowd and tomorrow night’s crowd may have a penchant for something else, whether it’s stories or puns or whatever.
But by the time my name was called, I had a decision to make. I could perform the set I’d carefully constructed at home, or I could perform the set that best fit the audience sitting in front of me. Those weren’t necessarily the same thing anymore. The room had given me new information, and pretending I hadn’t received it simply because I’d already made a plan suddenly felt like bad or stubborn basketball. So, just minutes before stepping on stage, I changed my set. And because I was reading this crowd, which, again, seemed to like one-liners, I even removed some tags from this set because they wouldn’t have the full force of a well-crafted one-liner.
I adjusted not at all because the first set I was planning to do was bad. And it’s not because I suddenly started doubting my material. Again, I changed it because the audience had shown me something I couldn’t have known while I was rehearsing alone. Fortunately, I think the adjustment worked well. And as I made my way back to my seat, I realized that this has everything to do with the way I think about preparation.
I think one of the easiest traps for comedians to fall into is confusing preparation with the goal. We spend hours writing, editing, rehearsing, memorizing transitions, and polishing every word until the set finally feels finished. That’s exactly what we should do. The problem comes when we become so emotionally attached to our preparation that we stop paying attention to the people we’re supposedly there to serve. We’ve gotta leave room to be able to call audibles.
definitely gives us a plan, but performance is dynamic; live shows are dynamic. The moment an audience starts laughing, groaning, drifting, or leaning in, they’re communicating with us, and every response gives us information we didn’t have five seconds earlier. That’s why reading a room isn’t some mysterious gift that only experienced comedians possess. Every audience tells us what kind of evening they’re looking for. They tell us whether they’re patient enough for a long story, whether they prefer quick punchlines, whether they’re ready for something thoughtful, or whether they want to laugh at local things such as their state, their culture, and themselves.
Here’s the tough part: I don’t think this kind of flexibility comes from preparing less. I think it comes from preparing more. Early in my comedy journey, I couldn’t have possibly changed my set halfway through because every ounce of my attention was devoted to remembering what came next. I could’ve never done that. The more comfortable I’ve become with my material, however, the more mental space I’ve gained to pay attention to something besides myself.
That’s true, of course, in far more places than stand-up. The best teachers, for instance, adjust when they realize a lesson isn’t connecting. The best leaders recognize when the original strategy no longer fits the circumstances. The best parents discover that the same approach doesn’t work with every child. Experience doesn’t eliminate the need to adapt. If anything, it should make adaptation more natural because confidence allows us to respond instead of merely react.
Looking back, I think my high school coach was teaching us discernment and flexibility. The plays mattered, but only because they prepared us for the decisions we’d eventually have to make once the game actually started. Memorizing the playbook we had wasn’t the finish line but the starting point. And the longer I perform stand-up, the more convinced I become that the same principle applies on stage. I should prepare relentlessly. I should know my material well enough that I could perform it in my sleep. But the moment I walk into the room, I’m no longer trying to prove that I wrote the perfect set at home; instead, I’m trying to have the best possible experience with the people sitting in front of me. Simply put: The jokes aren’t what’s sacred, the connection is, and sometimes to make that connection I may need to call an audible.
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