My favorite part about working in an elementary school is that I could never predict what was going to happen next. Every day was a new, incredible day. There was never a boring moment.
Sometimes, you think that you're handing out a worksheet just reviewing the names of shapes. But then instead of getting back hexagon and octagon, you get back this.
["Amy" "Gabriella"]
(Laughter)
And I think we can agree that is just correct.
(Laughter)
That’s right, that is Gabriella.
(Laughter)
Or, another time I was teaching a class on human biology to my fifth-grade students when one of them afterwards handed in this anonymous question card.
[What are balls for.]
(Laughter)
And you know what really gets me about this, what kills me, is we had spent so long studying punctuation. And he still used a period instead of a question mark. “What are balls for.” Period.
(Laughter)
At the same time that I was teaching elementary school students, I was also teaching adults improv comedy at a local theater on the weekends. This was a group of retired folks, graduate students and semi-successful business people who were paying money to spend their Saturday mornings in an unventilated basement with me. And most of the exercises that we were doing together were to get them to let go of the self-critical part of their brain, to release the idea that there was a "right" answer to find, and to instead be more comfortable with their honest, creative, idiosyncratic thoughts.
Now any elementary school teacher can tell you that getting kids to share their honest, unexpected thoughts, that's not something you have to cultivate. They will do that whether you want them to or not. I mean, here are some real questions that kids asked me out of the blue with no context, during what was supposed to be a silent work time.
(Laughter)
"Is it possible to make myself live longer so that I can see the Sun explode?"
(Laughter)
"Are pigs actually prejudiced against women, or is that just an expression?"
(Laughter)
"If your brother isn't married yet, why doesn't he just marry your mom?"
(Laughter)
And actually, that brings up a really important point, which is that kids' ideas are not always good. Sometimes they're very bad. I'm personally very grateful that my mom and my brother are not married.
(Laughter)
There's some research that suggests that for many of us, fifth grade is close to the peak of this kind of wildly free, uninhibited, creative thinking. But that does not have to be the case. In my experience, the difference between people with an amazing sense of humor and those without is often just whether they are willing to accept and notice their honest reactions, or whether they try their hardest to fit them into a box.
And that can shift over time. I saw that shift with my adult improv students. At first, when we would do an exercise where they were asked to name seven things in a given category as quickly and creatively as possible, many of them would get stuck. One guy, Rick, a corporate tax lawyer, answered the prompt, "Seven weird types of shoes" by saying, "Brown shoes, white shoes, black shoes, gray shoes." I'm not going to name all the shoes, it was all a lot of boring shoes, you get it. But then, after we practiced celebrating our more bizarre thoughts instead of repressing them, Rick eventually came up with a list a list that included things like, "Shoes covered in mud, shoes covered in gold, shoes covered in the blood of my enemies.” Which is like, that’s a lot, Rick, actually, that's a lot, it's really a lot. But it's also definitely more interesting. And I think that's the point. When we turn off our self-judgment and we just notice the things that stand out to us, or that we think, we can surprise ourselves in ways that are hilarious and delightful. Every comedian that I know has a notebook or some sort of document where they keep track of all the little odd things that they notice or think throughout the day. And what you find, when you start keeping track, is that there is no shortage of material out there. There [is] so much to laugh at. And if you have a little bit of courage to allow yourself to be laughed at and to laugh at yourself, you can make discoveries that you never would have otherwise, right? If you want to know what balls are for, sometimes you've got to ask.
I have found that you can find laughter in even the driest places if you bring some of that mischievous fifth-grade energy to the instructions and to what you're "supposed" to be doing, right? It doesn't have to be geometry class. It can be an opportunity for you to hang out with your good friend Gabriella.
Now I have had the most fun when I applied these lessons that I got from my fifth graders to self-serious adult spaces. To places where I maybe feel intimidated or like I don't necessarily belong. So, for example, for me personally, LinkedIn. Terrifying. I've never had a professional resume, I've never been comfortable with business networking, but I've also always been kind of fascinated by LinkedIn. Like, they let you make a profile, and they don't verify that you work at the place you say you work. So I decided I was going to test this out and have some fun. I made a profile on LinkedIn where I said that I was the CEO of LinkedIn.
(Laughter)
And I didn't think they would even let me do that. But not only did they, after I made the profile, one of the most incredible things that has ever happened in my entire life happened. Which is that LinkedIn sent this email to everyone in my contact list. They sent that email.
(Laughter)
"Congratulate Chris on the new job. Chris Duffy is now CEO of LinkedIn."
(Laughter)
That's a better joke than anything I could ever write in my entire life.
(Laughter)
I was the CEO of LinkedIn on LinkedIn for one year.
(Laughter)
And at that one-year mark, LinkedIn sent yet another email to everyone in my contact list asking them to congratulate me on my work anniversary.
(Laughter)
And at that point, I received a message from a woman named Faith who worked on LinkedIn's Trust and Security team.
(Laughter)
She said my account was being locked due to concerns about its inaccuracy. So I sent her back a photo of my license, front and back, to prove that my name was, in fact, Chris Duffy.
(Laughter) Faith responded.
"The thing that we are concerned about is not that your name is not Chris Duffy. It's that you are claiming to be the CEO of LinkedIn."
So I responded, "Faith, you are taking a pretty disrespectful tone for someone who works for me."
(Laughter)
10 seconds later, she permanently deactivated my account.
(Laughter)
It was a short but glorious stint, running my own personal social network.
(Laughter)
And now, what am I up to these days? I'm so glad you asked. I'm more than just a fifth-grade graduate. I'm actually, I'm the founder and owner of TED.
(Laughter)
Congratulate me, you know you want to. Thanks for coming to my conference.
(Applause and cheers)
