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Table of Contents

Go to this Notion Template for Joke Database and duplicate it.

At this point you should have a list of material that you've written and tried in front of a crowd.

Enter jokes in the database

Notion databases provide you with the ability to visualize the same data in multiple ways.

The default view is Incoming which acts as the inbox for all your incoming material.

Click on the Incoming button to list the other available view.

Go to Organize by Type

To facilitate organization the entries are provided as a Kanban Board View.

You can drag & drop entries to organize them.

Jokes can be thought of as following a complete thought following a specific setup-punchline format. They're designed to elicit a laugh.

Examples of this could include jokes, one liners, and tags etc.

Nuggets can be any thing that you've jotted down that you find relevant but is not a complete thought / joke on its own.

Examples of this could include premises, puns, and funny thoughts, observations, wordplay etc.

The goal is to take all the jokes that you've written and pipelining them by moving them through your Backlog → Try → `✓`

For you to be able to do this you will have to perform jokes at least 3-6 times in front of an audience

Drawer is a place where you can put jokes

Backlog is where jokes will go if you find them promising and would like to try them on stage eventually.

Try is the list of jokes that you are currently trying and testing at open mics.

✓ is for jokes that are getting a good crowd response consistently and you want to move in to your material.

The existing jokes are categorized as Orphan by default. You can move them into Standalone if they're individual jokes told independently.

If a theme emerges around topics, then its better to chunk them into a theme, or a bit.

Click on Add a group and add in a name. I also update the color to gray to indicate that this is a new bit and is not finalized.

As the bit progresses I change the color to yellow, green, and purple to indicate the different stages of completion. They correspond to the rating system highlighted below so you can look at that section for more detail.

I perform the jokes for a crowd. You need a live audience to test your material.

I always record my material and review it later. Don't rely on your memory. Record the room. Review the video later and pay attention to the reactions.

I always start my standup set with 6-8 jokes that consistently work and land a good reaction. These jokes are meant to serve as the benchmark to compare the new jokes to.

This way, if there's a bad day, and your 6-8 strong jokes are not getting a reaction, you will be able to grade your new jokes on that relative scale.

A - Great Joke. Consistently gets an excellent reaction across audiences. Gets a huge laughter, or applause.

B - Decent Joke. Consistently gets a good reaction across audiences. Gets an audible laughter.

C - Needs Work. Either gets an unreliable laugh or is a punchline, premise, tag. Gets a laugh sometimes, but inconsistently.

D - Doing Poorly. Few laughs, light laughs, or inconsistent response across audiences.

E - No Response. If a joke consistently fails to get a reaction then it either needs to be fixed structurally or you should move it to the drawer. It might be funny someday when you have more skills to problem-solve why this is not working.

You can also edit Status, Rating, Bit and all other properties directly in the view you are in as opposed to going to a different view to do so.

Right-Click the entry you wish to edit.

Click on Edit Property

Select the property

Select the value