Organizing Your Stand-Up Jokes Using a Project Manager, Part 1
I have had a lot of questions about the screenshots that I've shared about how I organize my jokes, and so I just want to dive into it. This is Part One of, I don't know how many parts, but I am very nerdy about how I organize my jokes and how I organize my entire life. I use an app called ClickUp and in this video, I show top level tips on what I do in ClickUp to keep things organized.
If you're on mobile, I recommend watching this directly on YouTube by clicking here.
In this video, I reference Pop Bits a lot. You can read more about Pop Bits in my Social Media Strategy for Comedians Who Don't Do Crowd Work.
The video transcript:
Hey guys, it's Andi Whiskey. I have had a lot of questions about the screenshots that I've shared about how I organize my jokes, and so I just want to dive into it. This is gonna be part one of, I don't know how many parts, but, , I am very nerdy about how I organize my jokes and how I organize my entire life because I use an app called clickup.
It's a project management system. As you can see, I use it for my entire life. But I also use it for my jokes. I've been using it for two years. I have up to 255 jokes and ideas in it right now. And so this is how I keep everything organized. I am gonna go over top level stuff to hopefully inspire you for how you might be able to tighten up your organization process or if you want to jump into Clickup and figure it out.
I will have future recordings of some sort, , where I go into exactly how to use Clickup. But this is just gonna be kind of to show top level stuff. So. Like I said, I have a lot of jokes in here. This is how I. Keep everything organized so I know what I'm doing and what I'm working towards, which is the big, the big process and part of it.
, so this is how I group my jokes. I have idea, which can be anything. It can be just any kind of premise. Or if I'm like, oh yeah, I have this really funny story I need to write down at some point I'll just like remind myself to do it. But basically nothing's been written. There are no punchlines yet.
Writing means there are some kind of punchlines and tags and stuff. Being written, working out means I have gotten to a point where I'm saying that joke out loud, whether it's literally in the mirror at home or if it's on stage at an open mic or a bar show, what have you, pop bits I talk about in another article.
I will link that in this article or whatever, but you can go find it on ComedyWhatsWhat.com where I talk about what pop bits are good to go means it is a joke that gets laughs. I have some kind of delivery worked out. I have done the working out process and now it has landed every time I've done it, but it's still pretty fluid.
Like maybe I'm delivering a little bit different or I'm still exploring different words to use in the punchlines, et cetera. The difference between good to go and prove and is that proven the delivery and cadence are locked in, and the words are locked in. I am saying it the same nearly every time, and I have the same cadence.
I have the same demeanor. I have the same words every single time. Now either of these good to go or proven can be moved into punching up. Sometimes when I've been doing a proven joke for a long time, I'll say it different one time with a crowd that just kind of inspired me to do that. And then I'll go like, oh my gosh, I need to revisit this joke.
I move it to punching up. Nothing's really locked into proven, but proven is basically where I'm storing jokes, that I consider my core set that I'm moving towards recording in my next 30 minute special. And, , core set versus pop bits is also really important to me. You can go and read that article where I talk about the difference, but core set being, again, the jokes that are just, these are mine, they're good and I'm moving towards recording them in my next special.
, anything from proven can still be moved to retired if I have changed my persona for some reason, and this happened recently on stage. and that joke, even though it's proven, doesn't fit how I deliver my jokes anymore. This happened recently because I have changed how I am on stage. I'm not as bubbly because of a head injury, and I'm a little bit more stoic, a little bit more snarky or angry.
And so I have old jokes that fit my more bubbly persona on stage that I've just had to retire. I don't do 'em anymore. I will still sometimes pull them out 'cause they're still in my head. So like certain shows where like that, that energy matches that show or I just feel like it, I'll still pull 'em out from retired, but that's where they live.
You guys can guess what, never use it again and eh stand for, that's how I feel about those jokes. So this is what this looks like and how I organize them. I have average length in seconds and that's really important because when I move these jokes over into my show set. I can measure out and make sure that I'm hitting the like 12 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever it is.
I have just started implementing average laughs in laughs per se- every 10 seconds. And this is just for me to start rating my jokes and also understanding like which ones are harder hitting. If I'm at a show, for example, this is the, the reason this is important. Now I'm getting nerdy about it. I'm sorry, but here we are.
Um, if I'm at a show where I see the other comedians before me kind of struggling to get laughs because the crowd is just not paying attention. Like it's, it might not be on those comedians, but the crowd's just kind of like paying attention to other things or they're really quiet. I will go through and I will pull out my jokes that have more laughs for 10 seconds or like more, this is wrong.
Um, or, uh, or more bad math, Andi. Sorry. Uh, but more average laughs and stuff. I'll, I'll pull them out because I know that I have to hit that crowd a little harder to bring the energy up to help out whoever's following me after just to have a good set. So these are things I think about and things that I measure accordingly.
All right. Differences between tags and topic tags are just kind of loose tags. Uh, just anything I feel like labeling. And so, some examples of tags are like queer. I can filter for all of my queer material. And then when I have a queer show, there we go. I've got a lineup. Sometimes I have a straight show.
Now the ones that I'll label straight are like my dating topics. You can see dating over here in the topic. That, the joke is maybe like it can be told to a crowd where they perceive me as straight and I haven't brought out any of my queer jokes. Like there are some dating jokes that are specifically queer, and if I bring those out without introing the fact that I am queer, it could get weird and it could confuse the audience.
So like, these are also things that I think about and how I organize my jokes this way, dark blue, meaning obviously if, if it's a crowd that likes more dirtier jokes, I will go and look for those and pull more of those out. Physical means there's gonna be a physical aspect to it. I had to basically sort all of these out and not use them for a while because physically I was just not healthy enough to do any kind of physical act out or anything.
But I have those marked in there, so I know that they're in there. Another thing is I'll usually scrap those if the stage is small, something just to think about. Pop bits, I will, you know, I, I got into that in another article, so I'll link into what that is, but that's how I label those. Political observation, obviously.
Now topics are how I kinda thematically, choose my set. So if there's like a, a theme to like sections of my sets, this is how I'll, I'll pull them out. And also if there's a theme to the show, like it's more about dating, I'll pull out all of my dating stuff. If it's a show we're talking about other states or where I've lived in the past, et cetera
make more sense. I'll do that. I have a show coming up. We're talking about the different generations, millennial, gen X and Gen Z and all that. I have a bunch of jokes on that. So I've got that topic sorted out. Current events and, and other different things. My car accident, my back brain injury.
I've sort those into topics and so that way. I have all of those jokes sorted in my set. I don't bring up my back and brain injury again later on unless it's like a good callback. But I keep all of the jokes about my back and brain injury together thematically towards like, for me, the front of my set usually.
So, that's something to keep in mind. Set structure piece versus complete. I'll just touch on this briefly, but basically if it's a joke that can stand completely on its own and it's not like a piece that can be shifted around with other pieces around it, like when I talk about thematically sorting out my set, for example, completes are complete.
Like once I put that in, that's gonna be like. A good, good. That's it. Like that. It needs a segue in, it needs a segue out, but it doesn't have anything to do with anything else. Whereas pieces are a little more fluid and they are, you know, they can be sorted with thematically other jokes or bits, to kind of complete like a more, thematic section of my set.
I, there are better words for that, but that's the gist of it. All right. Let's dive into my favorite part of using this app. So. In the actual joke task. These are called tasks in Clickup. I use the activity feed to just dump all of my ideas. I don't know how many of these I wanna actually show you guys.
Hold on. I wanna show you guys one where I've just dumped a bunch of ideas though. Oh God. You know what? Fine, we'll use this one. This is like, so vulnerable and embarrassing. But basically the activity feed is where you can see I have just dumped a ton of ideas. I wrote it out once and red means those are the punchlines and tags.
Sometimes I'll, mark the tags as orange, but you can see that all of these other things are just tags that I thought of or ideas I want to come back to, et cetera. And so I, I basically have versioning to my joke, but I also have like an area that I can now keep a lot of different ideas for this joke that I can come back to.
And I think that's something that a lot of people are missing because it's hard to like write that in, in a organized way where you can have all these different ideas that you have. So when you go and sit down with this joke later, you can take these ideas and form them into actual setups and punchlines, et cetera.
So here you'll be able to see. I, like I said, I've got punchline and tag marked out. But then, somebody shouted out a fricking tag for me at a show the other day, and so I wrote it down. I have actually rewritten this joke and I need to do it here, but I've rewritten this joke to include this idea.
So now, I, I've got more to it. And so usually when the joke is done, done and I move it to proven, I actually put it into the description of it. But I'll keep ideas in the activity. So that just makes it cleaner once the joke is proven is I will keep dumping new tag ideas or new, just premises or offshoots or transitions.
I, I'll like, 'cause this is a transition into another joke that, I just wrote down as a note so that I know like, oh, you can segue into your jokes about Elon. With Texas. It's not the best segue. I think I've rewritten that one too, but that's how I do that. And then, I have recently started putting the related jokes over here just so I can click through.
But like right now, I know in my head I, I'm getting to a point where I have so many jokes that I have to do that, but usually I know in my head what jokes are related. But now I can actually come in here and find that joke, task and market as related. This is a lot. I know the, I pay for clickup, so a lot of these features too are part of the paid ones, but Clickup is free.
You can get to a point where you can organize your jokes in there, similar to what I've got going on. And so it, it's definitely worth looking into. Have I talked about yet? I don't think I've talked about the differences between like my types here. So how I look at this, this I'm gonna have people who argue with me, I don't care.
How I look at the different types is, basically you've got bits. So the difference between Bit and Joke is the big one. I always get that question, but joke to me, I see as being set up, punchline, tag, tag, that's it. A bit to me means I have multiple setups and punchlines, and so there's a lot more going on.
Stories are even longer bits to me where it's, there's, there's just a lot of punchlines and tags and setups just kind of like mixed in and it's just kind of, it's all over the place, but. That's what I use that for. And then I've got, lines that I kind of keep, that I can just throw out here and there, or they fit into different thematic sections.
I have segues and so I use those. I, I have used these less and less, but I like to still have them written down so they're in my head that I can just move between all of my different bits with these segues. I have another one that I don't use anymore. No, that's it. Okay. This is top level stuff of how I do this. Now I'm gonna just show you super, super briefly the set list version. This one I completed. So basically I'll duplicate this list into a new list and I will change the list status to on the table maybe Yes don't touch it, and no, this is for a set now, this is, now I've duplicated all of my jokes into this list and now I'm getting ready to decide which ones I'm gonna go on stage with.
And so, I don't think I finished out this show's set because I wrote it down otherwise, but on the table means like, I'm not opposed to bringing it out for this show. I'll use on the table jokes more often at bar shows. Usually if it's a higher end show that I'm really making sure I get a good recording for, I'm, I'm not gonna touch the on the table stuff.
Now when I pull some, jokes, I'm not gonna get into the, uh, later I will get into the nerdy, part of like how this all works. Maybe are like, I'm still kind of sorting through all of my, my good to go and my proven jokes and my pop bits and deciding and they all go into maybe to start things off.
Those three sections good to go. Proven. And pop bits go into maybe, and then I move them into yes, when they are good to go. I honestly need to take, don't touch it. I originally used that as, pretty much when I was younger in comedy, I used the same opener and closer and so I would put them in, don't touch it.
But now that's changed. Like I'm a better comedian now. I cater each set a little bit different and so I don't need the same opener and closer every time. And then, so here, the one thing, like I said, I didn't set up this show quite correctly. What I'll do is I'll add in order as well, and this will just be my, for my show list.
And then I can like order them and sort them. There we go. And so this wasn't the actual order, but then it'll kind of like automatically sort them one, all the way down. And then typically I will have the average length, so I can see like if it was a 10 minute show are set for this show. Then I need, what is that?
10 minutes is 600. I need this to be at 600. And so I'll keep pulling from maybe to get that to about 600. I usually shoot for a little bit less because I'll riff off stuff or, you know, laughs and things like that. But then I can pull things and again, I can sort, or just search by like tags and see like, oh, I need, you know, a good opener is this.
Yeah, I'll pull this one. And so. Then I mark it as, yes, I pull it up and then I resort and I go like, well, I should open with this one and whatever, you know, figure it out. And so that, that's kind of how I organize my sets. And then, after this is done, I move it into the folder for shows. This is a lot of my other past shows or I archive it.
I used to archive 'em. Now I move them into that folder. But, yeah, that's how I, I do this. And then the nice thing is, is like sometimes if I have a similar show coming up where it's also 10 minutes and it's this kind of crowd at a brewery, blah, blah, blah. Instead of going to my joke ideas and duplicating that and redoing all this work, I can just duplicate this set all over again and maybe make some changes based on what happened at the last show.
But now I have that set ready to go and I don't have to think a lot about it. One other nice. Thing, you know, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna show you some of these other pieces yet, but because I don't know what's in there and I don't want you guys, it's vulnerable. All right. I don't wanna show you.
But writing notes, I have some things saved there. Resources, I have some things there. References and stuff. I have some stuff saved that I can, kind of come back to for joke writing and things like that. So this is how I organize my jokes, so hopefully it helps and inspires somebody to, to figure out something for your own joke writing.
You don't have to use clickup. There's a lot of other systems like it, but those are just some of the things that I use and do to organize my jokes.
