Justin Prescribes

Being playful is better than having good ideas

October 3, 2025

Why being in a good mood is better than being a genius. (Heck- maybe play IS genius..!)

So every day I make a little movie and post it online- it’s been a commitment to myself this past year and has taken me the full scenic route of the artist’s journey:

This is great!

Okay this is really hard.

Wow I hate this.

Hang on…

No, yes I hate this.

Actually I really liked that one

Okay no one else liked that one…

It’s been a rollercoaster and one thing I’ve recently learned is it’s more valuable for me to be playful than to have a good idea.

Some days I’ll get hung up on the ‘perfect’ premise and when I finally get to filming it I’ve got nothing in the tank and it falls flat.

Other days I’m simply in a playful mood and a so-so idea comes off really well. The state I’m in makes the execution more convincing or maybe the play and fun I’m having comes through in the final thing.

I also like that I am in control of how playful I am- I’m not really in control of how good my ideas are. So I can focus on my mood and do the best I can with what ideas I have that day… and if I happen to have a great idea then I can meet that with the energy it deserves too.

Bit of a win-win if you ask me.

Be in a playful mood- a lot solves itself after that.

Are you using questions or are they using you?

September 26, 2025

At drama school they taught me about “working questions”. Basically it was a tool to reverse engineer performance and art. My first go at working questions were pretty clunky:

“How can I use lighting in my work to enhance story telling of the character’s plight?”

Not super juicy… BUT a way better orientation to work than just “Wow, that’s good! I wish I could make something like that!”

They taught us this to transform what were seeing in artistic product into something we could work with as crafts people.

Questions, by nature elicit responses. So by asking a question, you’ll get some sort of response. A quality question get’s a quality answer.

The difference between:

“Woah! How come I can’t make anything like that!”

“How can I make something like that?”

It’s subtle but extremely powerful. I’m amazed at how many times daily I use this skill.

Learning and playing for keeps

September 24, 2025

Psst, have you tried bubbling?

And have you ever wondered how we keep what we learn…?

A year and a half ago I learned a great new voice exercise from a friend called the ‘lax vox’ exercise. The singer in me is on a constant journey of improvement so I was excited to try something I’d never done before.

The exercise involves having a straw in some water and signing through the straw; in my house it’s affectionately known as bubbling.

I loved bubbling! Every morning before breakfast, I was bubbling musical scales and my favourite musical theatre songs. The exercise is designed to strengthen your voacal muscular coordination and breath use. And it worked!

I was thrilled because my vocal technique really had changed. My daily bubbling turned into every other day, then would pick up again when I’m performing or teaching, then it dropped off nearly completely. And this morning I could hear and feel some difficulty in my voice.

I realised I hadn’t bubbled in a long time and I’d fallen into a familiar trap: Just because I learned the skill once, it doesn’t mean its mine forever. It’s the equivalent of going for a run once and thinking I’ll be fit for life.

We get what we practice for.

When I was in the daily practice of bubbling, my voice was always getting stronger and so it’s obvious that that would drop away when my daily practice did.

So this morning I got bubblin’ and decided I’m playing for keeps.

Loud and proud; strong and wrong

September 9, 2025

It’s generous to embarrass yourself.

At drama school we’d often get the instruction from our tutors to be “loud and proud, strong and wrong”.

It’s an encouragement to be bold in your failures and loud in your attempts.

If you weren’t committing fully to a scene: “Loud and proud!”

If you were unsure what choice to make in a scene: “Strong and wrong!”

Being lukewarm in your choices as an actor doesn’t help anyone; we need to see clearly where the problem is. Or indeed be blasted away by whats working.

This has served me well in the classroom too.

The years of actor training and rehearsal rooms have conditioned me to put myself out there more than most kids are used to.

I have less rules about how I need to be and I have a very low threshold for trying things out.

Yes, it means I’m often wrong or look a bit silly.

And that’s great. LET me be the ‘wrongest’ in the room.

By modeling ‘loud and proud, strong and wrong’ I want the kids to see how safe they are to try things out. After all, how could they possibly look as silly as THIS guy!?

It’s not about being zany for attention’s sake. Or being weird to be different.

It’s about whole heartedly trying.

“Loud and proud, strong and wrong” is about giving it your best shot.

Because really trying is a whole lot harder than flailing your arms about to be different.

Be bold in your failures and and loud in your attempts.

Not if; when

September 5, 2025

The good thing about writing every day (or making anything every day) is that it’s not a matter of if, but when.

Before the commitment to writing every day, I could have said to myself, “If I were to write something today, it might be like this”

“If” and “might” are pretty hypothetical. And if you want to take something seriously you also have to take it out of the hypothetical.

When it’s already a daily occurrence, you will be using the word “when”

“When I write, later I’ll write about that…”

There’s a degree of certainty in that. Certainty is not something we usually have the privilege of in the creative arts. So when it offers itself, I’d suggest you take it.

And it is offering itself, in the form of a practice. Simply decide you will take yourself seriously enough to do your thing every day.

Deciding is (in some ways) the hard part.

I don’t have to expend any mental energy deciding, I already did that a year ago.

I don’t need to waste any energy wondering if I will write. I know I will. So my focus can go to what it is I will write.

Urgency- now or later?

August 22, 2025

You know when you have a deadline coming up and things get more urgent the closer you get to it?

Yeah- well I think motivation is being able to bring that urgency forward to the present to let it act on you now.

The more we do that for things that are important to us, the more we’ll get done and quicker.

Give them some credit

August 21, 2025

Audiences are smart.

I wondered wether or not to add a joke in one of my daily films that indirectly quoted something Steve Jobs about the invention of the iPad. I considered editing it out because it was ‘too niche’.

But I’m glad I left it in.

For those who did get the joke, I’m sure the reference would have been appreciated. And for those who didn’t? I think the attitude around it was was filled with enough specificity that they didn’t need to know the reference- they got enough story from the playing.

I don’t want to water things down to try and cast the net wide for some unspecified generic person. I think it’s about following my actual interest or true chuckles.

Scratch your own itch, there’s probably people out there who are itchy in the same way.

Be making the next thing

August 20, 2025

Some advice I heard from Derek Sivers was to already be making the next thing when you release the first thing.

That way, you aren’t as precious about the reception and are less connected to it. It was a thing you made (past tense) and you’re on to the next thing now.

I think this is smart.

Found a new limiting belief!

August 14, 2025

It’s great when you discover one. After a days teaching today I decided to go for a short run along the beach. I could hear some resistance in my thoughts and it was clear what they were saying: You’re too tired to go for a run! You’ve been teaching all day! Just sit at home and rest!

Sure, that’s possible BUT I decided to question that thought a little…

After some thought, I found out that I believed that exercise takes my energy. Of course to a certain extent this is true, but as with all beliefs I did a quick ecology check and found that it doesn’t serve me all that well.

Sure, there have probably been times where I truly did need the rest and exercise was not going to help.

But I’m willing to be there have been far more times where it was just the ticket.

Here’s a belief I’m trying on for size: exercise gives me energy- the more I do the more I get.

By the way I went for the run and it gave me energy. Cool

Simplicity in the classroom

August 13, 2025

I’m back teaching for a few days this week and it’s so cool to be around year 5 and 6 kids here in Gisbourne.

I realised today one of my only responsibilities in the classroom is to show the kids that the world is safe and that they can do anything they want.

It’s that simple, I reckon.

If we can build these two beliefs in our kids then we’ve done our jobe at the most fundamental level.

If you believe it about them, then it’ll come through in every single thing you do and say to them.

JUSTIN ROGERS

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