Is taking things so seriously improving my performance? How can today feel like play?
In the week 34 (2022) edition of the 3-2-1 Thursday newsletter, James ends the letter by asking:
Is taking things so seriously improving my performance? How can today feel like play?
In Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, which I finished on Aug 6th (as noted on my Goodreads profile), author Stuart Brown argues that play is fundamental to our well-being and to living a fulfilling life.
Play is a very loosely defined term. Brown says that the following 5 characteristics is associated with Play:
- Purposelessness. Not for money, not for fame, not for any particular purpose. Just to be
- Voluntary nature. You're not forced to it
- Inherent attraction. You want to do the activity again
- Freedom of time. Jeez, what time is it? Time flies by when we are having fun
- Diminished self-consciousness. "There's no concern for what people think of us"
Do I have enough activites in life that fulfills many (or all) of the characteristics above? Truthfully, I have two, related activities that fulfills the above criteria.
- Hanging out with family, and
- Hanging out with gf & friends
How many activites of play do you need to experience the positive effects of play? That's a robot-like question, but a valid one nonetheless. Presumably, the answer must come from within: am I happy? If not, the answer might just be to play more. If I am, I'm playing enough.
One interesting point Brown makes is that:
Work is not the opposite of play; the opposite of play is depression
One particular story from the book captured my attention. The workforce of a US-based space exploration organisation was going into retirement and the organisation had troubles finding adequate replacements. Candidates considered were majorly from ivy league engineering programs, all extremely talented in their ability to solve theoretical engineering problems. However, they all lacked the ability to bring a loosely defined task from an ideation and brainstorming phase to actual implementation
What was the organisation missing in thier hiring process that made the wrong people? To figure out the missing piece, the team analysed the characteristics of the soon-to-be retired workforce. Among them they found a characteristic that wasn't elaborated on in the interviewing process - curiosity and a natural tendency to play. When young, they would all pick apart watches and machines, just to figure out how it works. When the organisation changed the interviews to also elaborate on play, they achieved much greater success in their efforts.
In my own interviews, I will make sure to figure out the elements of play in the candidates life.