All Work Is Play. All of It.
Alright…this is a bit of a thought process, but how I create things in my mind, so here’s what happened.
I was playing Marvel Snap and some Super Star Wars recently when I had a series of thoughts. They went something like this:
I don’t want to do this work…
Why not?…
Well I don’t like to work…
That’s obvious, because no one likes to work…
Okay, that seems flimsy though…
Well, it takes away from my time playing games…
And I like to play games…
Well, that’s obvious too. Everyone likes games…
But some “games” are a lot of work…
That’s true. Remember Shenmue?…
Right. Also… some “work” is fun and quite satisfying…
Okay, so is there an intersection we can deal with?…
As in, why can’t *all* work be turned into play?…
Like…ALL of it…
This line of thinking seemed interesting, but ludicrous. Because really… who “likes” work? Don’t we just do the work because we are forced to? Isn’t it always, “Do the work or else suffer dire consequences!”
Well, that concept has never sat well with me.
After jotting down ideas, scribbling out connections, whiteboarding thoughts, and weighing counterpoints, I finally asked the question that I had hesitated to ask myself:
“What if I could enjoy every moment as if I was at play?”
If you’ve ever had this thought, that old voice in your head may pop in and say something like,
“Well…sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do.”
Yeah…I know that voice and where it’s coming from, but screw that. There’s got to be a better way of looking at things.
But isn’t this just the passion argument?
You know the one that says, “If you can spend every day doing what you love to do, you’ll never have to work a day in your life?”
Well, no. For the most part, that is avoiding what we feel we don’t like. I am referring to a way of thinking that asks you to consider doing what you don’t like and adjusting your thoughts and feelings to learn to like it.
So this is gamification? Where I make everything into a game?
That’s not what I’m getting at either. Gamification is in the same field, but not the same thing. Most discussions about gamification are about tricking yourself into thinking that you are playing a game of sorts so you can cope with life as work. It gets into a lot of mental trickery that I liken to making vitamins into sweet gummies so people will eat them. I suppose it works, but it’s not what I’m getting at.
I am consciously looking at the things I don’t like and discovering how to enjoy them for what they truly are.
Listen, we generally don’t like “work”.
It’s okay not to like something. Regardless of the benefit(s), we feel that a certain bit of ire towards work for different reasons:
It goes against our morals
It’s boring
It feels demeaning
Has low status
It isn’t fair
It’s just not worth it
It’s not something we’d do if given a chance
It doesn’t pay well
It’s not fun
It makes you stupid
…and so on.
This framing around work is often what we hold as law.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
We can consider work in an entirely different way.
The difference between work and play.
We need to consider what work and play really are to us, and what the difference is between them? There are many descriptions one could offer, but her are the two points on the axis:
Work: and activity performed in order to satisfy some purpose, achieve some goal, or accomplish some task.
Play - an activity performed for the enjoyment, satisfaction, or the sake of the activity itself.
Now here comes the changeup.
If at every step of the work process, we can do it for the sake of doing it, we can begin to enjoy work, and work can begin to essentially become “play”.
This isn’t just wordplay. The framing is real and not just a mental sleight of hand. Let’s talk about it.
If your “work” is literally a playful experience, then suddenly, you’ve moved much closer to enjoying life. Because you can spend days, months, years, or an entire lifetime being angry and working instead of being happy and playing. (Remember that work and play are loose terms here.) This is a mindset shift that you probably haven’t truly considered.
When people ask why I like to work, I honestly say that “I enjoy my life.” And I don’t mean this in a rose-colored-glasses or head-in-the-sand type of way.
I look deep into the abyss and I smirk.
But let me not go into that heavy of a discussion right off the bat.
What I’m really getting at is the act of truthfully engaging with life for the sake of life itself, not because it will do something else in the future.
Grossly speaking, play is about enjoying the activity, and work is about enjoying the result of that activity. While there is a continuum, of course, the closer we can shift our minds into a state of continuous play, the easier it will be to enjoy every waking moment of life.
A Play Example
Let’s say you enjoy the actual act of playing basketball. Everything about it is great to you. But what about what comes along with playing basketball? What about stretching? Do you enjoy that? How about driving to the court? Driving to the gas station and driving to find a court? What about shopping for basketball shoes? Scraping your knee? Getting good sleep? Doing passing drills? Working out? Getting calloused hands? Sweating through shirts and socks?
Depending on where you draw your boundaries, those are all parts of basketball. You learn how to enjoy parts of the process because you can see them all as “basketball”.
Now that’s an easy example, since it starts from basketball, but what about shoveling gravel on the side of the highway? That’s a bit harder to think about, but it can be done. Somewhere within shoveling gravel, there is a core set of activities that you can attach to that will be your version of playing basketball.
This is where the work (?!?) comes in and where you will need to practice. (And yes, “practice” is another bad word we’ll discuss one day.)
To help you in this process, here are some ways to frame your “work”:
DO NOT Try To Think About…
What other people might say, think, or do
Irrelevant thoughts, feelings, and actions from others
Your expectation of what will happen
Any results that are so far removed that they cause you stress
How it feels to your past self
DO Try To Think About…
What you’re experiencing in the moment without judgement
What your micro-objectives are
The benefits of the activity itself (not what it means to you)
where the next regularly scheduled break is (have plenty of them)
Areas of improvement to consider for the next iteration
The details and nuance that can keep you in the zone
So yeah…this could be a whole book.
And speaking of being in the zone, it’s time for me to end this one.
…Because I don’t want this blog writing to feel like work.
I’m satisfied with it.
- Benja -