Big Little ThingsDon’t work. Play.
We’ve talked about fun as strategy here before. That’s because play is an essential developmental part of the human experience. It makes work easier and better. It’s how the world’s greatest ideas come into being. And it’s way more fun than working. Play can make you famous, it can make you rich, and it’ll certainly make you happy.
But still, mainstream culture reduces the idea of play to something that children do, and then grow out of: if you’re a grownup, you work, plain and simple. And if you’re dorking around at the office—shrink wrapping your colleague’s keyboard, say—you’re wasting time. But play is crucial to creativity and well-being. When you make your job fun, it doesn’t feel like work—it doesn’t feel like slogging through the bullshit—so you do it better simply because you enjoy it more. And others will enjoy it more too. Which means there’ll be more demand for what you do.
There’s evidence to that end in your life right now: you’re attracted to people who make you laugh; you’re wowed by projects and products that look and work as if they were fun to create; and hanging out with your perpetually depressed, or over-serious friend is always more of a chore than you want it to be. Anybody out there who doesn’t want to play more?
