Historically, work has been considered drudgery. It didn’t need to be fun. In fact, if it appeared as though you were
having fun, it was generally assumed that you weren’t being very productive!
Many of us have found, and Dan Pink has validated, that the opposite is
true. People work harder and are more
creative when they’re having fun (some would argue they’re even healthier)!
In A
Whole New Mind, Dan Pink discusses
three elements of play: Games, Humor, and Joyfulness.
“For a generation of people, games have become a tool for solving
problems as well as a vehicle for self-expression and self-exploration”, Dan
Pink. Games are interactive stories –
and we’ve already discussed how
valuable stories can be. Games allow
you to learn about an environment, strategize ways to be successful in that
environment, and then execute your plan. Often unexpected events occur along the way and you need to revise your
plan on the fly. Sound a little like
life?
Another element of play is humor. What I find remarkable about humor is that it’s a form of intelligence
that greatly parallels innovation. Often
something is funny because it’s not what you expect. Think
of every joke or pun where it’s the double meaning of a statement or an unexpected
outcome that causes it to be funny. Innovation
and humor both seem to rely on an ability to combine existing concepts in new
and different ways, a very important Concept
Age ability.
It’s also fun! I love what Dan
says about joyfulness – “Happiness is conditional - Joyfulness in
unconditional”.
Aside from learning new skills, games and humor bring us joy! Add in relationships (as Dan notes, “we
rarely laugh alone”) and you’ve got a pretty healthy start at being
joyful. And joyful people tend be
creative, successful working in teams, and adept at diffusing unproductive conflict.
Some of the exercises Dan recommends to enhance your play are: the
cartoon captions game (writing your own captions to cartoons), rating yourself
on a humor scale (Dr. James Thorson has an
online tool for this), and, of course, playing some video games!
As is the case with all of the sense we’re covering, Dan writes a whole
chapter on play and covers many points that I can’t in 400 words or less! It’s worth reading.
Technorati tags: Business, Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind, Play
What a wonderful post on a topic that inspires me to post references and link from here to yet another new challenge to remind us to play... Thanks for the life-changing ideas here, Ann... BTW I noticed there's "another book" idea directed to you by a commenter at the "Questions" blog.
Posted by: ellenweber | May 13, 2006 at 09:45 AM
My boss reads the comics to me nearly every morning, which was odd at first, but now we look forward to laughing together. My friend Dave Coverly, creator of Speed Bump, just completed a "write a caption" contest - you might check out some of the entries.
Posted by: John Gratton | May 17, 2006 at 09:56 AM
John - Sounds like a great way to start your day. Speed Bump is really neat too and I love the caption contest! Coming up with a caption is harder than you'd think.
Posted by: Ann Michael | May 17, 2006 at 10:27 AM