Playing with Splinters, or Three Thoughts on Play that are Driving Me Mad

Is it all play? Is it all good? If play is not the opposite of work, is it perhaps a way of working?

Prologue

These thoughts began to coalesce during my recent deployment to the Middle East, amidst a daily struggle between my role as a leader and strategist on one side and my faith in the wondrous power of play/playfulness on the other. Admittedly, the ideas below are still immature and therefore I delayed posting this for weeks while I debated whether it was useful to share. Perhaps the brink of a new year has conferred a sense of boldness or maybe it is just naive optimism. Regardless, I’ll heed what the muse of design keeps whispering in my ear: “show your work; fail fast; create with confidence.”

Introduction

(Image source: Red Bubble)

As I’ve already shared, my experience with design thinking has had a spillover effect I call “designfulness.” The idea that the attitude of design can exist apart from the activity of design is a construct I gleaned from studying play and playfulness.

Over the course of three short posts, I will continue to be “undisciplined” and sketch ideas on play/playfulness that ignore scholarly conventions. Specifically, I’ll be wandering outside my areas of expertise and wondering out loud about concepts that I’m still fleshing out.

There are some practical reasons for this. First, I’m preparing for more robust research and writing, as well as teaching an elective on the intersection of strategy, design, and play.[1]

Second, in addition to building up some momentum for a more scholarly and “disciplined” effort, I’m hoping to spur some meaningful dialogue amongst — or perhaps redirection from — those who take play seriously. Most fundamentally, however, these issues have become “splinters in my mind” as I continue to tumble down this fascinating rabbit hole.

“No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes…”

–Morpheus speaking to Neo in The Matrix

Alice chases the Rabbit down the hole. In the image of text, the main character in The Matrix is instructed to chase a tattooed image of a rabbit (the woman’s shoulder tattoo begins the chase), which is an obvious reference to Lewis Carroll’s work. The creator of the image on the right has reversed the metaphor and placed the iconic red and blue pills from the movie into the hands of Alice.

Before I outline what exactly about play(fulness) is driving me mad, let’s indulge in a moment of word play.

Initially, I chose the title of this piece as a reference to a line in The Matrix. When the main character is invited to depart the comforts of the familiar world and embark on a heroic journey, he is tempted by another character who highlights his slight discomfort and suspicion of the status quo: “you feel it… there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad.”

Yet, “splinter” is also appropriate for what I am trying to (playfully) do with the subject of play. As a verb, it means to shatter or break down; and while this sounds destructive, it is akin to a familiar mode of understanding the world through critical analysis. Also, as a noun, a “splinter” is a sliver that has broken off. In other words, it is a small component of a much larger body that, nonetheless, can still be subjected to analysis to understand a broader phenomenon.

There are three irritating “splinters” that have lodged themselves in my mind; three problems from the sprawling scholarship on play that I can’t seem to get a firm grasp on. While not tiny fragments, per se — recall that the splinter in The Matrix points to an entirely different reality — they will be treated here expediently.

My three problems with play are (1) uncritical optimism and advocacy (the “ideologue” problem), (2) nebulous language (the “catholic” problem), and (3) the relationship between play and work (the “heresy” problem).

Again, I hope this will spur discussion, either publicly (using the “respond” button below) or privately (via LinkedIn messages). Thanks in advance for playing along!

Continued in Part I

The views presented here do not necessarily represent the views of the United States, Department of Defense, Department of the Air Force, or their components.

Thank you to Lucy Taylor, Jack Trew, Ken Roach, Robert Poynton, and Zoe Yap for reviewing earlier drafts.

[1] Many thanks to Marcus Carrion for making the intro video (the only elective with one!). If you are an Air War College or Global College student interested in the course, please contact me for details.