Let’s go to… play
10 ways to make work more joyful and effective
What if everything didn’t have to be a struggle? What if there were easier ways to get people to work together? What kind of things are we capable of when we prioritise play and joy?
Before we get too far, I don’t think being playful means not working hard. But I do think that by being more playful we can make our work more effective, more satisfying and more joyful.
I’m a designer so these ten suggestions come from observations about design and the design process, but I’d like to think that many can be useful in the wider world.
1. Make it visual
If in doubt, make it visual. Get whatever you’re thinking about on to paper and ideally on to a wall. You can then take a step back and really see what you have, how it might connect to other things, how you might edit or reshape it.
You’ll start to see more possibilities. It’s also an invitation for others to get involved.
2. Make it physical
Joy is in the senses. You want to be able to explore things with as many of those senses as possible. With digital work this is more challenging, but why does your prototype have to just exist digitally? Especially in the early stages, if your tests are made out of paper, cardboard and doodles it’s an invitation for others to explore, collaborate and play.
3. Work with other people
It’s very hard to make things own your own. Novelists make a life out of doing so but it’s really tough. Finding people to work with is wonderful and provides all kinds of opportunities for joy — from workshops to a quick chat over a coffee. Here are some suggestions for making this happen:
Be open and receptive to what other people have to offer.
Give your ideas away, people will build on them and make them better.
Trust yourself, you have good stuff to contribute.
Trust the people around you, they have great stuff to contribute too.
Generate lots of ideas.
Become, or find, a good editor to help identify the best ideas.
4. Be prolific
Your going to give yourself the best chance of producing work you love if you produce a lot of it. This mindset might also make you more willing to embrace the possibility of failure. If you produce 100 ideas, 99 may stink and only one bring you true joy—but that’s a world better than 10 ideas that are kind of okay.
Here are some suggestions for exercises you can try to help make being prolific a habit:
30 circles — print out 30 circles and give yourself three minutes (be strict) to turn each circle into something. It can be anything. No points for originality—this is all about generating quantity. (Tim Brown from IDEO gets his audience to play this game here.)
Crazy 8’s — Define a simple problem to solve. Take a sheet of A4, fold it in half three times. Unfold and you’ll have 8 sections. Take four minutes to draw an idea per section. You can do this on your own, but it’s much more fun as a group as you generate more ideas and they get better when you share them. (There’s lots of good stuff about Crazy 8’s in Sprint — it’s a great book on getting to meaningful answers quickly.)
Object Taps—Write down a problem you want to solve. Then take a familiar (and unrelated) everyday object and take two minutes to list as many of its qualities as you can. It’s important to have the object there with you so you can pick it up and feel the weight, explore what it can and can’t do, examine its colour, material and finish. After the time is up, use the words you have generated as starting points for ideas that relate back to the problem you wrote down. I’ve tried this a few times and it’s surprising how many relevant and good ideas it helps generate. (I picked this exercise up from Do/Improvise by Robert Poyton.)
Whatever the problem is you’re working on don’t just solve it once, by generating lots of options you’ll open yourself up to finding better answers. You’ll also allow more room for joy by putting less pressure on yourself.
5. Share your workings
Often it’s tempting to only share what you consider to be the perfect end product, but in many cases the process can be a lot more interesting. That sounds disappointing doesn’t it? But really it’s a cause for joy. It means you can share much more, and really invite people into what you’re doing.
Sharing your work-in-progress is scary because it makes you feel vulnerable, but if you can do it, it also comes across as quietly confident because you’ve been brave enough to put yourself out there. It’s also quite liberating as you can lot go of being precious about your work.
It’s a way of showing the play that goes into making interesting work.
6. Keep your eyes and ears open
A great way to find wonderful things is to make sure you’re open to them. It’s not quite a matter of hunting them down, it’s being in the right frame of mind and you’ll find they just appear. Try walking down the street with your eyebrows up, I bet you notice something interesting.
Looking and listening in this way gives you a lot for free and it will enrich your work. You’ll appreciate that not everything has to be thunk up by you, you can build on what’s already out there.
The things that you pick up are like jewels — collect them and you’ll soon have a hoard of treasure to play with and to share.
7. Draw
Drawing is a great way of seeing. Do it and you end up noticing more.
It’s also a way to make your thinking visible. It’s super-quick and just the right kind of imprecise. You make mistakes and these are valuable because they give you something unexpected, suggesting connections that you may never make otherwise. Drawing can help you make mistakes in the right direction.
Drawing and doodling are ways of capturing your mind at play.
8. Do something new
Walk to work a different way. Write with your other hand. Stand on your head. Look up. Close your eyes. Take a walk. Pick up a book at random. Talk to a stranger. Jump on a train.
These are all ways to see the world afresh and shake your brain up, break it out of established patterns and habits. They’re short-cuts to noticing more. This will help with keeping your eyes and ears open. And it must be why we notice more when we go on holiday.
9. Be unexpected
Something that surprises you jolts you out of your routine. It can make you look at something differently. It’s inherently playful and it’s a great way to deliver joy. How can you make some element of what you’re doing unexpected?
What tables can you turn?
It doesn’t need to be big, surprises are often more delightful when they’re subtle, you’re giving someone the chance to discover something—that’s so much more satisfying than being handed something on a plate.
10. Make it a gift
Think of your work as a gift. What does the recipient really want? How will it show you care? How are you going to wrap it up? How can you maximise the joy of receiving it?
Thinking like this can infuse your work with generosity. It’s a spirit that’s light and positive but invites a deeper level of engagement.
Work that’s infused with play brings joy to those that make it, and those that receive it. It’s a quality that sounds frivolous but I’d argue it’s essential. We’re at our best when we’re playing—it’s when we get closest to a flow state where time dissolves into the task we’re engaged in. And for people looking at your work, if it’s playful it’s an invitation for them to be part of it, to get involved.
So let’s get to play.
Were any of these suggestions helpful?
If so, I’d love to hear how.
