The Future is in Play
When we are at play, time vanishes.
We’re so caught up with what we’re doing that there’s no room in our thoughts to notice time passing. It’s a state of mind that is deeply satisfying but can be also be strangely productive. When we play, we effortlessly explore all the possibilities in front of us.
Play is easily achieved by children and, in recent years, more eagerly sought out by grown-ups, too. Psychologists believe it’s where kids first start to work out who they will be in the world and learn how to forge meaningful relationships with their peers. If we are lucky enough to regain playful states of mind as adults, we can gain access to deep resources of inventiveness and motivation that help us work better. Play renews us and prepares us for the future at the same time.
In the first episode of my Changemakers Book Club last week, I talked to author Steven Johnson about his latest book Wonderland, which chronicles how play sparked some of the key inventions that helped create the modern world. Computers and the keyboards we use to interact with them, for example, started out as new ways to make music. Global markets emerged because of the spice trade, which had no other aim than to find new tastes to delight the palette.
Talking to Seven, I realized how essential play has been in my own life. It’s where I first learned to collaborate freely, without ego and without fear — a skill I could stand to relearn from my childhood self.
My best memories of childhood play are the games I made up with the kids from my neighborhood. Nobody told us what to do. There were no consistent rules. We just used our imaginations to create worlds for ourselves out of nothing, the epitome of what play expert Stuart Brown calls self-directed play. We’d construct cities from branches and leaves in the fields near our houses. We’d make up outlandish imaginary characters. We’d put on impromptu carnivals in which we’d all be clowns, ringmasters, animals, daredevils, and fortune tellers, with the roles rotating if we felt like it. We were like jazz improvisers trying out every possibility and riffing off each other’s ideas until we found the melody. Nobody felt ashamed if an idea didn’t work out. We’d just move on to the next possibility.
We’d play from morning until night. Aided by childhood’s dilated sense of time and by play’s natural effacement of it, each of those summer days was an infinity.
In my experience, overly structured efforts to recreate this kind of effortless collaboration in adult life don’t always gone well. I remember one painful corporate retreat where my colleagues and I had to do things like run races with rubber chickens between our legs. It felt forced. Instead of helping us connect, it had the effect of shutting us down. A relaxed game of tennis or a group hike would’ve worked much better. When it comes to play, the first rule is: you can’t force it.
It’s better to look for less obtrusive ways to rediscover play in your life. In this arena, kids are the best teachers. Years ago, I helped my daughter with a project for her 5th grade science fair. She created Hairostotle (TM), the hairbrush so smart that it cleans itself. Despite my attempts to micromanage the project (I nearly filed a patent on her behalf, no joke), we still had fun. (Or at least I did!) The project went all the way to regionals, before it was defeated by a much worthier entry — an electronic sensing device for the blind. We didn’t win the final prize, but we had fun and we forged a connection.
Because as a grown-up I often forget to play, I try to surround myself with objects that remind me to lighten up. I’ve got a lot of silly toys like idea monster dolls and a troll, and, my favorite, a female animé warrior with hands you can swap out for an array of different tools. It was a gift from Paola Antonelli, a senior curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s a toy and also a work of art, a distinction some artists love to play with or just ignore. It reminds me that not everything has to fit into a single category to work. And the interchangeable hands remind me that the way forward is through improvisation.
To play, and also to innovate, we have to be open to being wrong some of the time, to try out new possibilities without fear of failure. The essence of play is to be open to surprise. Or, as the artist Juan Gris says, “You are lost the instant you know what the result will be.”
