Productive play for adults

A client I talked to last week told me he wanted to change careers. He didn’t know what he wanted to do next; he just knew he didn’t want to do this anymore. I realized pretty quickly that what he needed was some productive play.

He had been so long in one job that he’d lost his ability to imagine beyond the boundaries of his existing knowledge and experience.

Every job he could think of to do next was either a modified version of what he was already doing, or a job title suggested by AI based on his résumé. Unfortunately, but predictably, he hated them all and was being crushed under the resulting cynicism and despair.

That was when I suggested a little productive play.

Productive Play: learning through fun

Productive play is a term mostly used in education and child development. It embraces the idea that playful activities not only create enjoyment but are an important and powerful part of a child’s growth and development.

Simple things like unstructured play time with building blocks, arts and crafts, puzzles, playing pretend with others—these all are examples of productive play for children that develop new skills, stretch the imagination, and expand knowledge… all while having fun.

Most of us can understand how these play-oriented activities build basic skills in children, from social skills to communication to a basic understanding of physics.

For example, my 4-year-old once built a bridge for Hot Wheels cars out of notebook paper and scotch tape. I suggested the flimsy structure wouldn’t hold up under the weight of the cars, but my kid wanted none of my advice. Of course, I was right.

It would have been absurd to force my 4-year-old to learn about bridge building through lectures or YouTube before being allowed to play with Hot Wheels cars. Instead, the unstructured, productive play encouraged imagination and experimentation, and it resulted in knowledge and an experience in dealing with failure.

“Welcome to adulthood.”

Fast forward a decade or two, and now I’m watching both my kids make their own way in the world as young adults.“Welcome to adulthood” is a thing I’ve said to them both a few times along the way.

So much is encompassed in that phrase. It’s time to be independent. Get your head out of the clouds. Buckle down. Get a job. Make money. Your safety net is gone. No more play time. Get to work.

As we grow up, we become conditioned to the idea that productivity and play happen at different times, in different ways, for different reasons.

“I work hard, and I play hard,” the cliché goes. Usually in some ad for a deodorant or an energy drink. Productivity happens when you’re working. Play happens when you’re not working.

The unfortunate side effect of such a mindset is that as adults, we tend to think that if something feels playful, then it must be unproductive. Or, worse: If it doesn’t show an impressive ROI, then it’s worthless.

Work is work. Play is play.

Certainly, in a capitalist society you need to figure out how to make enough money to ensure safety, stability, and—ideally—happiness. And yes, most jobs involve a lot of non-joy-making slog through unavoidable responsibilities and task lists.

Not all work can be fun. And not all play is productive.

Somehow we’ve come to believe that while some work can be fun (“follow your passion” and “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life”), play is simply play, and it has no place in a work context. (Shout-out to “team building exercises,” which more often than not crush all the joy out of what would normally be a fun activity.)

But productive play has gotten lost along the way. Not for everyone, of course, but certainly for most of the people I see who complain of being stuck, or lost, or just not sure what they want to do next.

And the result is the dampening of imagination.

Go ahead. Surf the internet.

This was true for three of the clients I saw last week. They felt stuck, lost, and unsure what to do next. They didn’t know what they wanted… they just knew they didn’t want this.

Of course there are tools we will use to consider what might be a good fit. Strengths assessments, pro/con lists, etc., etc. But the result is most likely going to be what AI has already given them: more versions of this. We’re feeding existing data into an algorithm trained to optimize for the patterns that are already there.

What they really need is to rekindle their imagination in order to inspire some new thoughts.

And the answer was incredibly simple when we talked it through.

Instead of scrolling LinkedIn for yet more uninspiring job listings that made them feel even worse, I asked them to take that time and simply pull on interesting threads on the internet. Engage in some productive play.

Each of them named a couple of topics they thought might be interesting. One is a caregiver for an aging parent but hadn’t heard of aging-in-place tech. He decided to read a few articles and see where they led. Another admitted being intrigued by artificial intelligence. He was excited about following some people online who talk a lot about current trends.

I’ve heard back from the first, who has already found several new job areas to consider that would leverage his skills and experience, but which he never would have even known about if he hadn’t simply given himself permission to explore without restraint.

There are no guarantees, of course, but that’s exactly the point.

They had been spending time and energy chasing the very thing they want to get away from. The result was deeper despair and dejection.

Now they’re excited and interested and finding their inspiration again. Who knows where it will lead? They may stay in the jobs they say they’re done with, having found inspiration elsewhere. They may ultimately make career shifts, having found jobs they didn’t know existed but which leverage their skills, experience, and wisdom.

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