Play to Win

Not the cliché, narrow, meaning of that title, to go all out in a performance or game, but a double meaning. Play as in fun, as playing a game, as if a kid. Winning as in the big picture, winning in life.

Engagement

We all seek engagement. Of being wrapped up in something, totally involved. We crave it for work, hobbies, the entertainment we watch, whether it’s dance, theater, movies, or tv. We crave it in our conversations and relationships. In what areas of your life are you engaged? How do you get more engaged in something? What is it that causes engagement? How can you have more of it?

Puritan Work Ethic

American society has a mis-concept about work and work ethic. There is this idea that you must be “serious” about your work. That you have to work hard to get somewhere, that it can’t be fun. (Students fall for this all the time -- “oh that teacher is better, because he is tough and gives a lot of correction, it’s hard work.” and the teacher having a ton of fun or taking it easy isn’t considered good.) But most of modern psychology (from “A Theory of Game Design” by Raph Koster, to “Flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, to “Drive” by Daniel Pink, and many others) points to the opposite. Fun and play is the path to mastery.

Games

How can you turn what you are doing at any point in time into a game? Kids are great at this. Kids are naturally engaged and excited and all about having fun. We need to keep that into adulthood, and bring it back to our lives when it’s missing.

If you’re teaching a class, don’t correct people just to correct them like some right or wrong thing. That will just make it no fun. But engage them. Make it a game. “oo! Go faster”, or “good, now stronger”, or “now softer”. Challenge your students. Play with them. Become a kid again.

Flow

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is this super bright awesome psychology professor who’s done a ton of research and written a ton of different books about the positive aspects of psychology from creativity to flow. Flow is that totally engaged state. The state where you’re active in doing whatever you’re doing, totally absorbed into it. Time can pass super slow in it, and it can pass incredibly fast in it.

How do you get to flow more often? One of the essential elements of flow is a balance between the challenge of the task and the ability of the person. Too challenging and the person will give up, too easy and the person will be bored. If you’re writing a computer game you want it to start out easy, but not too easy. As they play longer, it gets tougher. Good teachers balance this very well in students. Give just enough feedback, but not too much, sense how the student responds, adapt, adjust, find their level and get them engaged.

On your own if you are doing something, adapt your goals in the moment to make the balance right for you. If you have a huge task, break it down, don’t try to do it all, choose a easier version of it at first, or break it up into a smaller part. Learn to develop this skill in itself.

Go

Go out and try it out. There is no reason why not to learn to be totally engaged and live fully in everything you do. Some would say this is the truest development of self, what you were born to do in the first place, it just got lost along the way.