Thinking that unlocks authority
My favourite places to think are playful
Beach.
Shower.
Underwater.
What is it about water?
Unlike other environments, water is aggressive toward my sensibilities (did someone say ‘My Octopus Teacher’?).
Submersed but still
Underwater is not noise free but it’s another world. And I love the stillness. It's the complete opposite of my mind which is always switched on.
Above the water
The ocean is noisy. Everything in my head stops, and I'm 100% switched onto the smell, the taste, the experience.
The shower is noisy too.
Nobody thinks too seriously in the shower.
Surely, the shower is not a place for dedicated serious thinking. This makes it perfect for brainstorming.
My move
I tried to move back to the Blue Mountains and realised how important the ocean is to me.
It rejuvenates my soul.
We deliberately bought a house close to the ocean, a river, and some bush. Even my walk through the bush to get to the beach is refreshing and mood-changing.
The importance of play
It comes back to PLAY, which is a vital ingredient for innovation. Play encourages different thoughts and creativity.
Enjoyment generates solutions. It helps me recognise ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves.
It's necessary.
An artist needs to experiment and a solution for a person’s authority, their brand, or communication plan needs time to soak.
Ideas must be allowed to birth.
Sometimes infantilizing but always important
Child’s play has been a topic of academic study for some time, with play for adults a distant second but catching up. As a 2017 piece in the Washington Post reported, the best performers in society need to play:
“Soccer icon David Beckham has said that he plays with Lego pieces to control stress. Comedian Ellen DeGeneres playfully pranks her television guests. While serving as Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron was known to decompress at the end of a long day with the video game Angry Birds.”
Previously, play was perhaps seen as infantilizing (adults being treated as though they were infants), and, of course, there are plenty examples of adults who won’t grow up.
However, I have seen in my own life the benefits of play for a (ahem!) mature adult.
There is a thread of logic you can follow in some blogs written by John R Miles, who writes about the Passion Struck leader:
“I find today’s business world is full of CEOs and entrepreneurs who claim to be changing the world. They create and prioritize lofty mission statements and tell their colleagues to “be bold” and “take risks.” While it may be comforting to the CEOs or founders themselves, this simple lip service doesn’t mean that these individuals are transformational leaders. Transformational leaders don’t need to articulate that they are transformative leaders. THEY JUST ARE.”
While highly passionate, transformational leaders have many healthy habits, Miles goes on to talk specifically about playfulness as one of these traits:
“When we engage in playful activities, we stimulate our creative minds and increase our imagination, which helps us spark new ideas, learn how to complete new tasks, and solve problems faster. These are all crucial skills that make up a passion-struck leader.
Without play as an adult, you miss the opportunity to refresh, rejuvenate, and revitalize yourself. Instead, you’re likely going to end up burning out and falling well short of your goals and objectives.”
In their book "Welcome to Your Child’s Brain: How the Mind Grows from Conception to College," Dr. Sam Wang and Dr. Sandra Aamodt even make the claim that "work in adult life is often most effective when it resembles play.”
They say that “total immersion in an activity often indicates that the activity is intensely enjoyable; this is the concept of flow, or what athletes call being in the zone. Flow occurs during active experiences that require concentration but are also highly practiced, where the goals and boundaries are clear but leave room for creativity. This describes many adult hobbies, from skiing to music, as well as careers like surgery and computer programming."
Neuroscience that encourages stepping away from a desk
As a designer, I can be a craftsman and produce quality graphics from 9am to 5pm.
But a genius idea about extending someone’s influence, or about their vision and communication, needs to come from a deeper place.
The default network of the brain, also referred to as the imagination network, is used to construct dynamic mental simulations. As the Medical News Today article states, situated deep in the prefrontal cortex and temporal lobe, with connections to parts of the parietal cortex, is the part of the brain that builds pictures based on previous experiences and imagines alternative scenarios and events. Active during bouts of daydreaming, when the brain is not focused on the outside world, the default network is implicated in functions such as collecting facts about the self, reflecting on personal emotions and remembering past events.
My summary of it is this: To think about the task in front of you in a predictable, unchanging environment is important to getting a job done but limiting when solving complex problems.
As important as logging onto my computer
As someone who survives on creativity and solving problems for clients with ‘wow’ ideas, I have learned that play is as important as logging onto my computer. Not doing this limits my value.
Experimentation in play
For me, photography is used only as play, but I still get to still be a designer when I take photos, and it influences the work I do when I’m back at my desk. When taking photos I am capturing visual stories, but taking as many risks as I want with no consequence if it goes wrong. To experiment is to take your thinking out of the performance zone.
Perspective in play
We can easily lose perspective after a tough day at work and this is dangerous for a creative problem solver who wants to ASTONISH. In the long-run, play regenerates and prevents burn out.
Need to change gears? Get creative!
I work with a lot of clients who need to shift gears. They want to scale their business, reposition toward premium clients, or change their lifestyle and need to tweak their business to enable a healthier life.
Part of what we ‘do’ is keeping it playful because we need to tap into the great ideas. There are plenty of good ideas out there, but the key is coming up with great ideas.
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