Scheduling play at work, and scheduling work, also at work

The Now Habit, "A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play" by psychologist Dr. Neil Fiore, was originally published about 20 years ago, and people are still just getting around to buying it. I guess the reasons are self-explanatory. I, myself, just found out about the book from an article called: "Should You Really be Playing?." Here's a Fiore quote, courtesy of Trizle: "Scheduling play everyday instead stimulates your soul to work much more productively, while keeping your morale higher than a freakish eagle." Ah, and again, ah.

In a semi-related article, we find another ah-worthy article called "Flow: Get into the Zone at Work," which very neatly digests Csikszentmihalyi's vaunted psycho-philosophy into the following paragraph:

"Clarifying your short-term goals, closing out likely distractions, letting go of your expectations of how people will react to your work, setting apart a period of time and letting a timer keep track of it, testing early and often, adjusting tasks to the right level of difficulty, mastering your tools, enjoying craftsmanship for its own sake, and training your mind to wander less. All of these are simple things within themselves, though perhaps a lot to keep track of at once. You can integrate these components into your work style all at once or bit by bit. The end result will be the same: a fuller, more satisfying engagement with your work, yielding higher quality results."

I think it's the synthesis of these two semi-great insights into the play/work continuum that will bear the sweetest fruit - making sure you give yourself the permission to get into play, and making just as sure that you give yourself what you need to get into work.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith