The Importance of Play AND Work

Hey Chris,
Man, you said it! The whole point of working hard is to make the time to play hard – working without reward is like working just for the money, and why do that? Glad to hear your view on the work/life balance. Keep having fun Chris!
Wayde

Good reminder. It’s easy to get completely caught up in work.

Great reminder! There’s a fantastic TedTalk you should check out about play being important when it comes to creativity –> http://blog.ted.com/2008/11/the_powerful_li.php

For sure – I really believe in a fair balance of work and play. Makes life more fun that way :)

Absolutely. Work hard, play harder. Off to work after playing all day in SF. ;)

I’d just add:

1) Remember to play WITH your kids, too. If you’ve got them. It’s the best quality time and will get your creative juices flowing.
2) Consider buying a pass to your favorite parks (county, state, national, etc.). Guy Kawasaki tweeted that National Park attendance is down 13%. We need to play more! Buying a pass makes you more invested in play – you paid for it – might as well get your money’s worth. It’s like getting permission for recess!
3) Kaboom.org has a Playspace Finder widget on their website for adding to blogs. Add a playground to it. Or use it to find a new park.
4) OC Play Parks just made it onto Alltop for its geographical region – but there are not enough feeds for PLAY or PARKS to make it a viable topic! Huh? Start blogging, people.
5) Why not post about your play time on your own blog? It’s not enough to say “Go play.” Inspire someone with a “how” or “where.” Lead by example. Get out and play. Thanks for the reminder, Chris.

Both. I’ve accomplished next to nothing today, but I did watch a good animated movie with my family.

If you are interested in the “how” to find time to play, I humbly suggest that you check out the Life Balance software, (mac, windows, palm, iPhone), which helps busy people to carve out the time to do… fun stuff or whatever you want. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a co-author of the software, and I just happened upon this site via a Twitter link from Guy Kawaski, who seems to Twitter just about everything these days! Anyway, our software isn’t for everybody, but if you care about the issues concerning division and intergration between work time and play time, and want to be more flexible, less stressed, and manage your time better, it’s worth checking out a different kind of tool to get that to happen. For the people that like what we do… it works well. End of shameless, but on topic, pitch. Now go play! :-)

Great point. I think the difficulty is when “play” and “work” become indistinguishable because we are so passionate about what we do. That’s when we need to stop and build some disciplines around this stuff so that we don’t fry.

Hi Chris. I think you’ve made some good points here. We have to work hard, but work with some smart and fun mixed in as well. I think that you should enjoy your work as much as you can. Because of the type of work we do, we can work anywhere – so I regularly work at coffee places etc. It gives me different perspectives, a new environment for a few hours, and this boosts my productivity.

I regularly go to the beach as well. My office is in the city, and the beach is 5 min away – but I bet I’m the only one in my building who does this. People get so caught up in their stuck-at-the-desk mindsets that they forget to have fun. I normally go there to have a break, lunch, or even just a coffee, other times I’ll read, catch up on Twitter, but when I leave there, I’m totally refreshed and energised.

I also believe in investing in the best work tools. Expensive wireless mouse that does a few neat tricks, etc etc. My work experience is a totally fun one. So it’s 9.47pm now in South Africa and I’m still working – because I enjoy it.

Who said hard work had to be dreadful?

I love your blog, especially the videos. This post is especially fun for me as it is what I preach : humor in the workplace increases productivity.

I have a blog carnival that is right on this topic. I wonder if you’d consider letting us include this post in our next carnival? (We’ve only done one, but it was pretty successful w/ traffic.)

http://www.bradlaughs.com/2008/10/31/humor-carnival/

Thanks Chris.

Brad Montgomery

Am I happy to hear what you have to say! Yes, we all have to work hard but if we don’t play, our work and soul can suffer. What so many of us don’t realize is that if we don’t take the time out to play and be in our “childlike state” we can block some great opportunities for our subconscious to come up with great ideas & solutions for our work. How many inventors say their ideas came to them when they weren’t “working”? So playing has a great by product of actually being more productive! We just need to trust that, let go and play… That’s why I teach buffoonery! :) Thanks for your video!

Love that you have started doing videos in your posts again!

Great point. You MUST have a good work to fun ratio for all this stuff to work.