Play time

It would seem that there is nothing easier than playing. After all, we’ve been doing it almost since birth. But it turns out that as we grow older, we lose the ability to play carefree.

The pace of life is constantly increasing, and we are exposed to more and more stimuli. To relax, we practice meditation techniques, listen to educational podcasts, and learn sophisticated techniques that are supposed to help us cope with stress. But what if there was another solution? It’s the familiar spontaneous fun.

Scheduling time for fun and spontaneity will help us build mental resilience, increase happiness, and enhance well-being. You just have to find your own way to have fun.

HAVE WE GROWN OUT OF BEING PLAYFUL?

It has been known for a long time that play is the way children learn about themselves and discover the world. Play allows children to develop language, emotional intelligence, gain social skills – the list of benefits of play is very long. So why do we stop playing?

One form of play is physical activity – we wrote about its undeniable benefits in Physical Time. In short, it increases the body’s efficiency, strengthens the skeletal system, lowers cortisol levels, stimulates the secretion of endorphins, and as a result, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease and protects the brain. When physical activity is fun for us, we are more likely to engage in it regularly.

Laughter has invaluable health benefits. Studies prove the health benefits of laughter: it strengthens the immune system and lowers cortisol and adrenaline levels. In addition, it affects the secretion of dopamine and serotonin (“happiness hormones”). Scientists are still studying the effects of laughter therapy in people with depression, for example.

There is also a place for the benefits of fun in business: fun stimulates creativity, and openness, and strengthens intrinsic motivation and productivity. An additional benefit of play is effective problem-solving – if an activity absorbs us and is associated with a sense of pleasure, it will allow us to achieve a state of flow, which we wrote about in Focus Time. Work is most effective when it resembles play.

Play also stimulates learning. Not just learning new skills, but learning about who we are. Playtime is when we learn about ourselves – what we like, what we don’t like, and where our comfort zone lies.

HAVING FUN TOGETHER

Having fun together is a bonding factor in interpersonal relationships, also in business settings. By incorporating humor and playfulness into our daily interactions, we improve our relationships with co-workers. Laughing together builds empathy, compassion, and trust, and enhances optimism and well-being. Studies show that even brief but playful interactions with co-workers increase productivity. Direct contact is extremely important, as we mentioned in Connecting Time. Joking with colleagues, and playing games together e.g. word games or shooting hoops significantly reduces stress levels and increases mental resilience.

Spending time together outside of the office is equally important, especially nowadays, when a large part of work is still done remotely. You can find ideas for active time outside the office in Physical Time. Although technology makes it much easier for us to stay connected online, maintaining direct relationships with others is crucial to our physical and mental health, as Ewelina Pankowska discussed in her podcast.

Remember the importance of mindfulness in spending time together, which we wrote more about in Time In. Spending time with each other frequently and for long periods of time, but without being mindful together, will have incomparably fewer benefits than shorter, but mindful and conscious companionship.

One form of spending time together is playing “offline” games. They are excellent for promoting mindfulness of being here and now. They create an opportunity to build positive relations (with a hint of competition in the background), develop logical thinking, and build creativity. We especially recommend board games based on team cooperation. Another version of games is card games – not only poker and bridge. In addition to providing a dose of good fun, they can also serve to get to know oneself better. For this purpose, we highly recommend the emotion cards created by the Pracownia Rozwoju. Another category of games is outdoor games. Increasingly popular are Boule and Mölkky, games with simple rules, which combine strategic thinking and physical activity.

PLANNED SPONTANEITY

Why is spontaneity important? According to research, people who consider themselves to be spontaneous are 40% more likely to declare that they are happy. Spontaneity is an unconstrained, uncontrolled activity, unlimited by anything or anyone. It is an activity that has not been planned in advance and is beyond the control of others. It is associated with being natural and in tune with one’s instincts. And at a time when planning is worshiped – sometimes even turned into art – there is little room for spontaneity.

What are the benefits of spontaneity? First of all, flexibility. Spontaneous behavior prepares us for the circumstances of sudden change. It allows us not to stick to previous plans and to approach changing circumstances with an open mind. Planning is important, but it is equally important to get out of the comfort zone that this planning builds around us.

Another invaluable benefit of spontaneity is creativity, or “carefree spontaneity” of innovative, unconventional thoughts, ideas, and behaviors. Creativity is essential in everyday life, including professional life – it facilitates learning, is related to creating innovations, strengthens self-confidence, and develops curiosity. How can we stimulate creativity?

• Move – movement affects the oxygenation of our brain, and this significantly increases creativity.
• Get bored – boredom is a state that informs us that we lack novelty. Bored people tend to daydream, which increases their creativity – this is how they look for fresh solutions.
• Know your emotions – the energy that emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant, create in us. Emotions associated with joy and feeling pleasure will enhance creativity, but sadness can promote concentration. Anna Cieślik talked more about emotions in her podcast.

Spontaneity allows you to get to know yourself – to feel what is “ours”, what gives us pleasure, with what we feel good. And getting to know yourself, your reactions and your feelings are essential for building mental toughness.

So how to find a room for spontaneity in everyday life? It needs to be planned! The phrase “planning for spontaneity” sounds almost like an oxymoron, however, spontaneity needs time. Book a time in your calendar when “nothing will happen”: you won’t answer the phone, you won’t answer emails, so no one will plan your time for you. We wrote more about scheduling in Focus Time.

Keep in mind that spontaneity is often confused with impulsivity – a state of strong reaction to stimuli. It is usually associated with aggressiveness, while spontaneity usually refers to a dimension of joy or other pleasant emotions.

PASSION AND ART

One of the concepts closely related to play is passion – the love for doing something that brings us joy and fulfillment. It sparks the energy to act, without the need to rely on external motivators. It can be associated with childlike, natural joy.

Discovering passions is inseparable from discovering ourselves and analyzing our own inner experiences. One way to explore yourself is to practice mindfulness, which you’ll read more about in Time In. However, we can learn a lot about discovering passions from children – true masters of creativity and spontaneous play, which manifests itself, among other things, in constant experimentation and creation.

And it’s the arts and their connection to creativity that are key. As we wrote above, creativity is important for our functioning in the organization, among other things. But it also turns out to be essential for taking care of our well-being. Exercising creativity and developing imagination allows us to better plan future activities and more efficiently predict their results – creating art means planning and predicting the final effect, even if we create spontaneously.

Creating has other benefits as well. It turns out that no matter what type of art we choose: coloring, drawing, or even doodling on a blank page, art activates the brain’s reward center and makes us feel pleasure. Other studies show that creating, including coloring mandalas, lowers levels of the stress hormone – cortisol. Paweł Bogusław talked about the effects of cortisol on the body in the podcast.

Below you will find reliable articles written by experienced researchers, journalists, psychologists and health professionals discussing topics of happiness, fun and relaxation.

• “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything” (2009), Ken Robinson
• “The Joy of Movement: How exercise helps us find happiness, hope, connection, and courage” (2019), Kelly McGonigal