My first bit of common sense or wisdom came to me when I was about ten years old. Its source was from the book by Mark Twain, The Adventure of Tom Sawyer. Tom was being punished by having to white wash paint a fence (you may also know the story). Tom was not keen about his assignment so he thought, “How can I turn this task from work to play and perhaps even make a profit?” 

What Tom did was to start painting the fence with joy and excitement.  His friends quickly observed his enthusiasm and asked if they could join in and do some painting.  Soon he was selling the privilege of painting the fence and only stopped when he ran out of paint.  This story has many themes, but the theme of the story as I was taught it many years ago was:

What is work?  It is what you don’t like doing. 

What is play? It is what you enjoy doing.

Get paid to play.

That simple insight I learned at age ten changed me forever. I never forgot it, even after over 50 years of employment.  From that moment on I decided to NEVER GO TO WORK!! And you know what, I (almost) never have. My entire career (with the exception of about 3 years) I have been paid to play.  I was able to CONVINCE MYSELF that whatever I was doing was playful and joyful.   Now I must admit sometimes that having to convince myself that what I was doing was playful was a stretch, but I diligently and consciously made the effort to see situations in that light. 

The worst case solution was to ponder how the “work” situation was a learning platform and plan my escape; the normal response was to eagerly try to be my absolute best at it and speculate how it could be done better.  For repetitive tasks, analyzing them carefully was always an opportunity for improvement, even though the only one who would notice the improvement was myself. I turned my trade into an art form and forever looked for the smallest of tweaks and quirks to make the output something I had total personal pride in.  The point is, if what you are doing is play, then playing harder and better is always self-satisfying and motivating.

 Perhaps if your work is less than playful, than you could re-engineer your perspective and find some aspect of your tasks that you enjoy somewhat, and focus on how to make that aspect more central and playful.

Reflection Source: www.Smallercup.org

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