chrisgilmerproj

When I have the chance to take a break I enjoy watching a TED video (or two!) on my iPhone.  If there's a reason to love TED it's this; TED inspires us to share our ideas, to be at play, and to work as a community towards common goals.  I want to share a some thoughts I had while watching videos from TED today. The first video I want to talk about I actually watched second.  It comes from the Art Center Design Conference 2009 that was titled "Serious Play".  The talk was given by Stuart Brown on why play is vital.  Watch the video and then read on (I'll probably do a lot of this in my blog). The concepts of play that he touched on really resonated with me.  In my experience, adding an element of play to work, not as a separate activity but as part "of" the activity, shifts my experience from the mundane to the enjoyable. This makes work more enjoyable and I'm excited to be there every day. Stuart's talk reminded me of a video by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on the concept of flow.  Basically, when I'm in a challenging situation where I have a significant amount of skill I find myself in a region of flow, where my productivity increases as does my enjoyment.  Suddenly I feel as though I'm at play and I find what I'm doing to be both exciting and consuming. I don't believe flow in itself is the only component of play, and that's where the next video comes in.  The first video I watched today was by Adam Savage of Mythbuster fame.  In the video Adam talks about his obsessions.  When I watch Adam talk about his obsessions that's when I really understand what's so vital about play.  It brings him to life and when he talks it's as though he's exactly where he wants to and is meant to be at that moment. It makes me think about how I involve play in my life.  Where does imaginative play, object play, rough and tumble play, sharing play, and others play a role in my life?  And how do these types of play work in the lives of my peers?  I tell you that when I watch the speakers at TED I feel like I'm at play.  In part I think this is because I am cued by the speakers who themselves are already in a mode of play when they talk. At TEDxUSC I watched David Logan talk about Tribal Leadership.  He talked about how people naturally form tribes.  I'm in what he might call a type 3 tribe described by the phrase "I'm great".  The next phase is type 4 characterized by the phrase "We're great".  The transition from type 3 to type 4 is difficult and happens when you begin to look at the larger perspective of your interaction with others and how that benefits the group. TED to me is a type 4 or 5 (got to go read his book!) environment, sharing ideas that the whole community really benefits from.  But better yet, the people at TED are to me at play as they share their passion with the audience.  I think it's clear that there's a connection between these incredibly motivated and creative types and their play.  I think the video by Tim Brown sums it up when he presented on creativity and play. Now there's something I can take away from all this.  Every day I ought to include an element of play in my work, to boost my productivity and increase my interaction with others. Through others I can network to benefit my social network and leverage the power of our community to achieve bigger goals. I think it's vital to my health and my future to play.