How do you view your responsibilities? Are they
work, maybe play or something else?
Recently I’ve read the book “Predictably Irrational”
it speaks of differences between work and play. This book has inspired this
blog which concentrates mostly on the theory of perception of “work” and
“play”. Which category do you fit?
Mark Twain once
said “work consists of whatever the body is obliged to do, and play consists of
whatever the body is not obliged to do”. This means when you are forced to do
something your brain considers it work, but when you do something by your own
choice it is for your enjoyment.
That being said,
I think we can all agree that there is a positive correlation between “work”
put into a skill and success in that skill. So, what makes successful people
decide to work harder than others? Is it possible to manipulate what our brain
considers work and what it considers play? When successful people are hard at
work, do they believe they are hard
at play?
Let’s say for
instance that a friend offered you $40 to listen to a motivational speaker give
a lecture for one hour. Provided that you could fit it into your schedule, you
would probably go because making $40 for an hour of sitting in a lecture is
better than sitting somewhere else and making no money. This would be
considered “work”, because you are obliged to go. Now, let’s say hypothetically
that the first occurrence didn’t happen but instead someone offered you a
ticket to the same motivational speaker for $40 and you decided to buy it and
attend the lecture. In this case, you are no longer obliged to go and therefore
this time the same lecture is considered “play”.
The difference
seen here between work and play is that work is something valued by someone
other than yourself (your friend who offered you $40) and play is something
valued by yourself (you valued the lecture at $40). This observation shows that
we can manipulate what we consider work and what we consider play simply by
putting personal value on our decisions.
Many people view
their job as work and therefore do not enjoy it because they are obliged and the
job is valued by someone other than themselves. In order to consider our jobs
play we must find our own value in them such as finding true value or personal
satisfaction. It seems true that in most cases we can shift what our brain
considers work to play and therefore put in far more work at any skill and
increase our chances of success.
On the opposite
side of the spectrum, what happens when a person turns something that was once
play into work? Take professional athletes or musicians for instance. Does
their passion for the skill decrease? Do they subconsciously lose their play? How
do they find new “play” time if their old “play” is now work?
Could it be that
their “work” remains “play” thus feeding their fuel for success? Maybe truly successful
people are only bred from environments that encourage play.
“There
is no truth. There is only perception.” –Gustave Flaubert
