Deep work, deepening play
I think I might have been doing this all wrong.
Not life in general. But integrating play into my work week.
Towards the end of last year I wrote about how I was finding Play Mondays - time specifically blocked out in my work calendar to play - difficult, and that perhaps scheduling time for play wasn't the right way to go about what I was trying to achieve. In that post I talk about taking play seriously, and trusting myself to know when it's time for play, when is time for work, and remembering that the two aren't actually separate.
Despite what I know about play, I ringfenced time, but hadn't particularly given myself something to do with that time. I do not find myself able to play on demand, to trust that it is appropriate (and necessary) to spend a day playing. I have been effectively forcing play, which doesn't work (Carse, 1986); in attempting to allow space for spontaneity, what I hadn't provided was focus. This lack of focus led to play Mondays being quite stressful - shouldn't I be working? Despite reminding myself of the validity - indeed, the importance - of creating space for play, the more I tried to force it, the less playful I felt, and the more aware I was about the time 'taken away' from work. Because of this, I'm becoming more and more aware that by scheduling in play time like this, I'm widening the gap between play and work.
But perhaps I've got this all backwards. Instead of blocking out time for play, what if I blocked out time for work - and not just any work, but really specific work? What if I scheduled small, concentrated periods during the day in which to work undistracted on specific things - what Cal Newport would call Deep Work. And what if I trusted myself, allowed myself, gave myself permission to play more around those ringfenced times?
In his 2016 book, Newport describes the importance and value of periods of intense, undistracted, focussed work that drives your goals (personal, or project) forward. This is deep work. When you're doing deep work, you shut away all the distractions, you decide in advance what you're going to be working on, and you work on it in a highly concentrated, organised way. This is opposed to shallow work, work which takes up time but could probably be done in front of the TV e.g. sending emails. Work which doesn't really drive anything forward. The kind of work I (and I'm sure I'm not alone here) find myself distracted by constantly.
I appreciate that some of this sounds like what a colleague described as "tech bro pseudo wellness capitalist productivity garbage". Fair point. Full disclosure, I'm still only a few chapters into the book. I'm at the start of this journey. But even this far in, I'm hooked on the idea that if instead of creating space for play in an overwhelmingly worky week, I don't separate work and play - I frame them as umbrella terms for 'things that need doing', creating clear lists of what needs doing and making conscious decisions about when I'm going to do them.
Just one week in, it's forced me to think more deeply about what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, and when I'm doing it. It's less "oh yeah I should write that blog post" and more "tomorrow's priority is getting that blog post done". It's already made me reflect on how I work - I'm most focussed in the morning, so I schedule a big three-hour chunk of time in the morning to get the majority of my writing, making, designing done. If it's not completed in that time, that's fine - I can carry on in the afternoon or shift it to tomorrow. But by being specific about when I'm doing this work, I'm more conscious of my workload, and more effective at getting it done.
It also means I'm feeling more energised and more capable of finding space for play. I find myself being a lot more proactive with things like scheduling lunch dates with people, joining clubs I've thought about joining for a while, and rekindling old ways of playing that had fallen by the wayside. I also find I'm starting to trust myself more; because I know I'll have done 3 hours of very concentrated work in the morning, I'm more comfortable with my afternoons being less structured. If I can't concentrate, and the afternoon jobs aren't high priority, I'll stop, go for a walk, do some yoga, whatever, pick it up again tomorrow.
What effect this has on my long term playfulness remains to be seen. But instead of creating separate moments for play, it's making me appreciate being playful. More than that, by taking the pressure off work - by being more organised and making the 'what' and 'when' more visible - I wonder if I might be more relaxed at work, and therefore more playful more of the time. All of which leads me to wonder if deep work could lead to deepening playfulness.
*This is a PG version of the actual quote.