Prioritizing Play

Don't freak out: I'm not talking about make-believe.

If I had to pick one part of adult life that makes me feel the least alive, it might be packing school lunch.

I hate packing lunch. I don’t know exactly why—after all, there are lots of other repetitive, boring tasks that come with adulthood that I could also single out for my detest. Like, for example, laundry, or emptying the dishwasher, or buying groceries. But there is something about lunch-packing in particular that really gets me.

I’ve tried making it less soul-sucking. For example, a friend once sent me a whole packet of whimsical toothpicks with miniature animal heads on them, and it did indeed make me feel marginally more lighthearted to know that my daughter would be able to eat her grapes with a toothpick that looked like a panda. But even the panda heads could only do so much. One of the nicest parts of summer was not having to end each day by packing something for my child to eat on the next.

I bring this up because now that fall is upon us, I’ve been hearing from a lot of people that they’re feeling overwhelmed—and in some cases, a bit disheartened—by the return of the daily grind. Summer Fridays are a distant memory, most of us don’t have a vacation on the horizon, and people are taking work seriously again. And if you’re a parent, you’re also back to the school routine: the homework monitoring, the extracurricular schlepping and, of course, the lunch-packing. It can start to feel a bit heavy. Or at least very, very busy.

But with that said, the return to routine, with all its challenges (and school lunches), also offers an opportunity to create — or recognize the existence and importance of — routines and rituals that lighten you, rather than add to your overwhelm. Routines and rituals, in other words, that tap into the power of fun.

Now, if you’re reading this, you probably know that I’m obsessed with the value of fun, and firmly believe that, far from being frivolous, it’s essential for our happiness and health. (If you don’t know this about me, you can learn more here.) You probably also already know that I define fun as the confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow. The more playfulness, connection, and flow we can work into our daily lives, the happier we will be.

I’ve got lots of thoughts and feels about all three of the circles in this diagram, but today, I want to focus specifically on play, and how (and why) to incorporate it into your life this fall.

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I’ve found that a lot of adults really get anxious when you encourage them to play. So to clarify: I’m not saying that you need to be silly or act childish or play games (unless you want to). Instead, here’s how I’m defining it:

Play: doing things purely because you enjoy them, without caring too much about the outcome

It’s a little different from playfulness, which I typically define as having a lighthearted attitude and not taking yourself too seriously. We definitely should be playful while playing; hopefully that goes without saying. But we all really also need to be prioritizing play itself.

If you’re still feeling skeptical, allow me to offer this quote from play expert Stuart Brown from his book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. He’s talking about what play is and what life would be like without it, and he points out how many of the good things in life are, at their core, forms of play. As he writes:

“It’s not just an absence of games or sports. Life without play is a life without books, without movies, art, music, jokes, dramatic stories. Imagine a world with no flirting, no daydreaming, no comedy, no irony. It would be a pretty grim place to live. In a broad sense, play is what lifts people out of the mundane. I sometimes compare play to oxygen—it’s all around us, yet it goes mostly unnoticed or unappreciated until it is missing.”¹

I think that last sentence is key, because I think that for may of us, play is missing from our daily lives right now. And I believe that it’s our lack of play that keeps us stuck in the mundane and leaves us feeling trapped in the daily grind.

That’s why one question I’m asking myself this season—and that I encourage you to ask yourself as well—is “How can I carve out time for play?”

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Note that this can look different for different people. Some people might play by having a standing date with the same group of friends—for example, someone recently told me about how she and her friends meet up each week for “Taco Tuesdays.” Others might play by signing up for a class in something they’re curious about or enjoy. Others might play by trying or doing something new each week—like visiting a museum, or exploring a new neighborhood. Games and sports are obviously forms of play. So are hobbies. So is bantering and joking around. The key is to find something you like to do that, on its surface at least, might seem purposeless — and prioritize it.

What I’ve found is that play doesn’t just feel good in the moment; when we play, it fills up our tanks and makes the more mundane moments in life (ahem, lunch packing) easier, and sometimes even more pleasant, to endure.

So how could you play more this fall? What are some ways in which you are already playing? And are you prioritizing them enough?

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Importantly, if you want more play in your life, you may need to make space by saying no to or delegating some of your current obligations (or old hobbies that no longer feel fun). After all, there’s a reason many of us feel overwhelmed: our schedules are overpacked. But you’re probably making time and space for all sorts of things that are less important than your own personal need for play (including some of the stuff you’re doing on your phone). So ask yourself what you could say no to or get rid of or delegate—and do it.

And then? Brainstorm! Think of new things to try, and also think of ways that you might already be playing—identifying them as such can make them easier to prioritize.

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Here are some things I do or am thinking of doing:

-Learning an instrument. I’m still taking the weekly guitar class that inspired me to write The Power of Fun, and try my best never to miss a class, because it’s a weekly opportunity to get together with other adults for no other purpose than to play. I’m also learning drums. Why? For fun!

-Establishing a regular game night. My husband and I have recently started playing cribbage again, a card game that we played nonstop on our honeymoon. (A friend told me that “Nothing makes you sound young and fun like . . . cribbage,” to which I pointed out that I was basically born with the soul of an 85-year-old, so cribbage is actually quite appropriate —and also, it’s a great game. Don’t knock it till you try it.) We’ve also noticed that our daughter, who’s now eight, loves it when we play games as a family, so we’re trying to make that into a ritual as well. (One time, when we were about to play Spot It (one of our favorites), she announced, “Let’s play a game together and make some cozy family memories.” Um, okay?!)

-Establishing a dinner club with friends. A friend of mine has a monthly “dinner club” with her husband and two other couples, which basically means that they make a point to go out to eat together once a month. It’s funny how just giving something a name, like a “club” can make it seem somehow more meaningful than just “going out to dinner once a month” — but, well, it does! We’re thinking of starting our own version.

-Finding people who say “yes.” Trying new things often leads to fun, and yet it can be so hard as an adult to find people who say yes. So try to be one of those people yourself whenever possible—and if you have yes-saying people in your life already, thank them for it, and invite them to do more things! I recently asked a friend if she wanted to see Barbie with me and as the movie began, I explicitly thanked her for saying yes. “I always try to,” she said. It’s true: she does—and what a rare and valuable trait that is.

-Prioritizing passions. If you’re lucky enough to already have (or have kept up with your) passions, by all means, prioritize them. A couple of years ago, I rediscovered my love of swing dancing, and now do my best to attend a dance camp each summer — and it fills me up for weeks afterwards. Here’s a scene from this year’s camp—a jam circle, with some of the camp’s best dancers (myself most definitely not included) dancing to the Gordon Webster band at around 1:30 in the morning. This is all completely improvised, and it perfectly captures how playful this style of dancing (and music) is. Just watching the video makes me smile; it was even more amazing live.

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The Bottom Line

As Stuart Brown puts it, “When we stop playing, we start dying.”²

So this fall, how are you going to play?

To scrolling less and living more,

Catherine

PS: Here’s another thing (or two) about packing lunch

Okay, I’ve figured it out: I think the primary reason for my lunch hatred has to do with decision fatigue. After a long day of thinking and doing and deciding, the last thing I want to do is to have an internal debate about whether my child would rather have me pack pretzels or popcorn.

This is why I was thrilled when she announced at the start of this school year that “third grade means being an adult,” which translated into a blissful week where she packed lunch for herself. But she’s caught on to the drudgery, and we’re slipping back into our old routines (her argument for having us pack it: “I like being surprised”).

For my part, that means that I have gotten back into the habit of taking whatever she didn’t eat and putting it back into the refrigerator to be reincarnated as part of the next day’s lunch. Because you know, if a sandwich isn’t appealing on day one, surely it’s even better after it’s been carried around for eight hours in a lunchbox and spends the night in the fridge.

PPS: Hey Catherine, is there something different about this newsletter?

Why yes, there is! Congratulations on being so astute. As I mentioned last week, I’ve switched my primary newsletter over to Substack, which is a platform specifically designed to support writers and their work. Not only is Substack a joy to write in (and a great way to support and connect with other writers), but it offers lots of cool options, like a “threads” feature where we can have conversations as a community, and a “chat” feature where I hope to start a group “Delight” text chain (more on that next week). It’s fun to write in, and my hope is that, by switching to Substack, I’ll be able to send out more frequent newsletters and connect with you all more directly, as well as maintain an archive of my writing.

1. Stuart Brown, Play, p. 7.

2. ibid, p. 73.