Mike Montague will present three sales and marketing sessions for the Professional Selling class at Johnson County Community College in November! Mike is on the Marketing Advisory Board for JCCC. They have agreed to offer these sessions free for the students and the local business community through a grant from HubSpot’s Education Partner Academic Innovation Fund.
Here is the problem with to-do lists. Most of them contain have-tos, not want-tos. They are full of tasks that are so unimportant and uninspiring that you would forget them if you didn’t write them down. Who needs more…
To celebrate my 43rd trip around the sun, I would like to share with you a bunch of things I have been thinking about lately. If you haven’t been subscribing to Playful Humans, here is what you have been missing, in no particular order…
She was born on April Fool’s Day, and I always thought that made her sense of humor just a little bit better than everyone else’s. I am quite sure she is the one who most shaped my sense of humor, too. She is the one who introduced me to Monty Python, Dave Barry, and The Far Side. I watch my first Benny Hill and Mr. Bean sketches at her house, and she bought me a Dwight Schrute bobbled head for my first office. If you don’t recognize any of those names, please Google them right now, and let Grandma Lyn be the reason they are in your life, too!
There is a funny thing that most people miss about living their best life and finding unprecedented success. It is not the measured, calculated moves that bring you fun, flow, and fulfillment. It is the stupid, utterly moronic, complete waste of time actions that you do because you want to!
One 2019 study found that agreeing with the statement “I have a philosophy of life that helps me understand who I am” was associated with fewer symptoms of depression and higher levels of happiness. Other positive psychology studies have shown that happiness drives success, not the other way around. If you want to feel fulfillment, you must first find your joy and flow state in play.
How successful do you think you and your organization would be if more people in your organization chose their activities based on the above definition of play? If you think it would be better, start today. If you think it would be worse, it might be time to think about new work or new co-workers. When you play for a living, you create the conditions for you to succeed more easily, and you get to have a lot more fun along the way!
When was the last time you voluntarily made a mess, just for the fun of it? When was the last time you got dirty, wet, had a food fight, spilled glitter on the floor, stepped on a Lego, or knocked something over? Despite our parents’ and teachers’ best intentions, we have learned to see these as bad outcomes. They are simply side effects of play, and play is necessary for happiness.
In our modern technologically advanced society, we need to go back to doing what we do best as humans, building connections between people, ideas, and things that computers can’t see. If we can program a robot or a machine to do a task, then we don’t need a human. If it requires emotional insight, empathy, creativity, or imagination, then it is up to us!
It has been the marketing and normalization of hard work, more money, and the need for power and respect that gets in the way. We have traded our play and happiness for time savings, shortcuts, things, and status symbols. We have optimized play out of our lives to try to afford the luxuries and happiness promised in advertising. There is no money to be made off of “free play” for all… I think you can see that in the ways that play is marketed and communicated in our society.
