Good Life Project - Attention Grown-ups: If You’re Not Playing, You’re Likely Paying a Big Price. | Cas Holman

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Toy designer and RISD professor Cas Holman shows how rediscovering play can help adults build resilience, spark creativity, and forge deeper connections in an achievement-focused world.In this revealing conversation about her book "Playful: How Play Shifts Our Thinking, Inspires Connection, and Sparks Creativity," Holman shares practical ways to embrace uncertainty through play and explains why putting down our phones might be the first step toward reclaiming our natural capacity for joy.You can find Cas at: Website | Instagram | Episode TranscriptIf you LOVED this episode, you’ll also love the conversations we had with Debbie Millman about designing a life through creativity and story.Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the WheelVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, before we dive in, I want to share something a little more personal. We are a small team. We've been pouring our hearts into the show for more than a dozen years now. And through all the ups and downs in the podcast world, every single one of you who follows a show helps sustain this work. And I'll be honest, creating from behind a microphone can feel a little lonely at times. But when we see you hit that follow button, it's this beautiful reminder that you're out there,

listening, growing, and connected to this mission of bringing conversations and ideas that add more ease, meaning, and joy to your life. So if you haven't yet, it would mean the world to us if you take just a moment and tap follow, truly. Thank you. Now, let's get to today's episode. So what would happen if you gave yourself permission to play again? Not just structured activities or competitive sports, but genuine, free-spirited play. The kind that makes time disappear and fills you with that lightness of being we so often leave behind in childhood. Turns out as adults, most of us have kind of pushed play so far to the margins of our lives. We've forgotten how transformative and essential it can be, not just for joy and connection,

but for our resilience, our creativity, and the ability to navigate uncertainty. My guest today is Cass Holman, founder of toy company Heroes Will Rise and former professor of industrial design at RISD. She spent decades designing toys and play experiences for organizations like the High Line, Liberty Science Center, and companies including Google, Nike, and the Lego Foundation, and her new book, Playful, how play shifts our thinking, inspires connection and sparks creativity, challenges everything we think we know about adult play. What fascinated me about this conversation, it's how Cass reveals play not just as some

sort of nice to have addition to life, but as this vital force for resilience, especially in uncertain times. And she shares stories of bringing eight-year-old and 80 roles together in play, breaking down barriers that words alone couldn't touch and offers this completely different fresh take on how we might reconnect with our natural capacity for play why it really matters, even in the most serious moments in life. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. We've been having fun starting out these conversations with a little bit of a new five true or false statement segments.

Okay. I'm going to pose five true or false statements to you. And as much as you might want to actually answer with a heads, to the extent that you can, try and answer with just a true or false. And then throughout our conversation, we'll kind of unpack what we dive into you. Game. Oh, boy. Okay.

Yeah. Statement number one. Play is important for kids, but not for adults. False. That was a gimmie. Piece of cake. Thank you. Number two.

If a workplace is built around play, activity is going to suffer big time. False. When you're dealing with serious things in work or life, introducing play is inappropriate, if not outright, harmful. Oh, false. Number four, it's naturally harder for adults to drop into a playful mindset and let go the way we did when we were kids.

Very true. Last one. In play, done right, everyone's a winner. True. All right, so here's my big opening question for you. Why do us grownups, and maybe I shouldn't include. you in that, but why do grownups in general find it so hard to play? Well, it required an entire book, apparently, to answer that question, which I didn't necessarily

expect. I've been asked that question by a lot of adults, and I had dodged it to some extent because I felt unqualified. I thought we need therapy, not a new design, which is also true. I think everyone has their own relationship to cultural norms in our schooling, in the way that we're raised, whatever version of households we have and family structures, typically we come up being taught that there are right and wrong answers and that we kind of aspire to be right. We aspire to be good at things. In fact, we spend a lot of our childhood trying to become what we want to be when we grow up and kind of eliminating things along the way if we don't excel at that. them. A lot of those things that we eliminate, we actually like quite a bit. A lot of the things that we have to stop doing because they're not productive or they don't relate to being graded or getting into college are things that are really playful and really good for us and feel really good when we do them, but they don't feel important, so they don't continue to be priorities. And we're also, I think, as we come up, you know, we learn to hold still to kind of

aspire to be taken seriously. That means to not. We learn to not play. And we suppress the kind of instinct and our inner drive to play, which doesn't mean that it's not there. It means that we've learned to disregard it. I call it a play voice. I think we all still have an inner play voice. It's just that that voice is not taken as seriously as our adult voice, which is the one that says, no, you can't go roll down that hill. You can't like dance while you're waiting for gas at the gas station, you know, you can't sing along. There's people around. We have an inner play voice that's like beckoning and kind of like still sees the opportunities and the possibilities of play, but we just kind of ignore it or think it's not for now. Yeah, I mean, as you're describing that,

the person dancing at the gas station or like all these different things, these are movie scenes, right? These are the scenes that we, like, when we have, when there's that just like person who's totally free and they just, they love themselves and that they've gotten in touch with their inner child And we see those scenes at the movies and we're like, oh, that's awesome. I want to be that person. And I wish I felt that could free. And yet when we step back into our day-to-day lives, we're terrified of being that person. And like you said, it sounds like it's not that we have to learn to be that person again.

We have to unlearn not being that person. Exactly. Exactly. And I think it doesn't always have to be gram gestures. I think that there's a misconception that play is like big and bold and like, we. But play can be quite pensive. I, you know, when I'm walking my dog, I'll notice in people's windows what's going on in their kitchens and kind of imagine what they're making or what their lives are like. And I think that's kind of play, like that's imaginative play or attention play.

I think watching birds or even notice in details is a type of play that adults take part in. So there's all kinds of play that we actually do whether or not we would call it play or whether or not we like end. indulge in it because we often kind of look at our devices instead or think like, oh, I can't daydream or I can't space out, right? Everybody else is on their phones. I better look at my phone. You know, I need to feel important or I need to look important or like, ah, this is what we're doing now. Waiting for the subway, so I got to look at my phone. When, in fact, taking a beat and resisting the urge to look for entertainment or look to kind of consume play, even in the types of games and things we might play on our phones, we can tap inside of ourselves. with our own attention and create play for ourselves without meeting to, you know, look at our phones and perform adult in public. Yeah. Do you distinguish between play and whimsy? I think whimsy to me would be a characteristic of playfulness. My understanding of the word is kind

of like a lighthearted, something maybe a little bit joyful or it has a positive connotation. And so I think A lot of play has whimsy in it, and maybe all whimsy is playful. Where do we go wrong here? I mean, what happens between the time that we're kids where not only is play celebrated and accepted, but actually, like, it's literally built into a kid's day. There's literally playtime. There is recess in school. There's all this stuff, even within the context of classrooms, you know, like, how do we

actually play our way to learning the lesson that I want to actually create in the kids' lives? how do we go from literally having an innate impulse to play as a kid, having the people and the environments around us supporting that and saying, this is good, this is awesome, this is helpful, you're going to develop and be happier. And then at somewhere a point along the way, it's like the rug gets pulled out from us and said, no, actually, once you hit a certain point in your life, this is not the way to be anymore. And not only that, it's not only not the way to be individually, but also it's not

actually a good thing to keep building environments and cultures that support that. In fact, it's a bad thing. Like, where does this come from? How does that switch get flipped? Well, I think we're pretty single-minded in our need to be productive, right? I think that we value, it's all about values, and we value things that are connected to earning, right? And that's a very real need for most people, the need to pay the rent and buy groceries. That feels like the thing we need most for survival and everything else kind of falls in line with that. Like I think even the way that we exercise in sleep is now associated to, you should exercise because it'll, you know, meditate so that you can go be more productive at work or sleep better because then you'll, you know, do better in school or these things. So we tend to like even frame things as value.

I mean, look at how we think of time, right? Like time is money. We have all of these ways where we, our own behaviors and our time is so directly linked whether or not we're aware of it to capital and to this idea of the need to work, not just that, you know, and work has a different meaning to different people as well. And so I think that something like play, because it's, we don't understand it as valuable, it's not a priority. And so it does become kind of the antithesis of what is good, right, or what is valued. I think that we set up our structures accordingly. And I will say, though, that I have seen a shift toward, I live in New York, and so I'm seeing more and more streets that are being closed down for the sake of there being more public spaces for people to gather, which I see as a form of play. I think, you know, different communities have different excuses to have parades and festivals and music venues and concerts and things like that.

And all of that is adult play in a way that typically there's, you know, some kind of sponsorship behind it, of course. course, in the U.S. at least. In other countries, they have these giant music festivals that are, you know, part of the collective, known to be part of the greater good, right? So they happen the same way that, like, it's, and they're valued as part of the weight what people do. And time is taken off or time is given for that. But I think that it has a large part just with like, we don't value it. And so therefore it's not a priority. And we don't, because we don't necessarily understand and we're not connected to our own play, it's not a thing that we necessarily. feel the benefits of, right? Like when you get enough sleep, you can feel the benefits of that and you feel better the next day. So you're like, oh, right, that is a thing that makes me feel better. And I think with play, if we can, like, have enough exposure to it and, like, get into the, start to recognize the places that we do play as play and then give ourselves a little more and more room, then it can become a priority and we will start to value it more and therefore kind of give our, let ourselves have the time or in terms of as a collective, dedicate resource,

to it. It's so interesting this relationship we describe between play and productivity. It's almost like you assume they're on opposite sides of, you know, a duel. It's like you're either productive or they're either playful, but you know, like never the twain shall meet. So it's like you have to make a choice. And now that you're an adult and you've got to earn money and money comes from producing and like, okay, so that's the thing we have to center. But it really does feel like this false dichotomy. It's like, but are they really on opposite sides of that? And so, are they really on opposite sides of the seesaw? Or can they really like co-exist and actually are the is it really good for them to go exist? Yeah. And they absolutely can. So one of the things that I think is kind of important

for me to differentiate is the book is about play in general, but I focus on free play. I think that adults and in talking to people over the last 20 something years in my work, people who reach out and they say I really miss playing. Like I know there's some part of me that would benefit from the same type of play I had as a kid. Like, I remember what that felt like, the flow of it, the like almost spirituality that happens when you connect with yourself while you're playing and you totally lose track of time, space, like everything, all that matters is whatever thing you're doing, which is also maybe nothing at all, right? Free play specifically is something that I designed for, which is different than video games and sports, which are great ways that adults commonly play

and also benefit from. But free play is a little different in that it is, I think the biggest difference is intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. And a big part of how we come up in school, which is also related, I think, to like the need to earn is extrinsic motivation, right? Like, we work really hard. The extrinsic motivator in that is either to get a raise, to earn the money, to get a promotion. When we're in school, we study in order. We study what's on the test, right? So when we're children and we're out playing, children are all free play. They are driven by curiosity and free play to define it a little bit is a set of behaviors that are freely chosen, intrinsically motivated, and personally directed. Again, it's like it's something that

you want to do. You're driven to do it from your curiosity and need to explore, and children are doing that all the time. And they're doing it with their hands and they're doing it with their mouths and they're smelling the thing and they're throwing the thing. You know, they want to break it. And all of that is just like an intrinsic curiosity. Then as they come up in school increasingly, they are not learning because they love it and are hungry to understand the world, but because, well, I mean, they're also doing that, but the focus turns to what's on the test. There's right and wrong answers. It's not necessarily about exploring. It shifts quite a bit to memorize, understand what we already know. We're not doing great with, like, helping children be excited about uncertainty or things we don't understand, right? In school, they tend to learn things that we already know. It's like, here's what we know. Now you need to know it, right? And we're all constructivist learners. Like throughout life, we honor that when we're in kindergarten, right? You get to be constructivist and actually build the things and learn with your

hands. And then something happens in grade school where we're like, okay, now we need to like shift it into away from actually doing. And I think that's just about the scale all of these people in a classroom and you have to get through things quickly. And for a lot of reasons, the emphasis shifts to assessment. What's on the test? What's right and wrong, right? And so we become pretty uncomfortable with gray areas, which is where play lives. We become very uncomfortable with wrong answers. You do it until you do it right, or you get it right, and then you're rewarded. So that's what makes you feel good. So feeling good and your experience of success becomes linked less to trying and more with achieving or getting it right. This is, I think, why in particular,

we get acclimated to extrinsic motivation. We have it in our Fitbit. That's an extrinsic motivator. Now we, you know, you could also take a walk because it feels good and you see the birds and you chat with your neighbors. And it's like you get rewarded. I mean, it's like you get the raise, you know, by some sort of external metric, you get like all the stuff in life that's presented to it. It's like when you check the boxes often that somebody else has created for you, you get this thing that you're told you're supposed to want. So it's sort of like that's.

just the way that life gets structured as you get older. Right. Or culture gets structured. Yeah. And life is attached to culture. But like our person, yeah, I also experienced this. Like I have a conflicted relationship with the gamification of things because, yeah, everything can be playful.

And yes, make learning playful. But in gamifying things, most of the time we're just adding an extrinsic motivation to something so that you're learning in order to win or get more point. But this connects you even further from your curiosity about the thing. Now I'm learning it so that I get a point or win a badge, a digital badge, rather than learning it because I want to know and I want to understand how it's related to everything else I understand or don't understand, right? So how does this relate to play? Because free play specifically is about saying, what do I need right now? What do I want? And to be in touch with that is actually like, helping us at times, like, be attuned to our own needs. Do I need to move my body around? Do I need to sit quietly? Do I need to, like, stare at a wall? Right? So we're kind of like tuning in and saying, what do I need? And then how do I get it? I get to figure out what I am going to move my body around. Like, maybe I need to go like sweep. That's what I just did. I was just sweeping the yard, which is I putter. I have a lot of putter play. Or maybe I'm going to go across the street and shoot some basketball hoops. or maybe I'm going to play rowdy with my dog a little bit versus that, you know, a lot of the things that are extrinsic are tracking our time now. I keep hearing about the gamification of productivity and people are like, don't you like that? That's making your day playful.

And I'm like, is it though? I mean, it's telling you what to do and when to do it. How is that playful? So you get a digital badge or it beeps at you. I don't know. Is that playful? Maybe that's gamed, but not play. It's still telling you what to do.

And so, no. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Hey, here's my curiosity. Okay. And I'm nodding along. I'm like, yeah, this makes a total sense. Like, I love it when I get to show up and do something purely for no other reason than a feeling it gives me. I'm not trying to game anything or gain anything external.

There's no benefit other than just me loving doing the thing. So business scenario, right? there is a car dealership, right? You've got 20 salespeople in the car dealership. They're all trying to hit quota. And the sales manager comes in and says, okay, so we're going to create a contest. And whoever sells X number of cars gets this special bonus or this special perker, they get to wear a special jacket and their name goes up on the wall or something like that.

Maybe now they've taken something where people are showing up largely, just for the paycheck. Maybe some people actually kind of really love, they just love the game of selling and figuring out psychology and doing it, maybe doing right by people. They just genuinely love it, but probably a whole bunch of people there largely because it's just the JLB and they're doing the thing. Do you feel like then layering this gamification over it, like creating some sort of external thing that people would potentially really want, whether it's status, whether it's money, whether it's whatever it may be, a lot of people would look at that and say, well, isn't this a good thing? Because then you're adding another layer that takes something

that a lot of people experience as being kind of mundane without a sense of purpose and at least giving them a sense of there's something kind of a little bit more fun or a little bit more playful going on here in this context. Or do you feel like that actually in some way makes it worse? Back to what's the goal of that, right? So, in that case they gamified something in order to increase sales right they weren't out to like necessarily make it more fun and it might have become more fun so people who hated their job and they were kind of showing up and not trying to sell cars maybe now they're like okay i'm going to sell cars now because there's a contest i don't know if that's going to be more fun and nothing that you

described as playful right the goal wasn't oh my salespeople are seen kind of glum i want to make their lives better by adding an extrinsic motivation to sell things. I think that that's where it's kind of like a lot of the gamifying isn't setting out to make anybody's life better or make people more connected with their peers or their coworkers. In fact, in that scenario, it's probably going to make the coworkers because they're now competitive. There's a winner. In that version, it is kind of the worst case in terms of mental, not going to make assumptions about people's mental health. But I don't think that's going to make anybody any happier. And there have in fact been studies about the impact of competition on creativity. And it is like across the board not

helpful. In fact, people are the, there was a psychologist who did some research into quite a bit about creativity, Teresa Amabelle. And she found that knowing that work was going to be judged or anytime there was competition, the creativity took a huge hit. Like it was the work wasn't as good. people did not enjoy the process at all. They were really glad when it was over versus times that they were told there will be no judge. You have absolute freedom. And they wanted to keep going. So in that case, that relates pretty directly to work environments where oftentimes you are working hard toward one event and then you kind of like,

ah, and it's over and you take a break. So I don't think that competitiveness brings much to that, to anybody's wellness. It may increase sales, which is, in fact, usually the goal with the manager who brings that sort of thing to table. But I think that's a great example of gamification isn't necessarily about the individual and it's definitely not about play. I mean, it's interesting also because part of what you're describing, I feel like it also ties into this concept of the infinite versus the finite game. You know, the infinite game being the game that you play not to win or not to get to the end and succeed, but the game that you play with the desire that you hopefully never have to

stop playing because it's just so joyful being in the game itself. versus the finite game where it's like, okay, there's an end point that you're working towards. Like, I want to keep leveling up so I can get to the end of this game, which is always interesting because if you're having so much fun playing a game and it feels good a lot of times to level up, I'm more skilled, I'm more accomplished, I have more tools in my tool, bet, whatever it is, I have more status in the game. And yet the ultimate thing that you're then striving for is the moment that you no longer are able to do the thing that you've been having so much fun doing.

If the goal is winning, right? Yeah. So I think in many cases, you get to keep going, like, what are, this is one of the, I have the three elements that I think will help adults reconnect with replay. Yeah. And one of them is reframing success, reframe success, right? If success is winning and the game is over, but you love the process, then you're like, oh, man, I'm totally lost now. What am I going to do with my life? Where will I find fulfillment?

Right. But if the goal is, I love this, the game is over, then you keep doing. doing it. I mean, I see this with sports, with people, or I hear from people who came up playing sports or, I know someone who wanted to be a ballerina. And as soon as they got too tall, everybody was like, well, you can't be a ballerina now. And they were like, wait, what? Like, I love this. Why do I have to stop because I'm tall, right? Or like, with sports, like, all right, not everybody's going to go on to be in the Olympics. It doesn't mean you have to stop playing football or soccer. Our values are a little bit twisted, but by reframing success, it's like, well, does success look like becoming a professional? Probably not. And the same can be said for art. Does success look like you wind up with a gallery? No. If you love drawing, keep drawing. You know, you can show it to people or not. It could become your shopping list. If it's something that you find fulfillment in, reframe success and stop looking for it to be good or right or, you know, that like in

order to give yourself time to do it, to let yourself do it, it has to be something you're good at. It doesn't. It can just be something that feels good. And you can get a lot out of that. But remove the second thing is release judgment, right? Release the judgment that we all often are harshest inner critics, right? So release judgment of yourself, but also release the assumption that others are going to judge you because you're an adult who makes bad drawings. Yeah. I mean, that all makes sense. It's like if you redefine success as well, I just get to keep doing this thing that I really love doing. Like, that is my version of success, and I can do it indefinitely because I'm not

striving for some sort of golden ring or something that somebody else says is like, this is what it means when you're succeeding at this thing. Then as long as you're, like, you'll just keep finding ways back into it. And I love, like, the reframe that you also just offered around doing the thing for the feeling it gives you rather than doing it because you're striving towards some sense of mastery. I think we all do feel, we do love feeling like we're actually getting better at something and feeling more. It's awesome. Yeah. Right. Competence feels great. Yeah. And ambition is very confusing. Right. Right. Exactly. I have a friend of mine who has a book out now called In Defense of Dabbling.

And she's like, do it. Karen Walder, just do the thing because you love to do the thing, even though you know, you may well really kind of suck at it for the entire duration of however long you get to do it, but still just do it. And we really struggle with that because, like, all the messages that I think we get told, it's like, unless you're getting, like, working towards mastery, it's just not worth your time. Yeah, yeah. With drawing specifically, I hang out a lot with a five-year-old and an 11-year-old. If anybody has a chance to draw with children, there's your audience, man. That's fun.

You kind of can't go wrong. And what they value in a drawing has nothing to do with what we've come to believe make something good. And I love things kind of similarly, like I like karaoke for this. Often karaoke isn't about singing well. It's just about like efforts, about going all in. Yeah. And maybe bowling is a little bit similar. I don't typically bowl with people who are good at it.

So that's definitely not the point, right? So we reframe successes to like who's going to be fun to hang out with while we, you know, do this weird thing that makes all of us be kind of awkward for a while. Do you think there's a risk, though? Let's say you start doing something. purely for the joy of it. It's kind of fun. You're taking pottery classes at your local pottery studio, right? Or let's use bowling for your example. You do it because you got a couple of goofy friends who love to get together every couple of weeks and just go spend an evening bowling together. None of you are good. You're just having a great time doing it, right? Yeah.

But then you're doing it for six months, and then you're doing it for a year, and then you start to kind of get like, okay. And then you're doing it for another year, and you're like, I'm actually pretty good. And then, you're like, all of a sudden you're in a bowling league. When you do it, even if you're doing it for joy, over time, you may actually get good enough so that that external structure that says there's another reason to be doing this. It's like the sirens that lower you into the rocks. I love this as an example. And I think that with a playful mindset, what would inevitably happen?

Because I, too, have done this. And like I said, ambition is tricky. And I did play sports. There's some competitiveness in me, as with many of us. And, yeah, when I do something, I want to be good at it. often, right? And I check in. So I'll have that instinct. And then so I'll say, like, wow, I'm noticing that I'm getting kind of like embarrassingly attached to the fact that my score is not, or like, oh, I'm kind of losing. So I notice like, I'm being, wait a minute, this is becoming less fun,

for one thing. Or like, I'm getting kind of mad at the friend whose score is better or whatever, right? And then I'll be like, wow, interesting. Okay, let's check in. What is the goal here? Is the goal to win? Or is the goal to have some quality time with my pals, right? And if one is inhibiting the other, like the competitiveness or my desire to beat my last month's score is getting in the way of the goal, which is quality time with my friends, which matters way more than my bowling score, then I'll like take a step and be like, all right, Cass, check in, let's reframe. It requires an awareness of our moods or our, our, like, you know, instinct to want to be good or be frustrated when we, you know, hit a, what is it called the alley? The gutter, the gutter. The gutter, yeah. It shows you how often I'm going.

The galley, that's definitely not it. It's important to not ever know the lingo, too. That helps if you get to invent words along the way. I think that there's a misconception that in play, everything should be hunky-dory and easy and, like, feel great. But in fact, because part of what, especially in free play, part of what is required is the releasing judgment and embracing possibility.

Embracing possibility is kind of about curiosity and like, I don't know what's going to happen. Let's try. And then reframing success, right? Success is fun with my friends not winning. All of those things also bud up against these other habits of the desire to be good, the maybe need to try to win, right? In embracing possibility, when there's that window where you think like, oh, wow, I might be good at this, right? You start to hedge toward these other habits that can. be not quite as playful. And we're vulnerable in those ways, particularly in the trust that is required with the people around us. Like when we go dancing, if you're not a good dancer, often people will have to get a little bit drunk in order to cut loose, right? I hear a lot from people who are like, I'm great at playing after I've had a couple drinks, which, you know, okay, we all let off steam. However, what if we could achieve that level of inhibition without the need to drink first, right, so that we could be uninhibited on the way to work or when we're, you know, taking a road trip with our whole family. I think that part of what I tried to do in

the book is figure out what is it, what are the conditions and how can we create the conditions for this without our go-to tools that we typically use to release inhibition and be in a state that we can be really playful and care less what people think and be silly and be more open about our, you know, our feelings or make jokes more freely. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. You just name some of those conditions, embracing possibility, releasing judgment, reframing success. I'm nodding along listening. I'm like, yeah, it would be awesome if I could just reframe success. It's just being in it and playing and forgetting about the scorecard and it all being about

the feeling I get what I'm doing the thing. And if I could release judgment and let go of having to feel like I have to perform in a particular way or being seen by other people and not performing up to their expectations. And it'd be great if I could step into this place of possibility. And I'm like, yes, yes, yes, check, check, check. How? Because like, what if you don't naturally go there? And a lot of the conditions of being a grown up actually are the opposite. They support the opposite behavior. How do we start to actually rewire the conditions so that we can actually do these things? Yeah. I think kind of noticing when you're setting out to do something that might be different from what you had imagined it being. So, for example, if you start cooking dinner

and the fish is bad, you thought you were going to have fish and you're like, I can't because it's bad. Like, you can either drive around looking to replace the old fish and be really frustrated and probably hungry, or you can say, okay, was my goal to like eat this fish or was my goal to just make dinner for my friends that are coming over any minute? What have I got? Right. And remembering like, you know what, it's going to be okay, they will still like me because we're not going to have the promised fish. Maybe they'll also laugh and I'll involve them and how are we going to combine these seven ingredients that I have in my fridge. So there's this, again, like, coming at anything from a playful mindset means that you're coming in with kind of a what if sort of attitude and saying like, all right, what if it's this instead? And always coming back to what is my goal exactly? And maybe your goal was to use up the fish. But I have a feeling then that, you know, there's something else. In that case, like, all right, you got to move on, right? Reset.

There's something else here. If you have friends coming over that make something else. But I feel like there's almost always an opportunity that a playful mindset will help you through something that either, whether it's problem solving in this case. And then, of course, like, there's a much bigger picture function of play, which is building resilience and also just like staying grounded in who you are and being human. as life gets hard. It's a funny time to be telling people that they should be playing, right? Quite a bit of uncertainty going around.

And in fact, this is exactly the time that we should be playing. Because play is the thing that makes us more comfortable in uncertainty. Like, there's nothing that's about to be fixed right now. Like, we can approach this problem as something we're going to solve of all the problems that we could be approaching.

That's just not what the, world is going to do right now. And what we can do is stay grounded in our communities, in ourselves, and keep going, right? And in play, play itself, and especially free play, is about uncertainty. It's about comfort with like, I don't know what's going on. Let's try this. What about this? Like, okay, reset. How about this instead? And being curious and grabbing the people around you and just kind of being in it together. is a huge part of what happens in play. I think you write about this also.

It's this notion of, okay, so if you're living in a moment or a season of life or work where it's all about rigidity, it's all about rules, it's all about heaviness, it's all about just uncertainty and fear that play is almost like this microactive rebellion. It's almost like saying, I'm acknowledging there's a lot happening around me that doesn't feel good to me. And at the same time, if I proactively say, I'm going to take a moment out of my day right now and do something that drops me into this state of play, that's me saying, even in moments where I feel like I'm being constrained in all sorts of ways, or those around me are being constrained in all sorts of ways which are not okay and I don't want, that I still have like this

microdose of agency that lets me take a hot second out of my life. And in some way, shape, or form, make it good. Yeah, and I would even push up further and say, don't step out of your life. Be in your life and your play. Continue to keep play with you in the fight, right? Like, I'm queer, my partner is trans. Things are not comfortable for us. We have some uncertainty and have for some time around us. And the only answer is to keep being, continue being who we are, how we do it. I mean, queer people have always used play as protest. The Stonewall Uprising, for example, was a reaction to oppression, and we marked the occasion with a parade to honor our elders and our peers.

Their struggle and their pain, but also their joy and love, we play. We dance and gather and dress up, and we mourn and we celebrate. Our play is both how we experience our resilience and how we express it. We're not going to not play, because that's who we are. And I think that's who all of us are. Like, play is in all of us in conflict resolution. And this would be a big ask. Like, I don't expect people who are having a hard time communicating to come together and, like, play in order to fix it necessarily.

However, I will say for children, in play, when they are left to their own devices to resolve conflict, they will. And there's conflict in play. Absolutely. There's half of play is negotiating. You watch children play. There's always like, no, that is not for a fairy. That is for the elephant. No, the spaceship is not going there.

That is very real conflict. Or I want this, you know, I'm using the hammer. No, you can't have the hammer, whatever, all of the ways. And they'll resolve it because they want to get back to work. They want to play. And then also the play itself is a way of understanding people that is much different than verbal communication. And as a designer and as a creative person, Like, when I collaborate with someone or when I'm making something with somebody,

but it's essentially playing. That's like, for me, that's my primary form of adult play is my work. And when I'm collaborating, I understand someone so much differently. I could sit next to somebody for years and not understand them the way that I do after just 10 minutes of playing. In play, we understand people in ways that are so nuanced and human that we haven't. added structure and rules and all of our other complicated grown-up ways to. Yeah, I mean, that makes so much sense. I have a friend of mine runs a foundation called Arlution, and a lot of what they do is they go into conflict zones, and they'll go and they'll bring a whole bunch of oftentimes kids together.

Oftentimes kids who are on other side, the opposite sides of a really major conflict or issue, and they'll find some public space, like a wall somewhere or even in a refugee. camp or something and they'll bring them together along with a bunch of local artists and they'll make these massive collaborative paintings murals and you've got these kids you know like who didn't understand each other like we're always told stories about like how they were the enemy in many ways and all of a sudden within a short period of time they're playing together they're collaborating together they're seeing each other's ideas and visions and values through like the other person's eyes just through the act of playing in the form of craft of painting of making art together I think it's so powerful when you get to do things like that.

And yet, again, I feel like it's hard enough to do that as kids. You know, in that situation, you need somebody, like a group of people who really facilitate the experience. And I'm sure we've all heard about experiences as adults where, you know, like there's some program that brings people together and has people basically in some way, they manufacture an experience where people see the common experiences and history rather than all the things that separate them. Right. A lot of this, though, this gets to something I want to touch into also, which is this notion of when you embrace possibility, part of that necessarily means that

you also have to embrace uncertainty. You have to step into the space of the unknown. We're really bad at it and really uncomfortable doing that. Yeah, and I think that's because that's the part and parcel with play. If we have more play in our life and if we're more comfortable playing, I think we'll be much more comfortable in uncertainty. Free play it, especially. A project that I just did with the UN, the ILO, the International Labor Organization has an international training center. So it's the ITC ILO of the UN brought me in for a workshop about the future of learning. And obviously because, and I'd worked with them before and they love play and they use play in a lot of their training centers and are in a lot of their process as they work with different countries. This was kind of a peak AI when people were just beginning to kind of tie.

Everything was, I mean, it still is two months ago. However, whether or not, regardless of the format of learning, the thing we need to learn is each other. And my thesis for this workshop that we did and we brought together, we had eight-year-olds and people who were between 65 and 82 years old working together. And we paired them one on one. and I set up these different steps throughout the day, but the thesis of the future of learning is learning each other. And it was interesting to have a few different methods, some were conversational and trying to make it non-hierarchical.

This is the other thing about the beauty of play, and it's not always easy to create the conditions for non-hierarchical play because so often there's a physical advantage. In this case, with intergenerational play, the children have an advantage because they're intuitively driven to play, whereas adults, you know, have the advantage of that they kind of like have an expert perceived expertise of some kind or just the habits of an eight-year-old is used to looking to the 60-year-old for what to do. And the 60-year-old is used to telling the eight, right? So we had to work pretty hard to set up conditions that were non-hierarchical and where nobody would kind of have the instinct to guide, to direct. And at the end of the day, the most most powerful moments were when they were making things together, right? So the conversations were playful and there were some other little, like they made skits. They had to kind of act out things. All of it was beautiful, but there were just these really quiet moments of them

working together on the sets, actually, for their skits. And none of them, you know, the olders in the group weren't necessarily artists or creative people. The eight-year-olds for the most part all proclaimed that they loved drawing, as most eight-year-olds do. No one was necessarily in their element. But in play, they all just relaxed. It's sort of like if the rules are we're all out of our element, then we're all, it's like it's normalized, right?

And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, yeah. Like there's no expectation I'm going to be good at this or proficient or like I have to perform to some expectation. We're all just kind of living in the mystery. And that's actually, like that's the point. Exactly. And that's play and that's uncertainty. Yeah. And we've been talking a little bit more about this distinction between playing for your own purposes and also collective play. Like what happens when we play together. And it sounds like these are practices that both of them would be good. Like it would be good to find practices where we can just make play a part of our own lives individually and also find ways or create the conditions to be able to do this with other people. Because it sounds like they're different benefits. For the sake of kind of giving us a collective vocabulary, I define some adult play types.

It's interesting in early childhood, in particular, I borrow a list of playtypes from playworkers. There are trained professionals who work on junk playgrounds and adventure playgrounds. There are a few in the U.S. They're all over Europe. Playworkers have these play types that they use because they spend a lot of time reflecting and talking about the play with each other and kind of understanding children and observing play. As a design professor and teaching design for play for 13 years, I'd use these play types,

whether my students were designing for children or for adults or for intergenerational play. And it hadn't really critically about, you know, if there needed to be a different version for adults, right? And then when I started writing the book, the thing that made me realize was talking about risk. That made me realize actually adults, obviously we play differently, like developmentally, a 30-year-old will play differently than a 5-year-old, right? A 5-year-old plays different than a 10-year-old because developmentally we're using play or we're getting something different out of play. So developmentally, I knew we were different, but I thought like the play might be the same. But I realized that one of the big ones is like what we would consider risky play. Like what's risky for a child is maybe going around the corner from their family at the playground or like 30 feet away from.

their blanket at the beach, right? And this is back to kind of DW-W. Winnicott's safe space, right? If you have any experience with Winnicott's beautiful theories of what is safe and risk and the importance of risk and play. And the same is said for adults. I think to be pushed out of our comfort zone, so to step into uncertainty is part of what helps us grow. Like that's what challenges us, right? That is still throughout life to be challenged as part of what makes us feel good. Again, whether or not we're good at it, right? So I was like, well, what's risky for an adult is actually just playing, right? One of my adult play types is behavior play or misbehavior play. And I kind of started to realize that all playing for an adult is misbehaving, which is just such a mess. Like,

my hope is that in 10 years, I'll have to revise the book because we'll all be so playful that it's no, won't be considered misbehavior for an adult to just, you know, like I said, like sing in public or groove a little bit while you're waiting for gas. So in the adult play types, it was interesting to separate out that social play. All of them can benefit from social play. All of the play types can be done socially, and all of them have versions that are free play or not free play, but then still try to look at like, how do we play? And like, how can we organize them so that we can start to see it and talk about it more?

That was fun and interesting and different than how children play. and I think also different from this idea of like our inner child. I don't want people necessarily to tap into their inner child and expect to play like that. I want people to tap into your inner you now and play like that. Find it where your play is now. And maybe it relates to how you played as a child. But it's probably changed a bit and what you needed then and how play served you then is going to be different than how play can serve you now.

That makes so much sense to me. Somebody is listening or joining or watching us in this conversation. They're kind of nodding along. They're like, yeah, I get this. Like, it makes sense. And I want to actually see if I can bring some more of this into my life. What's this sort of, what's an easy first step in? I think releasing judgment.

Please do not judge yourself if you're not play. If you don't think you're playful, right? So, like, I'm aware that people that it's not another thing that you have to now be good at, right? Like, oh, God, cast now I'm supposed to play on top of everything else, like the kids. and the things like no this is not or like now I have to find time or clear time for this like maybe and also no on your way to to work on your way to picking up kids like the grocery store like while you're cooking let yourself you know kind of embrace the possibility of a new route like look up from your phone and people watch and remember that like people are really interesting fascinating in fact

and look with curiosity, and you will be entertained, most likely. And the same can be said for nature. Like, nature is pretty cool. And the world we live in is actually, there is a lot there to play with in your imagination, with your attention. And so I think, like, the habit of escaping our present world into a digital world, right? Or like, I just need to, like, I need to get out of here, right? We, like, go into our devices. When I'm scrolling social media on occasion, I'm like, wait, wait, what am I?

looking for? Why am I in here instead of being out here in this actual world with these actual humans that live near me? I think that's a good step. Releasing judgment and letting yourself be wherever you are and look up from your phone. And if you're the only one doing it, release the judgment that that's weird and that people are going to think you're weird because you're looking around or like, oh, you must not be important because you're not answering emails all day. I've done that in the coffee shop I'll sometimes do that as an exercise and like I'll just stand there waiting

and intentionally with my phone in my pocket and I'm looking around everyone else is on their devices and I feel really weird because I'm like somebody's going to look up and be like what's up with him Right and in fact you are the same one It is a weirdest feeling Yeah It is bizarre it's like no I'm just really trying to pay attention

to what's in front of me I know it's weird but hey I'm going to roll with it Yeah It feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So in this container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To make decisions and find purpose that gives you meaning. Thank you.

Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say, but you'll also love the conversation we had with Debbie Millman about designing a life through creativity and story. You can find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsay Fox, and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Alejandro Ramirez, and Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still listening here. do me personal favor, step and second favor,

share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too, but just one person even. Then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter, because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.