Aaron McHugh - Fire Your Boss: Discover Work You Love Without Quitting Your Job

To Leith, Holden, Averi, and Hadley.

Your lives give me courage, love, and joy to keep going.

CHAPTER 13

THE POWER OF PLAY

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

W WHEN DO YOU JUST play? Sams question caught me off guard. Sam was my new friend and Aloha ambassador who, just moments before, had witnessed me flip my one-man outrigger canoe repeatedly. He had graciously offered helpful advice like try easy and then silence to allow me some room to figure out that more muscle wasnt the answer. After a few more tries, we left the shoreline of the napping sea turtles to paddle into Kukio Bay in search of a sandy point to start our fitness routine. Onshore, running barefoot in the golden sand between push-ups and lunges, Sam dropped that question: When do you leave your watch at home and run just for fun? When do you just play? Between flipping the canoe and the lunges, I was feeling quite shaky. Maybe thats why he chose to ask when he did. He knew my defenses were weak, and he might get an honest answer.

Although Sam and I had just met, he knew my story. Hed met my daughter, Hadley, and he seemed to appreciate all the stress that I was attempting to manage in my life. He saw how I used physical fitness as my release valve to siphon off the built-up pressure. Having spent his career developing vacation homes along the Kohala Coast for clients with last names like Dell and Schwab, Sam knew one when he saw oneone being someone who didnt know how to play. In the wake of his question, I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. My answer? Um, never.

Childs Play

We have to let go of exhaustion, busyness, and productivity as status symbols and measures of self-worth. We are impressing no one.

Bren Brown

Allow me to channel my inner Aloha Sam and ask you, When do you just play? When do you leave the watch, literal or figurative, behind and do something simply for the joy of it? If you, like me back then, have no idea what Im talking about, then its highly likely that your life is over-programmed, over-scheduled, and everything is either a competition or a checklist of efficiency or some toxic cocktail of both. If so, thats perfect. Im here to help.

Im intentional these days about asking people that question, When do you just play? And the two most popular answers I get are

1. when Im on vacation,

or

2. never.

I dont fault anyone for those answers. Theyre fair. If youll recall, never was the answer I gave Aloha Sam. I was truly perplexed by the idea of playing as a grown man. I needed some help interpreting what it means to play as an adult, because if Im honest, I believed that play was for children. Thus the phrase childs play. As kids, we playedyou know, like Tonka trucks and running through the woods playing games like Capture the Flag. But in a strange twist on that old Bible verse, when I became a man, I put away those child things. As an adult, I was more about achieving life goals. I mean, Im a big deal now, and theres important stuff to do, right? Of course, if anyone pressed me on the question, Id respond with stories of climbing mountains and competing in triathlons. I assumed that because I exercised daily and occasionally came home bloody and muddy, that must mean I was playing. Yes, those were/are healthy outlets for adventure and physical fitness. But heres the subtle little secret: when I engaged in them, I was always measuring my performance, keeping score. And thats not playing.

In 1938, Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga wrote about the importance of play in culture: Play is a free activity standing quite consciously outside ordinary life as being not serious, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. Ill spare you Johans sociologist technical jargon. Simplified, he sees play as having two key qualities:

• No one is keeping score.
• We engage in an activity for enjoyment and no other gain.

Now let me channel my inner Huizinga and ask, When was the last time you did something for the sheer fun and enjoyment of it? Seriously, when? And what do you do on a fairly regular basis that involves no element of keeping score or monitoring performance?

Lava Rocks and Smoke Breaks

Back to that time on the Big Island. My family and I were vacationing for three weeks, which became my detox from my addictions to stress and busyness. While there, I received an invitation to join a mixed bag of men (from billionaire residents to Kona locals) for something they called Run the Rock. We assembled on the beach, grabbed paddleboards or jumped on a five-man outrigger canoe, and splashed our way to a nearby cove for their ritual. Heres how Run the Rock goes: I partnered up with a guy, and then Id dive down, pick up a lava rock, and run along the ocean floor. When I was out of gas, Id resurface, and my buddy would dive down and take his turn, I mean, run. It was an absolute monster.

I later learned that running the rock is a regular aspect of lifeguard and big-wave surfer training. But I have to confess that in those moments, without a watch, void of any sense of competition, deep in the ocean blue, Sams question clicked, and I thought, I feel like Im eight years old again, free from any responsibilities and fully alive down here, totally enjoying this experience! Hey, Sam, look at me, I m playing!

Months later, back on the mainland, at work in my office building and attempting to live with that Run-the-Rock spirit, a spark ignited: I think Ill become a smoker. Stay with me here, okay? My reality was thisI couldnt seem to find any time during the day to play. Every minute of my work day was scheduled with calls and meetings. However, I noticed the smokers each possessed a free hall pass of permission to run outside for ten or fifteen minutes, multiple times per day. No one gave them a stink eye. Hell, there are even laws to protect them. In that realization, my idea was bornWhy dont I act like Im a smoker and turn those workday smoke breaks into playful moments instead?

Remember, I warned you about the necessity of holding unorthodox ideas. Im just saying.

Play doesnt just help us explore what is essential.
It is essential in and of itself .

Greg McKeown

Armed with nothing more than courage and a BIC lighter from 7-Eleven, I started using my smoke breaks to go to my truck in the parking lot and fire up my small portable backpacking stove. And for what reason? To brew up a hot cup of coffee on my tailgate. I had no intention of becoming a smoker, I just wanted an excuse to catch my breath, enjoy a few moments of not keeping score, and enter into the spirit of play. For a couple of years before this epiphany, this stove sat in my basement on my gear shelf, and it bugged the crap out of me how little use it received. I had big dreams of taking it on multi-day adventures backpacking the high country in Colorado, but I never went. Each year the stove gathered a little more dust, that is, until my brain exploded with this question: What if I lived adventurously and played while at work? Some men carry a lava rock underwater. Some men brew coffee during their smoke break. Its all play.