If there was one thing that generated creative solutions, reduced exhaustion, strengthened team cohesion, improved cognitive flexibility, and made us better at our jobs, wouldn't every professional on the planet be prioritising it like mad?
There is, and of course, we aren't.
Since the Industrial Revolution, play has been viewed as appropriate for children and poets but not for serious adults. The assumption is that serious = competent.
Most treat play as a guiltily enjoyed, occasionally affordable morale boost.
And I get it. We want to impress our bosses and our parents and we think about our list of errands and how easily will AI replace me? White knuckling from one task to another, we must be taken seriously. We NEED to be seen as competent.
Then there is some girl on LinkedIn saying we need play.
But play is not a distraction from serious work. It is the path to professional performance. From working artists to Nobel laureates, exceptional professionals maintain a playful attitude toward their work.
There is, firstly, play as engagement — when work itself becomes playful, when the task is approached with curiosity and looseness rather than grim determination. This kind of play, as you can imagine, drives creative output directly.
Then there is play as diversion — banter, long lunches and Friday night drinks. Play as diversion builds trust, ease, and genuine warmth that lower friction when work becomes difficult. Pretty simply, both matter.
The science of play When we play, amygdala activity decreases and the prefrontal cortex activates. Play reduces the fear of failure, the single greatest suppressant of creative risk-taking. Animals play to practice for the hunt, to test limits and gather feedback in a low-stakes environment so that when it is serious, a single look is enough to know to toe the line. We do the same. Pattern recognition, risk assessment, and reading a room are skills we train and develop in states of play.
Leaders who bring genuine playfulness to their teams find that interpersonal conflict decreases, not because difficult things go unsaid, but because the shared experience of play shifts the focus away from personal ego and toward the collective.
Play suspends ordinary conventions, structural obligations, and functional pressures. Creativity is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the instinct to play.
One caveat: Play must be voluntary, authentic, and meaningful to be effective. Forced fun can be painfully superficial and lead to cynicism.
What can we do? Next time you’re rushing around proving your (not to be undermined) competence, ask:
How do I feel when I am truly at play? In what environments do I feel most playful? (where am I, who's there, what am I doing) What would it take for this work to feel like play? Where do I see play, on the spectrum from essential to mere distraction?
“do me this favour!
If you don’t want to dance, laugh or sing, if all that bores you, then I ask you, I beg you for just once in your lives, just for fun, to astonish us or make us laugh, summon up your energy and all together think up something witty or brilliant, say something which even if it’s rude or vulgar, at least is funny and fresh.”
Ivanov, a play written by Anton Chekhov about a character who, once passionate, became overwhelmed by debt, boredom and a paralysing inability to take action.
Reflecting on his career, Chekhov said that as a doctor, he had described the sickness of the soul correctly.
His prescription in Ivanov is clear: please do something, just for fun.
Sources: Mainemelis, C. & Ronson, S. (2006).Ideas are Born in Fields of Play: Towards a Theory of Play and Creativity in Organizational Settings Research in Organizational Behavior, 27, 81–131. The neurobiology of play: a narrative review of evidence from mice and humans for advancing neurorehabilitation. A Brain Motivated to Play: Insights into the Neurobiology of Playfulness. Additional references: Freud (1926); Vygotsky (1978); Piaget (2001); Winnicott (2001); Csikszentmihalyi (1997); Gardner (1993); Henri de Man (1927, in Roy 1959); Spariosu (1989); Anton Chekhov, Ivanov (1887).