The other day I was reclining on the couch playing God of War 2018 on the PS5.
I'm a few hours into the game and I find myself at a crossroads, literally and metaphorically.
I could choose to row my boat left and progress the main storyline, or I could choose to row my boat right and do a side quest that seems interesting, but that wouldn't really progress the main story.
I noticed that my default thought process is we've got to go left because that'll get us moving through the storyline faster.
But then I stop and notice that thought.
I think, Hmm, that's interesting.
I'm playing a video game here.
So why do I feel the need to play it efficiently?
Why does my first thought go to what's the fastest way to progress the game?
And after some thinking, I land on the question what's actually the point of playing this video game?
And the answer comes pretty quickly.
Obviously, the point is to simply enjoy the journey of playing.
There is no cosmic significance to my playing God of War.
It's not an exercise in self-improvement.
The points or levels that I earn in the game have less than zero impact on my life.
It's simply an arbitrary video game that I'm playing at an arbitrary difficulty level purely for the purposes of passing the time and doing something enjoyable.
So I decide to turn right and take the more scenic route, doing the side quest.
That has no bearing on the main storyline, but enjoying myself with the attitude of leaning back, relaxing and enjoying the challenge of this arbitrary video game.
The following morning I'm in the office with the team and I'm working on some designs for our new productivity app.
And I find myself feeling a tad on edge with how little time I've got available to work on it.
I've just got a few hours of deep work before the next meeting, and then it's lunchtime.
And then my afternoon's packed with the gym, followed by a couple of more meetings with the dev team.
And I find myself approaching these designs with an air of franticness, an air of feeling like I'm running out of time and therefore I've got to make progress on this quickly.
But then I remember the feeling when playing God of War, the feeling of trying to do things efficiently.
So I asked myself that question again.
What's actually the point of us building this productivity app?
Sure, if the app does well, it'll mean more money for the business, and it would be cool to be building an app that lots of people around the world use and it helps them manage their time and achieve their goals.
But in the grand scheme of things, a few decades from now, if not way sooner, the app will be completely forgotten.
A few more decades from now, me and our entire team will be dead, and no one will particularly care about this random app that we spent a few years building on planet Earth.
This app that I'm spending all this time and energy working on actually has zero cosmic significance.
So what's the point?
Well, I realized that much like a video game, the point is primarily to enjoy the experience of building the thing.
If we build it well, it'll hopefully have a little more impact on our lives than literally spending those hours playing more video games.
But honestly, not that much more on a cosmic scale.
In many ways, the journey of building an app is much like the journey of playing a video game.
It's an arbitrary goal with an arbitrary level of difficulty, played for the primary purpose of building something cool and enjoying the journey of building it.
So then I think huh, If the point of building this app is actually primarily to enjoy the journey of building this app, what if I approached it like I approached playing God of War?
What if, instead of approaching it with an attitude of franticness or stress, I instead take a breath, I lean back, I relax and I try to remember that building the app is an arbitrary video game, where the primary goal is to simply enjoy the challenge.
And you know what?
I have a pretty good time.
For the next few hours, I get my study with me Spotify playlist playing through my headphones.
I take breaks every now and then to get a coffee.
And while approaching it in this relaxed fashion, I make a lot of progress and I come up with a bunch of cool new ideas.
And I have a pretty good time.
The very first chapter of my book, Feel Good Productivity, is titled Play.
The whole thesis of the entire book is that when we approach our work in the spirit of play, we actually become more productive, more creative and less stressed.
And on top of that, the work ends up generating rather than draining our energy.
But even though I've written that chapter and I've seen firsthand the benefits of taking a more playful approach to work, I still find myself in defaulting to the mode of.
This is a serious thing that needs to be done quickly and productively and efficiently.
Over time, I think I've gotten a bit better at catching myself when I do this and then trying to deliberately switch over to play mode, but it still isn't my default setting.
I'd love for it to be so that my approach to practically every goal or project in work or in life is to treat it with an attitude of lightness, ease and sincerity, rather than heaviness and seriousness.
Zooming out even more, I have found myself wondering this.
What if every goal we're working towards in our work, our health, our relationships, our home life?
What if all those goals are merely arbitrary video games, played on an arbitrary level of difficulty, where the primary purpose is, in fact, to enjoy the journey of playing them?
What if the journey is in fact the destination?
And after all that, we've landed on a classic cliche.
Thank you for watching.
See you next time.
