In my eyes, Malone is an almost perfect example of a non-scrub — a person who saw into the game of business, and played the actual game, not some made-up, more difficult version of the game. Malone’s insight was that he could load TCI up with debt (at a disciplined five-to-one earnings ratio), and then use the interest payments and cable equipment depreciation as a tax shield for TCI’s utility-like, monopoly cash flows. He then used that debt to expand aggressively, gaining scale advantages, until TCI became the largest cable company in the US, owning interests in various cable programming and tech ventures along the way.
https://commoncog.com/blog/playing-to-play-playing-to-win/
In everyday interaction, we spend a large part of our time either trying to fill a role other people expect or want us to fill, or avoiding that role. But a game removes this type-casting stress by telling us exactly what our role is. It gives us an arbitrary alter-ego into which we can escape for an hour and a half. We’re not John or Jane Doe trying to balance career-family-mortgage, we’re Colonel Mustard in the drawing room with a revolver. And we can act accordingly–which means, paradoxically, that we can act more like ourselves.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199807/wanna-play
Even though I was excited to start living more playfully, I explained to Harry that once I returned from work after the holidays and had momentary breaks from the chaos, I just felt exhausted, and in no mood to be playful.
Instead, given a few minutes to do something fun or joyful, I checked my phone, email or social media, probably subconsciously in search of a dopamine hit, or maybe because it felt productive to add to my grocery list or respond to a text message. On the day of the attempted coup at the Capitol, I scrolled for updates as part of my job but also as a concerned citizen.
Source: How to stop wasting time scrolling and start finding joy in play
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once described play as ‘[b]ecoming and dissolution, building and destruction without moral implication, in eternal innocence’ – as an act to be found ‘in the world only in the play of the artist and child’. When I ask my six-year-old Jeanne what happens when we play, she says: ‘If all the children in the world play at the same time, it grows. It grows and grows.’ Playing is like a dream, for, as the poet Paul Valéry wrote in 1914, in dreams ‘we have a combination of EVERY POSSIBLE MEANS of diverse impressions’. Play is an opening of multitudes.
Yet, paradoxically, for all its emphasis on multitudes and freedom, play involves strict rules, making it a skill that can be honed. Various play specialists, such as Fink and the social scientist Roger Caillois, have attempted to define the necessary criteria to reach the state of play, one that Fink describes as bringing light, or ‘day-ing’ the world. According to another play expert, the psychiatrist Stuart Brown, our need to play stems from our biological neoteny: we are the only mammals with an 18-year-old childhood. For Brown, play possesses certain key attributes: it is purposeless, voluntary and inherently attractive, while offering freedom from time, diminished consciousness of self, improvisational potential and continuous desire. When we play, we exist outside of time, and don’t want to stop.
Source: Play is cathartic, allowing people to sit with their shadows | Aeon Essays
This roomful of gadgets reveals the other Shannon, the one who rode through the halls of Bell Laboratories on a unicycle while simultaneously juggling four balls, invented a rocket-powered Frisbee, and designed a “mind-reading” machine.
This room typifies the Shannon who—seeking insights that could lead to a chess-playing machine—began playing so much chess at work that “at least one supervisor became somewhat worried,” according to a former colleague.
Shannon makes no apologies. “I’ve always pursued my interests without much regard for final value or value to the world,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve spent lots of time on totally useless things.”
Source: Claude Shannon: Tinkerer, Prankster, and Father of Information Theory – IEEE Spectrum
Every animal including humans rely on play as a way to learn how to fit in and thrive. As far as we know, only insects don’t engage in some form of play because their behaviors are all hard-wired rather than learned.
“Play provides an environment for experimenting with risk. When a lion cub deliberately gives up some control over its body, it puts itself at a disadvantage, allowing others to succeed in pouncing on it. Marc Bekoff of the University of Colorado Boulder and his colleagues have proposed that play increases the versatility of movements used to recover from a loss of balance and enhances the ability of the player to cope with unexpected stressful situations. The goal is not to win but to improve skills, sometimes by self-handicapping.”
Caitlin O’Connell, “Play Is Serious Business for Elephants.” Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/play-is-serious-business-for-elephants/
Words of wisdom from the Harvard Business Review article, “We Need Imagination Now More Than Ever:”
3. Allow yourself to be playful.
Crises require a goal-driven and serious response. However, in times of stress, we tend to overlook the important human capacity of play to temporarily forget about goals and improvise. Biologically, play can be characterized as de-risked, accelerated learning. For example, juvenile animals’ mock fighting is highly effective preparation for real combat.
In unprecedented, rapidly changing situations, play is a critical capability. As well as providing some much-needed stress relief — how many of us are currently working from dawn to dusk? — play can end up being, counterintuitively, very productive. We can make interesting, new connections between ideas when we allow ourselves to loosen up from our regular, goal-driven, laser-focused, instrumental approach.
“Creativity is the rearrangement of existing knowledge into new, useful combinations,” Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, chairman of the LEGO Brand Group, told us. “Just like playing with LEGO Bricks, this can lead you to valuable innovations — like the Google search engine or the Airbnb business model.”
Sometimes nothing immediately useful will come of play, but playing at least allows us to practice imagining, improvising, and being open to inspiration — all important skills when navigating the unknown.
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