What if We Never Stopped Playing?

All mammals (and even many other animals) play when they are young. It’s how they learn.

When they aren’t afraid to try new things and fun with new experiences, their brains (and bodies) develop and they are able to grow to where they will be successful adults.

And then, in animals just as in humans: it stops. Instead of investing in more growth, they stop playing and they focus on survival and raising young.

From an evolutionary point of view, it makes sense that they would only spend so much time developing and then, when ready, would devote all of their time to raising new copies of their DNA.

But let’s say your primary goal wasn’t just to pass on your genetic material, and you weren’t simultaneously facing all of the challenges of caveman life. Is this really the best way to go about life?

Of course it’s not.

Life is very different now, I’m likely to live much longer than a caveman, and my priorities differ greatly. I think it’s extremely obvious that development should continue long past our mid-twenties.

Now, I’m well aware that primary brain development stops around 26, and that seems to coincide closely with when most people stop “playing” much. I’m not sure to what extend it’s possible to keep learning like a child beyond that time.

But my gut tells me that if you approach new experiences and challenges with child-like enthusiasm and interest, you are very likely to learn new things and develop yourself at any age.

So while I know the “grown-up” thing to do as one ages is to become more serious, stop trying new things, and to focus strictly on production, I just don’t think that’s for me. I think it’s a huge shame to stop playing and trying new things. And it might just be halting development that could easily continue, too.

It may even be possible that the rate of development and improvement enjoyed by children and young adults could by matched long into more advanced ages. It seems to me that if you managed to do so, you would have an incredible advantage over your peers by the time you were middle-aged.

So I think I’ll keep playing!

 

It’s Amazing that I Still Don’t Have Time

I barely leave the house, and yet I still feel like I barely have any time to get things done at all.

My experience makes me feel like I have nothing in common at all with other people. Maybe it’s becauseĀ  actual hobbies have become a dying pastime.

But I’ve been filling all of my days with work, learning/studying, exercising, socializing, house/yard work, and of course other hobbies like kayaking, disc golfing, etc.

And I feel like I’m really productive, but at the same time, there still just isn’t enough time. I’ve found that I’m never even close to bored, I’m never sitting around doing nothing (or even just watching TV for fun), and I rarely finish everything I set out to finish for the day.

And the bigger problem is that I’m not finishing some of the very most-important things I’m supposed to be doing. There are major, long-term projects in my business that are critical to my future success that I’m not getting done.

Maybe I just thought that with everything shut down, it would be easy to get all of these things done. But obviously that won’t be the case for me.

So now I’m left wondering if I need to start cutting some things out or limiting certain activities more, even if they are productive.

Or maybe it’s just a case of needing to delegate more in my business. I think that, along with the sense of “having more time”, I’ve started to take on more of the development work myself. That’s time that could fairly easily be freed-up by delegation.

Maybe the answer really is that simple. I guess I’ll have to think more about that.

Either way, it truly is important that I figure out how to get these important long-term things done. My career depends on it!