Progress Through Play!

Hidden Potential by Adam Grant

Chapter 4: Transforming the Daily Grind

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Main points:

• Turning work into play is a kind of mental scaffolding. It helps you overcome a specific challenge at a certain point in time
• Why games are so effective:
  • They shift how you approach something by boxing in the time and rules of the experience
  • They can turn a business headache into a fun problem to solve
  • They can lower the stakes
  • They create a tangible step in what can otherwise feel very nebulous
• It helps to create a scoreboard to track your progress on an area you want to shift towards greater play
• The point is to make positive actions feel good and become natural
• Here's a game you can use to turn your negative thinking into a game that's fun to play:
  • When you find yourself thinking, "This will be hard" or, "I have to buckle down" you caught one. Give yourself a point for catching the "grind mind" in action
  • When you create rules for a game that makes it fun give yourself 5 points
  • When you create a game to bring that fun to your team, give yourself 10 points
  • Share your score at the end of the day, either with yourself, your colleagues or new friends in the Superabound Collective
  • Try to beat your score each day until you're consistently approaching work with a new habit of play

Transcript:

So if you tuned in at 11 o'clock Eastern on the dot and wondered, Where was he, you know, here we are a few minutes late, but ready to rock. So thank you for joining me thanks for listening in, we have chapter four of Adam grants, hidden potential in the non boring leadership book club here with the Superabound Collective, we are live in the Superabound collective as well as here on LinkedIn, I'd love to hear from you. Go ahead and drop a comment on what resonates for you what gets you excited what you're going to use in your work as a leader and a business owner. That's what we're here to do is take our leadership game to the next level. And I use the word game. And that's what today is all about. It is progress through play. So we're not just going to talk about progress through play, I'm going to give you a game that you can start playing today that will help you make progress in an area that is really important to you. That was Aaron's idea she brings all the fun I'm I tend to be the more boring of the two of us. And so she said, how are you going to make it not boring. And so bringing a game was her idea. So thank you to Erin she sends her love and best wishes even though she is on the road and not able to join us live today. So to begin with chapter four, we're talking about scaffolding, right, the first three chapters were about character skills, which I spoke all about how I love that framing, of aspects of ourselves that we can develop, that we can build that makes them skills of character. This is all about scaffolding the next three chapters, and scaffolding is something external to us. It is something useful for a point in time. And it is for a specific challenge. And often, you know, just like scaffolding on a building, eventually you take it down once you have achieved your desired result in in, as it relates to today's topic, the challenge in mind, let's begin with something that you dread. Something that is just very unpleasant, that for whatever reason, it's not appropriate for you to delegate, maybe it's a skill that you want to develop. For instance, if you are in a leadership role, and you don't like difficult conversations, right? Maybe they get you amped up, maybe you do things to avoid them. You don't want to provide feedback or constructive criticism, that could be the thing that you use the scaffolding for. If you're a business owner, and you shy away from marketing conversations, marketing posts, you know, kind of getting your word out there, you could use that you could use this for that. Similarly, if you're a business owner, and you don't like the admin side of things, kind of a bookkeeping, record keeping uploading receipts, same thing, you can use this for that. So I want you to take a moment just as we begin and think about whatever it is that's currently on your plate that causes you some level of dread discontent, that will be what we're going to create a game for. Today, we're going to we're going to turn it into something fun, right progress through play. Um, want to hear your thoughts? Because I think the big question for me is, what makes a game so much more enjoyable? Like, why? Why does that have an impact? If we see things as a game versus as a grind? I want to know, share it, share it on the comments there. I have a couple of thoughts, things I thought through with Aaron here. And what comes up for me is a game makes things more approachable, more enjoyable for like four key reasons, I think. One is that it has an endpoint with a game, you know that at some point it's going to be over. There's a buzzer and then you can walk off the field and you can be Happy with your effort whether you won or lost, you put it in. And now you get to step back. Work. If you feel kind of burnt out or rundown, it's often because there's the sense of there being no endpoint. I sometimes tell this story because it's so dramatic and was shocking to me at the time. But Aaron and I spent some time at the place where the Spartan Race was invented, and the precursor to the Spartan Race was actually called the Death Race. And what we learned about the Death Race was that, Among its many other horrible features, hence the name, it had no finish line. You had no idea when you could stop going through the obstacles and ordeals because some of them were obstacles, and others were literally ordeals, like recite something that you had learned, you know, 10 or 15 minutes earlier. And if you missed something from the recitation, eat a raw onion. What am I doing this morning. And so the Death Race would end when there was a certain amount of attrition, right? Like if 90% of the people had dropped out, then they'd ring the bell and the race would be over. So that is a particular kind of psychological challenge that work often presents people with. And if you have something that you are dreading, oftentimes it is from this sense of, there's no endpoint, there's no way to win, there's no, you know, what's the use. So if you can box it, like we do with games, then it becomes more more winnable, more approachable. So don't turn your work into a Death Race, I guess is what I'm saying there. Another element of a game is that it lowers the stakes. Now, some games, the stakes are really high. But usually, in the end, you know, you can say, well, it's just a game. With work, oftentimes, the stakes are higher, there's a lot of money at stake, sometimes people's lives are literally at stake. But oftentimes, it's lower than that. And yet we treat it as though we are searching for the cure for cancer. Even if you are searching for the cure to cancer, oftentimes your work is not quite as life or death, right? It's a meeting here, it's an experiment there, it's just the work that's on your plate for that day. So turning it into a game can lower the stakes and actually free up creativity. Right, if you think about the kind of flow that you can enter, when you're on the field of play, and you're just enjoying yourself in that process. It's it's very conducive to doing great work. So it lowers the stakes, it boxes things, it turns a challenge and obstacle, almost a test of your own self worth into a fun puzzle that you can solve. During the pandemic, Aaron and I got very deep into, like gloom, Haven, that's what we're doing now. It was Arkham Horror, Arkham Horror, and, you know, a lot of similarities to what was happening in the world other than the horrible monsters. But you know, it was it was these very challenging situations, but because it was on a playing field in front of us, we were able to just enjoy the process of solving problems, overcoming challenges. And so the game shifts, right, it shifts, what could otherwise be seen as a big problem into a fun puzzle. Again, not to diminish the work that you're doing, but actually open up your mind space to be more creative. Right? Think about how creative you are when you're having fun. When you're playing something when you're in a video game, or a sports, you know, sports ball, whatever it is that you love to do, there's a freedom there a freedom and a flow. And that's what you want to bring so that you can do your best work. That's why we talked about progress through play. So let's create a game, shall we? The first step is to think about the area of work the aspect that kind of gets you down something that you dread. For me that often comes around marketing you know, putting out a message putting out something for people to engage with consume I have a lot of self judgment sometimes self doubt creeps in there and so then I will kind of shy away from it. And you know, sometimes I'll muster the strength to get over it and you know, come on, man, just buckle down, get the thing done. But what actually helps me out with that is turning it into a game. So consider for yourself something that you kind of dread that you find yourself procrastinating on. Once you've got that I want To find a piece of paper, or maybe pull up a fresh Google Doc or if you have a whiteboard, let's start the whiteboard and create your scoreboard. Alright, here we go. So we're going to create a scoreboard where you get to award yourself points for the progress that you make.

Here are my proposed rules for the game. The timeframe for each round, is one day, when you start your workday, and when you finish your workday, you earn one point for catching thoughts that are, we call them static, the unhelpful thoughts, the things that have you dreading, or shying away from or really not bringing your most creative presence to the work at hand. Thoughts like, this will be hard, or time to buckle down. Anything that turns it from a game into, you know, serious work. Give yourself one point, it's like catching a Pokemon. catch a Pokemon, give yourself a point, you don't even have to change it. Sometimes that awareness is all that you need. Right? We're talking about scaffolding here, building up that process of noticing that static when it comes in. Let's say you're a leader, and you need to give somebody feedback. And you hear yourself thinking, Oh, God, another uncomfortable conversation, or, Oh, I don't have time to be constantly correcting my people, right, any of those thoughts that weigh you down and prevent you from really being your most creative, most engaged, most helpful self? Check it up, right? Give yourself a checkmark there. And the reason we're doing that is not necessarily even to change them at first is to become aware of, again, what we call static, because that static makes the actual thing you need to do, let's say a conversation with one of your direct reports much harder. Or sitting down and creating a report, you know, maybe doing some admin work. It makes it harder, right? If you're like, Oh, God, I hate this admin stuff. How enthused Are you going to be to actually open up your computer and get to work, even if you do it? Aaron always gets on my case, not gets on my case. But she calls me out for sitting down to work, and I've got a frown on my face. And I'm like, It's my working face, what it's my working face. But it's much nicer to actually be engaged to be loose to be in the flow. That's how I would like to be rather than frowning. So, you know, those are all chances to catch yourself kind of in the, you know, work mode, rather than turning it into a game. So that's my proposal one point for catching the Poke Ilan. Five Points for creating a game. So, you know, give yourself a plus five, when you turn that activity from a grind into something that shifts the frame. And the frame could be alright, here's my, here's my time that I'm going to work on it. It could be a game against the clock. It could be number of repetitions done. So if you're doing your receipts, how many receipts can I get uploaded? If you are providing feedback to somebody? The game could be? How quickly and compassionately Can I do it? Right? If you're someone who says I'll wait to our next one on one and your next one on one is in a week, and then it gets rescheduled for the following week, it ends up being two weeks before you provide any feedback to the person. How short can you make that window? So plus five for creating that game. For me in terms of the creating the marketing message, kind of getting it out there. The game that I created that got me over the hump and really into the work was asking myself, How much love and authenticity, like how much of myself, can I put into this message? And that just shifted everything from, you know, how can I how can I get 100 people to sign up for this thing like that didn't feel like a game to me, although that would be an effective one if it feels good for you. For me, it was about the essence of the message. What values was I going to express as I put this out there? How can I create something that is not AI? Right is something only that I could write. If you're deep into AI, you might be laughing at that statement saying Did you you're just a machine of your own right but but in my case, it helps me to say where how can I put more soul into this? How can I put more heart into this? And that was the game that I played was how much love can I infuse in these communications? So that was my plus five for Earlier this week, so plus one for catching the thought plus five for turning it into a game. And at the end of the day, see how many points you have. Next day, see if you can beat your beat your previous points, right, but the best games are between you and you. And as this has scaffolding, over time, eventually you'll want to be able to, you know, deconstruct it, because what you find is, you're actually approaching these things that you use to bring, you know, more of your frowny face to kind of making it more of a grind. And you're actually turning it into something that is infused with joy, creativity, flow, and even bringing that beyond yourself to your whole team. Because that is where this gets really powerful. There's a certain amount of impact that you can have when you are able to create that game for yourself, and make your own progress by setting things up as play. But there is so much impact when you can bring that to your team. Bring that to people that are also in your world. And so actually, now that I think about it, so So the scaffolding for yourself is, you know, how many points can you get? How do you overcome your own previous best for turning the grind into play, let's say plus 10, for bringing somebody else into it. Right, so that as you bring this spirit of creativity flow play into your work, you're also bringing it to your team, that becomes the culture that you create, which will help other people rise to their best and see the work that they're doing with you towards their own lantern or towards the lantern for the team as not a grind as an opportunity to rise to their own best. You may have seen this, if you've worked on sales teams, I know I was always blown away by the creativity of the sales organizations at Shopify, HubSpot, the various places where I've been part of those teams where, you know, they will have games every single month, every quarter. And there's always a way to excel within that framework. It really is a gift, right? It's a gift that you can give to yourself and to your team. So that the the real work that needs to be done, is seen as a chance to flourish a chance to reach for the gold. I mean, who doesn't want to be at the top of the podium. I'm watching the Tour de France, documentaries on Netflix while I'm riding my peloton in the morning these days. And we're all just captivated by winning the game being at the top. And so the more you can create that for yourself, the more you'll be able to just access those powers. So I would love to hear from you. What is the area that you are gamifying of gamifying is the right word, but that's kind of the idea. Our you awarding yourself your points, how are you doing with it? I would love to be able to support you with that. Go ahead and share that in the comments here on the LinkedIn or if you're in the Superabound collective to share it on the on the feed there. All right, my friends. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day rest of your week. Thank you for tuning in. That's been a delight. Take care