Breaking the Routine Learning from Childs Play

[Music]

good afternoon and a virtual welcome to

everyone

before we begin i want to start off with

an activity i want you all to think of

the last time you played a game

use your imagination or made a friend

and

no not a facebook friend it might not

surprise you that children play games

use their imagination and make friends

much more easily than us adults

but have you ever paused and thought

about why this was the case while we

think about that

let me present to you guru dance paradox

a situation

where a hungry donkey always chooses to

eat what’s closer to it

but now it has to choose between two

same stacks of hay

which are the same distance away from it

in the end

it can’t make a decision and ends up

starving to death

it’s really a tragic tale but when we

think about it we’re all donkeys

numerous functional mri studies have

revealed that most of our decisions that

we make

are hardwired and associated with a lack

of willingness to try things in new ways

as well as a difficulty to change

thought processes we must make a

difficult decision to change our ways of

thinking

it’s a no-brainer right however this is

difficult because the science shows that

we are limited by an ability of our

brain

called neuroplasticity which is really

high in children

compared to us adults well why

well one reason may be because of our

routines

and our stressful lifestyles which may

impede

neuroplasticity okay but how

let’s put this into context shall we

this is a graph

generated by the gallup world poll in

2013

where we see a short decline in the

level of happiness

as we age what’s interesting here is

that children seem to be at the happier

end of the spectrum

while most adults tend to be on the not

so happier side

look at what having responsibility does

to you now

how many of us have ever looked like

this at

work poor school okay i can see everyone

virtually nodding their heads in our

current society

many of us face a repetitive structured

routine

that leaves us up all night stressed

sleep deprived and

unable to enjoy even a small part of our

lives we are confined

to a 9 a.m to 5 p.m daily schedule of

education or work and many of us go

beyond this

so let’s get to the meat of the matter

shall we what makes

children so immune to this lifestyle and

what can we learn from them well in a

recent study

it was found children spend

approximately double the amount of time

outside

and most of their time engaged in play

play is unstructured

and disruptive in other words when kids

play video games

competitive sports or even rock paper

scissors

they develop skills that improve their

pattern recognition

attention teamwork creativity and strong

bond formation

and here’s breakthrough there’s nothing

stopping us from doing the same

apart from our routines but how do we

implement it

into our daily structured lifestyle and

how do we do it without attracting

attention

because otherwise society will tell you

you need to grow up or

act your age well through a review of

current literature there are three

strategies that i’ve identified

and these strategies might be all the

easier to do amidst the pandemic where a

lot of you may be working virtually

the first strategy is diversion there

are

inherently structured tasks and

responsibilities you can’t do anything

about

so find breaks and leisure time to play

sports

games etc the second strategy is

incorporation

there are tasks in your daily lives at

work or school

where play can be incorporated for

example

turn repetitive tasks that don’t require

much thinking such as sorting files into

a race

with colleagues or against time the

third strategy

is conversion so change what you’re

doing completely

ask for funner tasks at work or take on

interactive and engaging courses for fun

and a more extreme example would be if

you’re not having fun at an office job

why don’t you take up acting or don’t

like that business degree

time to switch to science if science

doesn’t work out for me i know i can

always become a stand-up comedian

well that was a joke putting aside

childish matters let’s go back to our

graph

now that i’ve given you a few things to

think about i’ll give you some hope for

the future

the world poll was actually conducted up

to the age of 90

where we see that happiness actually

goes up after we hit that retirement age

so here’s my take home message add a

little bit of diversion

incorporation and conversion into your

lifestyle

for all of you grown-ups without a smile

embrace your inner child once in a while

thank you