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