My Confession
I’m the hardest working lazy person you’ll ever meet. I’m willing to work very hard so I don’t have to.
Josh Bruce, self-referential joke
We’re all sort of hardworking lazy people, mostly from our perception of work and literally how the human body functions. When I say “lazy,” I don’t mean I want to sit around and do nothing while zoning out on mindless television. Further, when I say “work,” I typically mean something I didn’t volunteer to do, aren’t driven to do, and feel pressured to get done. I have to work to stay focused. I have to work to care emotionally. I have to work to take one more step.
Everything else in my life is play.
Some people operate well in environments where they’re told to do work they don’t care about while being pressured to turn it around in 24 hours or less when 48 is more appropriate. They enjoy the adrenaline rush. The feeling of being a superhero for a day or the underdog overcoming insurmountable odds.
That’s not me.
That’s my confession.
Now for my obsession.
The passage of time. More specifically, my emotional response to the passage of time. More generally, the emotional response of others to the passage of time.
Randy Pausch once said, “Time is the only commodity that matters” and I agree. With that said, I have no concept of time.
Just to make sure that landed, I have no concept of time.
When I told a friend this he laughed. It is admittedly odd that the time-obsessed, hard-working, “lazy” person, has no concept of time.
One hour is one hour. That doesn’t describe time, that describes a measurement system for time. If you spend one hour in a meeting and one hour playing a game you enjoy, the time has not changed, only the context. More specifically, your perception and response to the context.
The “container” (setup and surroundings) for the meeting you attended was probably CRAP, which contributed to people becoming DRAB.
CRAP is a mnemonic I use to remember things we want to avoid when setting and maintaining a container for an interaction:
- Communication Barriers: static on phone lines, overuse of acronyms, interruptions, and so on.
- Rushed: “Quick! We should have a meeting on solving world hunger with 100 of the greatest minds on the planet, and we’ll do it in 30 minutes or less.”
- No Agenda: “Why are we here? What are we wanting to accomplish? How are we going to accomplish it? Who should be here and why?”
- Pointless: “We totally could have done this via text or email.”
DRAB is another mnemonic I use for what typically happens to (or the types of) people within a container, CRAP or not:
- Disengaged: “I would really rather be doing something else.” Note: They may also be really engaged in something else, just not the thing they’re in the room for.
- Resentful: “Oh, great, I get to go to another one of his (or her) meetings. Really getting tired of them; they’re always CRAP.”
- Annoyed, Angry, or Agitated: This could be tied to resentment if directed at the organizer but could also be between members of the group.
- Bored: “So, let me get this straight, you want me to sit here and watch you enter things on your computer while I wait for the moment you may, or may not, ask my opinion on something you can’t answer yourself? Guess this is another meeting where I count the threads on my shoelaces.”
Meanwhile, your game playing experience was the opposite. Conversation was flowing, you didn’t care how much time passed, you knew why you were there, and it had purpose. Not only that, but you were engaged in all that was going on around you, enjoying the company of others, and could not think of anything else you’d rather be doing.
The gameplay description is close to that of flow.
For me, I try to make every experience the gameplay experience and I work hard to keep it that way. If that sounds interesting and possibly appealing, then I hope to help shed some light on walking through life in a consistent, if not constant, state of meditation.