CHAPTER 5

Stage One: Your Permission to Play

For a moment, imagine that you’re nine years old. Your teacher is lecturing about the importance of long division or vowels. You’re waiting for the hour hand on the clock to reach 2. You may still have a tough time reading analog clocks, but you know that the 2 means recess time. The time arrives, and, like a Tasmanian devil, you recklessly shove your school supplies into your desk and run out the door. For a solid fifteen to twenty minutes, you play foursquare, tag, follow the leader, make-believe, and — the mother of all recess games — kickball.

Different countries use different words: recess, break, interval, playtime, free period, morning tea. Whatever you call it, the result and the meaning are the same: a necessary break for children from the rigors of schoolwork. The American Academy of Pediatrics has repeatedly emphasized that children need to have downtime between cognitive challenges. Even the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has weighed in, recognizing the right for children to play as an essential part of their well-being.

Yet, oddly enough, many schools have greatly reduced recess or have eliminated it altogether. According to some studies, as much as 50 percent of American kids no longer have recess despite overwhelming evidence showing how it can improve performance. It would appear that the culture of the WISH-infected adult world has started to fester around our kids.

Consider the adult side of this issue: Americans are taking fewer vacations than ever. According to the Project: Time Off’s 2016 report, nearly 55 percent of all Americans fail to use up all of their vacation time. This resulted in an estimated record-setting 658 million vacation days wasted that year.

If our goal were to be both joyless and productive, an argument could be made for never taking a vacation as adults or having recess as children. But it doesn’t work. In fact, the same study found that employees who take ten or fewer days of vacation time are less likely to have received a raise or bonus in the last three years than those who took eleven days or more. In case that isn’t obvious enough, forgive me as I make it perfectly clear:

When you take less vacation, you earn less money. When you take more vacation, you pave the pathway to promotion.

Someone didn’t just steal recess from you. They robbed you of the very tool you need to be successful! Time to take it back.

Bringing Fun Back

I’d like to give you a license. No, not a license to drive a forklift or to kill like James Bond. This is your license to have fun, relax, and find refreshment. I, by the power vested in me, am giving you permission to enjoy yourself.

To make it official, there is a license in the back of the book for you to cut out and put in your wallet. Cheesy, yes. But also effective.

To earn this license, you’ll need to do a little enjoyable homework first. After all, these are just words in a book. What authority does a book have? We need this license to mean more to you than just a cornball motivational poster of a kitten saying, “Hang in There, Baby.” This isn’t about telling you what you deserve. Remember, “deserve” is the desert mindset. The Oasis mindset is about what you really, truly, deeply need.

You must refresh and recharge your day. How you feel about life emotionally has a considerable biological impact on your daily performance. Don’t believe me yet?

The Mini Experiment: Part One — Desert

Play along with me for a moment as we do an exercise together. Please do this rather than just read about it, as it will help you give yourself permission more quickly than by me lathering you up with study upon study. While it may seem silly, the result you get from this fun test has long-term implications for your productivity and success.

You’ll need a pen and a timer of some kind — such as a stopwatch on your phone or the second hand on a clock. Got them handy? Let’s begin.

Write down a “desert” you’re experiencing right now — whichever one is top of mind. Remember, a desert is an extended period of deprivation and/or chaos in your life. If you need help coming up with your desert, refer to the list you made back in chapter 1.

My desert is: _____________________________________________________

Now it’s time to immerse yourself in that desert. Take it in. Get your stopwatch or timer ready.

For a full sixty seconds, imagine that desert. Describe in ten words or phrases how that desert makes you feel. Stop when you reach sixty seconds, even if you haven’t completed the list. Ready? Go!

1. ________________________________

2. _______________________________

3. _______________________________

4. _______________________________

5. _______________________________

6. _______________________________

7. _______________________________

8. _______________________________

9. _______________________________

10. _______________________________

Now stop and immediately write down how much energy you have on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being an overcaffeinated Jim Carrey and 1 being a sloth with the flu.

My in-desert score: ________________

Perfect. You’ve just allowed yourself to feel the full weight of that desert. If your score wasn’t at least below a 7, odds are you didn’t choose a truly challenging desert.* You may want to give it another go before moving forward.

The Mini Experiment: Part Two — Oasis Game

Now that you’re feeling like a desert traveler, parched and perspiring, it’s time we give you a mini oasis, or MicrOasis.

In this case, I’m going to give you three options for breaks you can choose from, with each being one minute in length.

First, decide which one of these three activities you want to perform. Don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. Go with your gut, follow the fear, and commit. Hard.

□ Option 1: The Balancing Pens Game

How many pens can you balance on your face using just gravity? No props, no tape, no stuffing pens in your mouth.

Have an assortment of pens and pencils handy, and then start the timer. Place the pens on your face, one by one. Within the one-minute time limit, how many can you pile up on your face?

One woman was able to stack up more than twenty pens on her face during a live event I did. Can you beat her? If you can, get someone to take a picture and email it to me at [email protected] or share it on social media with the hashtag #PowerofHavingFun.

□ Option 2: The Pen-Catching Game

Only got one pen or pencil handy? No problem!

Place the pen on the back of your hand. Then, in one movement, flip your hand up in the air and catch the pen.

See how many times you can catch the pen within the sixty-second time limit. My personal best is thirty-four. Can you beat me?

Option 3: Watch Funny Videos

Prefer something more passive and screen-oriented? Visit this page: PowerofHavingFun.com/ video

There you will find a bunch of quick, funny videos curated from YouTube for a variety of tastes. All are safe for the workplace and children.

Set your timer for one minute. Watch. Stop when the timer goes off, no matter where you are in viewing.

Now that you’ve selected your MicrOasis, do it! Use the timer, and stop at sixty seconds.

Then, immediately after completing this one-minute activity, write down, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much energy you have, 10 being absolutely energized, and 1 being an industrial- sized vat of pudding.

My Post-Oasis Score: ____________

Notice any change? If you deeply immersed yourself in the process of first thinking through the desert and then engaging in a harmless, mildly fun distraction, odds are you experienced a significant swing in emotions and energy — in just a matter of two minutes.

This illustrates the power that a brief, carefully chosen moment can have. Many of my clients have reported that a small ten-minute break to walk around the block or listen to their favorite song gives them all the energy and enthusiasm they need to work for the rest of the afternoon. Enjoying an Oasis within the desert of the workday is like going to a miniature carnival in your head.

A cleverly titled study, “A Walk Down the Lane Gives Wings to Your Brain,” was published in Applied Cognitive Psychology. The authors, Steinborn and Huestegge, found that rest — vs. continuous work — improved performance. That’s likely not a surprise to most people. However, they also discovered that the type of rest — whether active, such as taking a walk, or passive, such as watching a video — had essentially the same benefit. In other words, whether you go for a jog or veg out with YouTube, an Oasis recharges your internal batteries.

Let’s couple that with a fascinating study with an unfortunate name: “The Role of Dopamine in Learning, Memory, and Performance in a Water Escape Task.” Researchers from the University of Washington found that mice, when deprived of the naturally occurring, motivation-inducing chemical dopamine, took significantly longer to perform a simple task. The more they persisted in that task, the worse their times got.

On the other hand, mice that had a little pick-me-up of dopamine at any point in the process cut their performance time roughly in half.

We’re not mice. Yet some of us are treating ourselves like a rodent in a maze, doomed to repeat the same experiment over and over . . . with no joy in sight.

But you can choose to inject a little fun in your personal lab experiment of performance.

The Culture of WISH says that you must work hard for long, extended periods of time, and only when work is “done” — which truthfully will never happen — do you deserve to experience success. This approach deprives the mind of dopamine for those extended periods of time, reducing motivation.

On the other hand, the Oasis mindset says that by working hard and taking enjoyable breaks on a repeated, regular basis, you will succeed more and experience greater success. You do this not because you deserve it, but because you need it and because it pushes you forward. My field experience coaching leaders around the world confirms this. I’ve seen, time after time, how little Oases yield big benefits.

In the back of the book, your License to Have Fun is waiting for you. It may seem like a small or even silly gesture. Yet in the moments when you feel you need to keep working, pushing — because that’s what the Culture of WISH would tell you — pull out that License to Have Fun. Think of the many reasons why enjoying Oases are so vital to your success and happiness.

If you want, put your name on it, draw or paste on a picture of yourself, and add your favorite quote that will remind you that it’s okay to have fun. If you’re looking for a good quote, perhaps you can borrow a line from one of my favorite movies:

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

* Or, you may be the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.