Precious Work and Play
Going with the Flow
I once gave a talk at an elementary school to third graders, and told them there are a billion people in the world who want to work and can’t work. A girl raised her hand and asked, “Is all the work done?”
—Paul Hawken
The point of life is not to slave away for years until the age of 65 and then say, “Phew, Glad that’s over!” Rather it is to make sure that we do not die with our music still in us.
—Lance Secretan
It’s impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
—Jerome K. Jerome
There was bad news and good news for Michael Penkala, who had camped in line for two days to buy the newly released Sony Playstation3. The bad news was that he had to be taken to a hospital with gunshot wounds after two thieves held him up while he was waiting. The good news? Wal-Mart publicly announced he’d receive a free Playstation3 as soon as one became available. Woo-hoo! At hundreds of Best Buys, Wal-Marts, and GameStop stores all over the country, the release date was a violent video game come-to-life. For example, in Connecticut, a buyer walked triumphantly out of a store with a new PS3
that five masked men promptly made off with. In Kentucky, a passing car opened fire on buyers waiting in line; and in California, two GameStop employees reported a fake robbery to cover up their own theft. The list goes on and on; stampedes and near riots broke out all over the country—police fired pepper pellets at unruly shoppers, and multiple stabbings occurred just like in the games.1
Let’s hope the new console is somehow worth all the pain and police time! I suppose I should suspend judgment until I sit down with one of the games (not likely)—but the PS3 frenzy tells us one thing: Millions of Americans are willing, as always, to take risks to PLAY. There’s further evidence of that in Cleveland, where resolute, wet-suited surfers challenge the murky waters of Lake Erie, even in the dead of winter. Writes a New York Times reporter, “Cleveland largely turns its back on Lake Erie, lining the coast with power plants, a freeway and mounds of iron ore to feed its steel factories. The shore is especially deserted in winter, when strong winds and waves pummel the land.” Clearly, somebody had to put those polluted waves to good use, and forty-four-year-old Bill Weeber, known as Mongo, stepped forward with his surfboard and companions. “Surfing Lake Erie is basically disgusting,” he admits, “but then I catch that wave and I forget about it, and I feel high all day.”2
As author and adventurer Diane Ackerman observes, play can be much more than diversion. Humans as well as most other animals evolved not only through war games but courtship games, socializing games, hunting games, and games that sharpen the senses. The more an animal needs to learn to survive, the more he needs to play, she maintains. Who knows what skills crows learn when they play tugs of war with twigs? Maybe it’s just for sheer enjoyment, which also has survival value. Says Ackerman, “A crow may swing upside down on a branch, monkey style, or play drop the stick—flying down fast to catch it. One researcher saw a crow invent a log-rolling game in which it balanced on a plastic cup and rolled it down a hill.”3 (An oversized version of that game might just work on the TV show Fear Factor, if it was filled with rattlesnakes.)
“Play is a refuge from ordinary life, a sanctuary of the mind, where one is exempt from life’s customs, methods, and decrees,” writes Ackerman. “The playground can be as big as the Grand Canyon, as fluid as the ocean where dolphins swim, as crowded as a jazz club.”4 For my talented friend Phil Lohre, a Colorado or Alpine ski slope is the perfect playground. “Being at the top of a ridge with the sun setting and fresh powder below is totally exhilarating,” he says with a smile that reveals many memories. “On the way down you experience a freedom of openness, a feeling of great challenge, and occasionally, a heroic wipeout that sprays your equipment all over the
hill. But most of the time, you look back up and say, Wow, those are my tracks? I did that?”5
Phil’s passion for skiing spans thirty years or more. In fact, in his twenties, he considered competing professionally on the freestyle mogul circuit, but an appointment with the Foreign Service popped up first. He got hooked on skiing in his teenage years. “At that age, you go as fast as you can until you fall down,” he recalls with a laugh. “Your speed gets away from you, you catch a tip, and the next thing you know you’re cartwheeling down the hill. But one day I was skiing at full speed, to the point where I usually crashed, and I didn’t crash. I realized that I’d jumped to a new level of proficiency, and that’s what I’d been working for.”
In each of the sports Phil has played competitively—including hockey, basketball, softball, soccer, and Ultimate Frisbee (now known widely as “Ultimate”)—the game is the center of the universe while it’s being played. “Going onto the field, you enter a sacred space. You can leave all your worldly anxieties behind and just be totally immersed in the game. Whatever you’ve done in the past is irrelevant; the present is what counts. You feel a sense of urgency as you work intently with your teammates to execute strategies and tactics, because time is always a factor.” One of Phil’s favorite feelings is the satisfied exhaustion that follows a game. “When the game’s over and you’ve given it everything you have, you come away with memories, experiences, and a deeper camaraderie. You feel high as a kite.”
Phil has played Ultimate for twenty-five years and been a key member on various championship teams. In 2000, his team went to Germany as U.S. national champions. “I remember looking down the line at my six teammates and thinking, ‘solid, solid, solid …’ Our sense of confidence and teamwork was awesome, and the sense of fitting and belonging was something I’ll never forget.” His team won the world championship that year, and then went to the semifinals four years in a row. But despite the thrill of winning, it’s the playing that really does it for him—those transcendent moments when he loses himself in the game. Winning may be the frosting on a cake made from ingredients like skill, focus, fun, and teamwork, but when opponents and teammates want only the frosting, Phil becomes less interested. In fact, he first became involved in Ultimate because of its informality and emphasis on the joys of playing. “There was no coach barking at us; we coached ourselves. The idea was to play hard, have fun, and get to know each other. Sometimes, I think we all take winning too seriously, at the expense of enjoyment.”
Now, as a high school coach in various sports (as well as a teacher of academic subjects), he emphasizes teamwork. “My goal is to give them tools so
they can work together and improve together. Instead of throwing the disc to the star player all the time, I encourage them to throw it to whoever’s open so they all learn new skills, build confidence, and have fun as a team.”
Certainly, we make the effort to climb, fish, or play Ultimate partly because of a potential prize—reaching the peak, pulling out a five-pound trout, or scoring the winning point. But the real reward—available to amateurs as well as masters—is that we’re out there, interacting with others and challenging ourselves to reach our highest potential. When we watch sports on TV, the biggest challenge may be whether we’ll personally polish off a whole pizza. We aren’t using our senses; we’re not risking exciting, high-payoff strategies; we’re not getting the ball to a pumped-up teammate who’s ready to do something with it. We don’t receive the rewards of physical conditioning and we’re often clueless about the intricacies of the game. By default, what we’re left with is whether our favorite team wins or loses. Residents of Ashbourne, England, still stage an annual match of “mob football,” a spirited forerunner of soccer and football, played for at least seven hundred years. Anyone willing to risk getting trampled is welcome to play. Traditionally, the game started at a midway point between two towns. Players tried to kick, carry, or throw an inflated pig’s bladder to a goal marker in the opposing town, and no doubt there was much merriment afterward, in the pubs of both the winning and losing teams.6
In our more “civilized” times, the mob only watches. Though watching sports in person is often more energizing than on TV, the escalating cost of tickets is one reason (among many) that American savings rates have gone negative in recent years. Typically, the players on a star-studded team make more money than a majority of the fans in a packed stadium, combined. Meanwhile, back at the ranch house, a family has just invested three hours of sitting in their “home theater” watching a losing game. Watch out—the whole evening could go up in smoke. Unless, that is, the game is about something more than winning, like being together as a family, or being immersed in the sport itself. Let’s say we know enough about the sport to be fascinated with its strategies, or maybe we go outside at halftime and throw a football around with our son, rake leaves, or talk with a neighbor. Think how much postgame depression and sports-induced suicide can be avoided if we take the hyped-up games on TV a bit less seriously, not letting them become addictions that substitute for life itself.
The Evergreen Cougars, including Libby Wann, take the 1997 state high school title after a double overtime. © Dennis Schroeder/Rocky Mountain News
Psychologists tell us it comes down to involvement. From long-term studies of human behavior, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi finds that the more expensive and energy consuming our leisure time equipment, the more detached we are from the activity itself. Despite incredibly intricate camera work and awesome television technology, our huge-screen TVs don’t take us any closer to reality. In fact, many times, we are only half-present as we watch, suspended in an ether of virtual reality, with distant voices calling us back to reality—where we could be feeling alive. Hobbies like playing music with friends; playing amateur sports such as softball, bowling, and skill-intensive fly-fishing; reading a great book; or conversing at a dinner table make us happier, because we participate in them. (The root meaning of the word “amateur” is “I love,” not “I’m not very good”.) These activities require less expensive equipment and consume less energy, but demand a lot of psychic energy and focus. Teacher Phil Lohre not only coaches sports, but also offers an elective class in card games that his grandmother taught him—hearts, spades, and bridge—all of which involve teamwork, concentration, and involvement.
In Csikszentmihalyi’s research, U.S. teenagers only experience flow about 13 percent of the time while watching TV, compared with 34 percent while doing hobbies and 44 percent while playing sports and games. Yet these same teenagers spend at least four times more of their free hours watching TV. What’s going on—is it hypnosis? We adults, pioneers of an
electronic generation, don’t seem to be faring much better. “Instead of playing music,” says Csikszentmihalyi, “we listen to music by billionaire musicians. We spend hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures.”7
We’re socially conditioned to believe that passive relaxation yields the greatest happiness, and that consumption and possessions help us relax. We imagine them to make our lives so convenient, so easy. By using various machines, media, and consumer products, we believe we can remove “distractions” like cooking, walking, and even thinking, so we can fully relax. But there’s a critical difference between passive relaxation and restorative relaxation. We all need time to unwind, and we are usually refreshed by the beauty of nature on a hike, a depth of calmness when we meditate, or the sense of gratitude and delight we get from playing with our kids or the dog. I think of these activities as restorative and creative relaxation. But when we are simply under the spell of commercial stimuli on the tube or at the mall, we aren’t creating ourselves but rather allowing ourselves to be created. We aren’t aligning our actions with our values, but aligning our inactions with someone else’s values.
Residents of the average American household will spend about a quarter of a million dollars over the course of their lives, trying to entertain themselves—with tickets, electronic toys, sports equipment, vacations, and all the rest.8 (Of course, a very affluent American household could spend that much in a single year.) The question is, what sort of value do we get from these expenses—what exactly are we trying to buy? And what percentage of those expenses results from social pressure and commercial persuasion? Not only do we want to have fun; we also want to appear to be having fun, because of its social currency. We want to tell stories about sports and vacation adventures because everyone else is telling their stories. In effect, we buy leisure partly in self-defense.
However, in a less consumptive lifestyle, the most valuable leisure equipment is free—our minds and bodies. The equipment we were each issued provides almost infinite opportunities for play, from sex to sudoku. The leisure industry can’t sell us our own bodies, and though our minds are often easier targets, we can develop the natural equivalent of pop-up blockers if we work at it. Industry-sponsored media love to portray the American lifestyle in terms of what we buy and own, but a more centered, calmer American lifestyle is now digging out from the avalanche of hype that just
about smothered us. Millions of people, including some of my friends and me, are getting their fun and entertainment from activities that don’t cost a dime. Instead of buying entertainment, we are creating it.
For example, organic gardening gets a huge exclamation point in my life because of its many intrinsic rewards. I burn calories digging soil, turning the compost, and gathering organic materials to grow high-quality food; in turn, the food gives me more energy. It just makes sense. In the neighborhood garden, I work with friends to devise strategies to beat the heat or outwit invasions of villainous insects. (The challenge is similar to a video game, only real; and the solutions use martial arts approaches rather than handheld missile launchers.) In the garden, we constantly use all our senses—including the climactic experience of tasting a fresh peach or a salad of juicy tomatoes and basil—all within prescribed rules that avoid the use of hazardous chemicals. It’s a game you can eat. Skillful gardening is as challenging as golf or downhill skiing but instead of costing $50-$100 a day, it yields an ongoing income. The time span may be seasonal and the feedback slow and steady—a drawback for those addicted to constant hits of stimulation—but for me, and many others, slow time is luxury time. What’s the hurry?
For Gary and Patricia, nothing beats a day spent on a photographic adventure, either in the city or out in nature. They love to forage for images on hikes and seasonal explorations. Instead of taking along credit cards, they bring lightweight cameras and tripods. Instead of mindlessly obeying advertising images, they create their own images with skill and curiosity. At the end of the day, they bring weightless digital treasures back to their computer lab to see what beauty, mystery, whimsy, and irony they’ve captured.
Creative sewing gets Susan’s recreational juices flowing. Since her early days, when her grandmother taught her to sew on a treadle sewing machine, she’s learned how to create just about anything with fabric: a wedding dress for her daughter; a slipcover for a long, sectional sofa in her son’s family room; silly Halloween costumes for skits at work; and stuffed animals like the two-foot-tall, jagged-toothed Tyrannosaurus rex that now prowls her grandson’s bedroom.
For Jan, contra dancing is a great way to end the week. She loves the lively jigs and reels that have survived from another time, and the nonverbal communication and customary exchanging of dance partners. Her steps, skips and twirls connect her with the kaleidoscopic pattern of the whole group. Even though I myself have been left scratching my head at such events—wondering where I was supposed to turn—I understand the giddy appeal of being in motion in this conspiracy of joy.
How many people do you know who have a trapeze in their high-ceilinged living room? Edee and Bob also stay in condition by taking
turns balancing each other on their outstretched legs—an exercise in trust and coordination, and also an impressive parlor trick at parties! Once the Michigan state pogo stick champion, she claims to be able to bounce no handed and one legged at the same time, though I haven’t confirmed that one yet. She’s the queen of ceremonies and celebrations, recently orchestrating a wacky neighborhood parade complete with streamers, noisemakers, and a marching band of kazoos. We carried cloth banners and pulled toy wagons decorated as floats, and Edee marched beside us in a drum majorette outfit, blowing a whistle as cadence. Says Edee, “Parades are like fresh flowers. They are momentary splashes of color and energy and then they’re gone.” Bob’s passion is designing and building things, preferably out of salvaged materials. I’ve watched him over the course of ten years, remodeling houses, building handrails for elderly neighbors, crafting artful sand containers to prevent falls after a snow, and making sturdy compost bins and cold frames for the community garden, enabling something to be grown every day of the year, even in Colorado’s erratic climate.
Gary Galger and Patricia Lynn Reilly love to spend their time lost in the deep play of looking for great photographic images. Credit: Gary Galger
In a single generation, we’ve forgotten that conversation is an art. You set up unspoken “rules,” as you go; you find areas of common interest, you entertain each other with stories and jokes, you comfort each other, all free. John de Graaf explains how we’ve abandoned gatherings around the
table: “Think about it. Who has informal chats at the kitchen table? How often do we use our dining room tables for company or our coffee tables for gatherings with neighbors? ‘Having people over’ has been reduced by nearly half in the last forty years. Instead, we’re eating fast foods alone in our cars.”9
What happened to charades and scavenger hunts—which bring people together, don’t cost anything, and are uncomplicated fun? What happened, I think, was they fell out of style because there’s no money to be made. Nobody advertises profitless people-games that don’t require products. In a world of affluenza victims, public relations professionals—who create the image of our lifestyle without our permission—don’t promote self-created, free recreation. However, in our style-oblivious neighborhood, Nancy orchestrated a great scavenger hunt recently, leaving intriguing clues to go to various locations, like, “How exciting when told, A surprise this cabinet will hold.” (The storage box for packages left by the mailman.) On our team, we sent the kids ahead, telling them to find each clue and bring it back to headquarters, where we sat drinking beer. In a pinch, we sent adult members into action—on the run, of course, because the other teams were right on our tail. Who needs reality shows when reality is even better?
Sometimes the universe itself is playful. I love it when a belly laugh washes over me from out of nowhere, as one did in a Mexican fishing village a few years ago. I was sitting in the shallows of the surf, trying to put on a pair of flippers to go snorkeling. But every time I made the attempt, another wave mischievously knocked me over, and the joke carried me to a wonderfully humble place that made even the seagulls cackle. It was hilarious how small I was compared with the ocean!
Dawn, who tells stories about swimming with whales and dolphins, tells another story of what happened when a blue jay attacked a robin’s nest in her backyard, knocking the baby birds to the ground: Dawn quickly built a nest out of a breadbasket and dried grass, lashed it onto a tree limb, and carefully tucked the fallen babies into it. Mama Robin, who watched the whole scene, quickly abandoned the old nest and moved into the new one to take care of her family. Dawn swears that Mama returned the following summer, landing on her windowsill to say hello.
Other friends of mine are learning to speak Spanish, largely for the challenge; volunteering to do ecological restoration; and becoming knowledgeable about citizen involvement in the political process—from caucus through election night. The fine line between play and work begins to dissolve when we enjoy doing things that are also useful.
I’ve reached some nice heights performing music, sometimes becoming so involved that it seemed like someone else was singing and playing guitar. When I was back in college playing in an acoustic band, I considered trying to convert that passion into a living, but then I imagined all the smoky bars we’d have to perform in; all the people talking, laughing and drinking beer while we played our best songs. Instead, I decided to try kneading another passion, writing, into a profession. In my late twenties, I wrote a novel that sprouted from postadolescent convictions and was almost published. One of the book’s themes is—guess what—finding meaningful work in a top-heavy, money-obsessed economy. The main character, Josh Watkin, needs to find work quickly, since his wife is eight and a half months pregnant. With the goal of retaining deed to his soul while still making a living, Josh fills out dozens of job applications, each of which seems to have unacceptable linkages with the Growth Machine he despises. In one chapter, he feels existential anxiety about the prospects of finding good work:
The phrase “reason for leaving” may ring a bell as three words that always appear on a standard job application. They want to know why you’d rather be “here” in this job than “there” at your last one. The underlying accusation, of course, is that you were fired, but even if you weren’t, they give you a box about the size of a cornflake to explain why you did leave, when really nothing shorter than a book could tell the story.
Your “reason for leaving” doesn’t have to be an honest one, but it had better sound like everybody else’s reason or you’re automatically out. Be careful what you put in that box! Don’t try to explain in ten words or less that “We need jobs that use our equipment—our bodies—rather than machines, because obesity is becoming an epidemic.” Don’t say, “We need jobs that don’t extract and auction off every last square foot of land and every last particle of soil,” or that, “We need jobs where we don’t lose our dignity; where our voices are heard and our creativity is challenged but not used up; we need work that’s meaningful and important to be doing; where we can feel human, alive, and energized.” Don’t even try to summarize that you “want to feel fulfilled.” It might be honest but it sounds way too earnest in today’s wound-up, cynical world. Do yourself a favor: just put down “money” and you’re on your way.
I guess I didn’t follow my own character’s advice: the money hasn’t for the most part been my reason for leaving the jobs I’ve left. I simply wanted bigger
challenges, doing work that I believed in. Admittedly, I was a product of my times: In 1970, 79 percent of college freshmen said their goal was developing a meaningful philosophy of life. By 2005—after the spread of affluenza—75 percent said their primary objective was to be financially very well off.10
Studs Terkel begins his epic book of interviews, Working, with the sentence, “This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence—to the spirit as well as to the body.” The book is a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash. One of the people he interviewed, editor Nora Watson, says, “I think most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us, like the assembly line worker, have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.” Other people from all walks of life concur: “I’m a machine,” says the spot-welder. “I’m caged,” says the bank teller. “A monkey can do what I do,” says the receptionist. “I’m an object,” says the model. “I’m less than a farm implement,” says the migrant worker.11
Commenting on the way work often dominates our lives, essayist Bob Black writes, tongue-in-cheek, “Free time is a euphemism for the peculiar way labor, as a factor of production, not only transports itself at its own expense to and from the workplace, but also assumes primary responsibility for its own maintenance and repair.”12 True enough, but sometimes we luck out—always in a give-and-take kind of way, of course; no job is perfect. Advertiser H. Jackson Brown Jr. suggests, “Find a job you like and you add five days to every week.”
Yet, a large and very diverse mix of variables determines what work will make us happy. We crave work that has meaning beyond the paycheck; that challenges our creativity and aptitudes; that gives us a sense of being recognized and remembered; that connects us with people; that’s safe and secure, both physically and fiscally; and that doesn’t strip away all our energy. Much of our enjoyment of work depends on who we are and how we perceive the world. For example, when asked what they were working on, one proverbial stonecutter replied, “I’m cutting this rock into slabs that are two feet by two feet by six inches.” The second stonecutter had a wider view: “I’m helping build a cathedral.” The question is, are we building enough cathedrals? Is our economy moving in a direction that provides great jobs?
Personally, if I were going to work in a car factory, for example, I’d rather it be a factory that manufactures hybrids, safe and durable cars. Traveling salesman Peter Gilbert recently donated his 1989 Saab 900 SPG to a museum after a million miles of service; I’d want to be part of that assembly line or engineering team! If I were going to work as an investment counselor, I’d want to steer clients toward investments that are good for people as well as the environment—so-called socially responsible investing that now
screens trillions of dollars. It’s up to each one of us to know why we should or shouldn’t feel proud of the work we do. Brooklyn fireman Tom Patrick, another worker in Terkel’s book, comments: “The firemen, you actually see them produce. You see them put out a fire. You see them come out with babies in their hands. You see them give mouth-to-mouth when a guy’s dying. That’s real … It shows I did something on this earth.”13
Good work affects much more than the size of an individual’s house. People whose goals and values are more intrinsic agree with statements like, “I want my work to provide me with opportunities for helping other people and increasing my knowledge and skills.” For example, a surgical doctor makes great money and also saves lives, learns something new every day, and uses his or her training and skills to meet one unique challenge after another. However, these days, physicians in general are often told exactly how much time they can spend with each patient. The waits are long and the doctor visits short when cash becomes more important than caring. Says one European neurologist, “They’re applying the logic of machines to people. Lots of doctors are frustrated—they want to have time to treat the person, not just the disease.”14
In fact, according to Dr. Daniel Goleman, “Surveys find signs of burnout in 80 or 90 percent of practicing physicians—a quiet epidemic.” On the positive side of health care, there is a resurgence of doctors who choose to make house calls rather than seven-figure incomes; and there’s also an increase in classes offered to medical students dealing specifically with patient-doctor communications and empathy.15
By choosing good work, we contribute to a world that, with luck, produces more biological, economic, and cultural assets than liabilities—or at least stays even. A culture improves largely by the work of its people—employers, employees, activists, and caretakers. Certainly, not all work that’s important is salaried. For example, a recent study by Salary.com calculated that a stay-at-home mother or father—who works an average of 91.6 hours a week as a de facto housekeeper, day-care teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive, and psychologist—would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all of the work, including overtime—an amount similar to a top ad executive, marketing director, or judge. Is any work more important than this?16
Though many regard the word “employment” with the same disdain that economists give to the word “unemployment,” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s
research demonstrates that we often achieve a greater sense of “flow” at work than in leisure time. (A recent Pew Research Center poll found that employed people are as likely to be “very happy” as retirees.)17 One reason we lead the world in average hours worked per week may be that work is sometimes more like a game than the American version of leisure. Work usually has clear goals and rules of performance, just like in a game. It provides challenges and feedback, encourages concentration and lack of distractions, and, ideally, matches the worker’s skills with the task to be done—all aspects that characterize flow. It can also offer social connections and a feeling of accomplishment.
World-acclaimed viola player Geraldine Walther has been in the flow of music since she was seven; she always knew that playing violin and viola was her passion. She is the newest member of the Takács string quartet, considered by some music critics to be the greatest string quartet in the world. When I heard the group perform a few months ago, I was swept away by their playful, buoyant intensity. The concert seemed to fill me up; to heal whatever needed healing. As I listened, I felt I could be what they were playing—their sense of celebration burst through the music and inspired me. The next day I called the group to request an interview with Geraldine (Jeri), because I wanted to ask her how this musical magic came about.
Over lunch, she tells me she’s recently left the San Francisco Orchestra, where she played for thirty years as primary violist, because she wanted to challenge herself. “I had a comfortable job with the orchestra, and the salary was great,” she says. “I knew that I could have coasted indefinitely, but music is such a central part of my life; I needed more.” By accepting the new job with Takács, she hadn’t taken the easy road—string quartets are widely known as the riskiest venue in classical music. “There’s nowhere to hide,” Jeri says with a smile. “But the guys are so expressive and so generous; they help me be the best I can be. I feel like I can’t let them down …
“Each performance is like an improvisation—I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but then we find a way to stretch individually and stay together at the same time. We’ll feel someone about to do something different and we each make minor adjustments—it’s a fantastic feeling … I lose myself in it. She adds, “I consider it a joy, privilege and responsibility to be playing in this group.”
I ask her how the audience connects with the energy of a given piece. “There seems to be a cycle of energy. We feel the attention and the involvement of the audience; everyone wants and expects us to play as well as we can, and we don’t want to waste their time.” She mentions a certain movement in a Bartók piece, which the composer meant to be amusing. “The audience always laughs when we come to that part—the humor comes across.”
First crafted in the 1500s, violas are slightly larger than violins, often providing harmony. According to violist Geraldine Walther, “Some say the cork is the first violin, the cello is the bottle, and the wine is the viola and second violin.” Credit: Susan Benton
Jeri’s work connects her intimately with her colleagues, demanding that she rise to her highest potential. It also connects her to audiences all over the world that are uplifted and empowered by the music. Clearly, hers is good work.
Teri Rippeto also had a youthful realization about the kind of work she wanted to do. “I always had curiosity about food,” she tells me. Her Aunt Judy was a mentor, teaching her at a very young age how to can fruits and vegetables. “Canning is from your heart,” she says, “and that’s the most beautiful and most important part of cooking.” In fourth grade, Teri won a 4H blue ribbon for her chocolate chip cookies, and thirty-five years later, she runs a restaurant, Potager, with a staff of nineteen and a customer base that includes the mayor of Denver—and me, of course. I’m particularly impressed with her emphasis on serving the freshest, highest-quality food she can find. She’s a regular at the well-known Boulder Farmers’ Market, whose vendors grow all the organic produce they sell. The meat she serves is local and grass fed; lobster, scallops, and clams are express-mailed by a friend in Maine; and fresh fish is delivered by an airport courier right to her restaurant.
Quality comes first, but Teri’s next priority is to cook with vegetables, fruits, and herbs that are locally grown and in season. In mid-December, I didn’t expect she’d still be preparing seasonal dishes from local sources, but
she surprises me. “On the menu right now are dishes with locally grown potatoes, winter squash, onions, garlic, fresh salad greens grown in cold frames and greenhouses, Jerusalem artichokes, beets, and cold-hardy leafy greens like kale, chard, collards, and mustard greens.” She is so passionate about the meaning of food that last year she mailed a monthly newsletter to 1,500 people, with staff-written articles about knowing where your food comes from, the health benefits of organic produce, and how to use what’s in season to create gourmet meals. Her sous-chef teaches classes on healthy cuisine at Boy’s and Girl’s Clubs, and she wants to become involved with gardening programs at local elementary schools. When I ask her if she considers her work “play,” she says she wouldn’t go that far—but without a doubt, her work shows that the time we spend making a living can enrich lives.
The Algonquin Hotel in New York City recently celebrated the ninetieth birthday of one of its most revered employees, Hoy Wong, a gentleman originally from Hong Kong who, in his fifty-eight years of bartending, has served drinks to celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope, and Judy Garland. Once, when the Duke of Windsor ordered a “House of Lords martini in and out on toast,” the veteran “Mr. Hoy” had the expertise to serve him a martini with a lemon twist, ignited with a match. The bartender knew his trade. “After he drink, he liked it,” Wong said proudly. “And he had a second one.” Says the Algonquin’s general manager, “He never misses a day. If the weather’s bad he shows up early. It’s just really an honor to work with someone like Mr. Hoy.” The hotel showed their respect for him by inviting 350 friends and admirers to a party in his honor. Mr. Hoy’s good work is about doing his job well, with pride.18
One of my pet peeves (in addition to the term “pet peeves”) is dealing with sales people, government workers, and others who distance themselves from their work, essentially becoming prisoners of their paychecks. They do the work just well enough to get by, as if they are worthy but the work is not. As an aspiring writer who spent seven years in the computer control room of a sewage treatment plant, I learned firsthand that pride in one’s work is not about social distinction but self-esteem. No matter what the job is, it needs to be done well or not at all.
What can we learn from athletes, musicians, and other masters of play to help work be more enjoyable? Interestingly, in some cases monetary rewards become an obstacle to enjoyment. In research with two groups to
observe the effect of extrinsic rewards on behavior, one group received money for solving a puzzle and the second group did not. The group that was paid stopped playing after the first game, while the unpaid group continued to enjoy the puzzle for its own sake. Researcher Edward Deci concludes, “Rewards seem to turn the act of playing into something that is controlled from the outside: It turns play into work.”19 If we want work to be more like play, it seems we need to emphasize the joys of challenge and creativity, as well as the social value of what we are doing.
The money’s important, but so are other, more intrinsic rewards. Athletes tell us that the winner doesn’t always “take all.” In both work and play, the greatest value comes from qualities like peak performance, involvement, pride, respect for others, and continuous learning and improvement. These values make life worth living, regardless of trophies or salaries. If we’re relatively content in both work and play, extrinsic rewards become less important. It seems we need to devote more time to teaching and mentoring children that there’s more to life than working and spending. I believe we need to learn, again, how to reconnect with activities that challenge us—for example, how to cook, build a table, or be politically active. We need to breathe life into workplaces so even menial jobs can be enjoyable, by offering more opportunities for autonomy, more employee-defined challenges, more emphasis on quality and the “story” of the product or service, and more direct feedback on work performance (as opposed to just quarterly, numerical score sheets).
Can workplaces become kinder, gentler, and more soulful? There seems to be a movement to bring “spirit” into our offices and places of business—which essentially means treating employees with greater respect (leadership from the heart, not just the head) and working together to create meaning in the product. The annual Business and Consciousness Conference is now one of North America’s largest events, and books like Reawakening Spirit at Work and Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work are being used as texts in business seminars all over the country. Business leadership coach Lance Secretan points to SAS Institute, the largest independent software company in the world, as a good example of spirit at work. The company shuts its offices promptly at five o’clock, recognizing that people have lives outside of work. They also provide other work-life amenities, such as “Free Breakfast Fridays,” soda fountains and snacks in every break-room, on-site childcare centers, employee health-care centers, fitness centers, and wellness programs. Staff turnover is 3 percent in an industry that averages 20 percent, and a few years ago they received 27,000 applications for 945 job openings. The bottom line is that SAS saves an estimated $50 million a year in recruitment and training costs.20
“Getting a life” includes both work and play. We’ve become world champion consumers partly because our culture doesn’t know how to enjoy leisure; instead, we try to buy it. Writes author Susan Ertz, “Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon,” and psychologist Milhaly Csikszentmihalyi would agree. “The popular assumption is that no skills are involved in enjoying free time, and that anybody can do it,” he says. “People are unhappiest when they are alone and nothing needs doing. In our studies, people who live by themselves and do not attend church find Sunday mornings to be the lowest part of the week, because with no demands on attention, they are unable to decide what to do.”21
Priceless moments await us in both work and play. Both are interrelated with the other assets this book presents: creating a rich sense of self, using time well, maintaining great health, learning from history, and so on. However, to become more satisfying, it seems that work and play need to be better balanced. Right now, work dominates the lives of a majority of Americans, leaving little time for learning how to play. Most economists, philosophers, moneylenders, and media moguls assume that we need constant growth to create more work and perpetuate an ever-expanding standard of living. This assumption—that jobs and growth are the backbone of the economy—is systemic in tax structures, educational planning, health-care coverage, and insurance plans. Maybe it’s time we rethink what we want the ultimate product to be. Do we want limitless economic growth, or satisfied people?
Creating Playful Work and Purposeful Play
Overall goals:
• Reach for values that move satisfaction from the “end product” (winning, output, high salaries) to the everyday process of work and play.
• Elevate play (not just leisure) to a higher status in American culture.
• Strive for cultural consensus on “what work needs to be done.” For example, as many people now work in the recycling industry as in the automobile industry, and recyclers outnumber the mining industry workers three to one. To become a less consumptive, wasteful society, we also need better minds and more workers in the fields of renewable energy, healthy food, and green design.
A Few Strategies:
• Offer greater flexibility to choose part-time work. Workers should be able to choose shorter hours if they are more satisfied with free time than they are with higher income. For example, 36 percent of the Dutch labor force works part-time (34 hours or less per week), and those part-time workers are legally entitled to a proportional share of pay, bonuses, holidays, and other benefits.
• Increase opportunities for lifetime learning and life enrichment classes at universities, churches and other institutions, where adults and children can learn new skills (e.g., cooking, carpentry, film appreciation, civic involvement).
• Watch for personal signs of dissatisfaction at work, such as: apathy, feeling overwhelmed by deadline pressure or workload; project procrastination; a toxic relationship with your boss; withdrawal from friends and family members; sleeplessness; increased smoking, drinking, or caffeine consumption; increased physical symptoms such as headaches, colds, exhaustion, ulcers, or heart condition. Change jobs if necessary.
• Increase the use of tools that help students and job applicants find work that aligns with their passions and aptitudes.
• Provide management approaches that make work more like a game, with clear rules, continuous feedback, and teamwork; (e.g., the “total quality management” initiatives of the 1990s emphasize quality circles in which each employee is trained in all aspects of the business).
• Give greater emphasis to quality and the “story” of a product or service, to enhance both worker and consumer satisfaction.
• Emphasize healthy lifestyles that optimize both play and work; e.g., many workplaces have improved the quality of food in cafeterias; have implemented employee outings that are active and healthy; and have built “high productivity” facilities where employees have more individual control over temperatures and air quality and where atriums, sunspaces, and indoor forests bring nature into the workplace.
• Hire human resource consultants like Barbara Brannen (letsplaymore.com) who intentionally bring play into the workspace with “appreciation programs,” “moments of laughter,” and projects in which employees perform charitable functions together. Fear is replaced by pride as a motivator, leading to higher productivity and greater employee satisfaction.