Making Work a Game
How to Make Work a Game!
The following "rules" might help me keep a lighter, more detached attitude toward my work. And that, I hope, will reduce the causes of my procrastination. Perhaps they will be helpful to others, too.
1. Follow the rules of your workplace (including social rules).
2. Take your lumps (pay your debts, fees, & fines) with courage. That's just how the game goes.
3. Strategize! Take good care of your body, property & finances (including taxes) & time.
3. Experiment. Pretend you are an anthropologist or social scientist while you try out things that you don't normally do....
4. Take chances (try challenging, riskier things and invest in new things for yourself, work, and other arenas of your life).
6. Challenge others (duel, spar, play, tease, goad, incite, initiate).
7. DO pass Go, and COLLECT YOUR REWARDS!
8. Delight in the fun & fellowship.
For me, being sane and happy, and still employed and housed for the next 2 years (until DS graduates) means I WIN. What is YOUR goal?
- Login to post comments
interesting
:smile::smile::smile:
I really like the experiment. Pretend you are a social scientist...
I think I am going to try out on one of our IT lad -. :wink:
I want 2 work harder
Great ideas
Slider, these are great ideas. If you can implement them, I think it could be a lot of fun. I've been thinking lately about the concept of how to "care without caring" (after reading Alan Alda's memoir which is a pretty good book btw). I think if you can figure out ways to develop that playful attitude, it will really help. I think my current goal for work is similar to yours... the job isn't really everything I had hoped but I really want to make the best of it. It just isn't the right time to make a move. I am hoping to stick it out for 3 more years here.
I'd love to see your versions of the rules!
My other forum, "Slider Faces a Career Decision," will be my own plans and reflections on this issue. But I thought the idea might be useful or just fun for others, too, and I'm curious about what "game rules" others might come up with. I hope nobody uses this column for procrastinating on more important things, though! ;)
no rules for me!
I'm demand resistant. If I made a set of rules like that, it would virtually guarantee I'd do the opposite.
Do you play games?
If you play cards or Monopoly or even Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey, you agree to play by the rules FOR THE DURATION OF THE GAME. That's key--it's not forever! In a way, it's not so different from the willing suspension of disbelief required to enjoy a work of science fiction or fantasy--you KNOW that can't happen, but you enjoy pretending "what if it could?" That's exactly the attitude I'm trying to cultivate: I don't believe in all this, but what if I gave it a try and followed all the rules for a time AS AN EXPERIMENT? What might happen?
Otherwise, you're right--because demand-resistance has been the problem all along! Add disillusionment on top of that, and it's awful. Searching for a bearable way here. Of course, what I've already outlined for myself in "Playing by the Rules" under 'slider faces a career decision" IS already huge. It will take some real effort. I will undoubtedly fail to keep all the rules. But I will also do more than I absolutely have to in other areas--can't help myself. Hopefully the "extra credit" will smooth over the failures.
moment by moment
I try to do the right thing moment by moment. If I codify it, I rebel. I just don't like rules AT ALL.
I hear ya
8)