WORK

Work keeps you alive. Work keeps the fear out. Work is the antidote. Work is all time.

Work is a sustainable routine. Not a routine that you can sustain, but one that sustains you. Work is what keeps you alive and well. Work makes sure your needs are met. The goal is to do it so well that it keeps you alive not just as a requirement, but spiritually as well. Pour yourself into the craft or the detail, try to be better at it than anyone else. Try at it so hard new meaning emerges. What can you learn from this? What can you learn from this if you do it over and over. How is it different each day? What happens if you change it 1 degree or 3. Experiment with it. Work hard enough to call it play.

I spent some time watching videos about how to do laundry better. What makes whites whiter? How does pressing a collar make a shirt look more expensive? Since I have to do laundry, I might as well make it interesting.

I don’t always strive to get better at work. I don’t always turn labor into a game or a goal to reach. Even with proof that it improves when I do. When I was a bank teller in college, I decided to test my abilities with people, see what reactions I could manipulate. I watched people, picked up on patterns and learned more about my own patterns. People would storm in, furious over an overdraft fee and instead of reacting to their rage, I saw an experiment. I don’t remember exactly what I did, but my energy was probably more inviting than is normal. I nodded, I came along with them on their stories, I was calm, I listened. They weren’t screaming at me they were screaming at the problem. It worked! They always apologized to me. This was probably the first job that I realized my capacity for power (and love).

My father said “hobbies can you get through just about anything.” He also meant working at something, anything. When I was in high school he was learning to hunt with a bow and arrow. Then he learned how to golf. Now, at 82, he drives around in his ATV trimming the forest, making paths, and clearings, burning all the brush, drying wood. Work is a way to control the mind by giving it something to do. Work keeps the mind from being alone with, and then defined by thoughts— getting lost, overwhelmed and scared.

PLAY

The best way to have fun, is to not attach time to it. This is the problem with work. It could be fun, but the clock has a choke hold on the individual and the group. I have told my co-workers to get on board with the systems our team is making so that we can attain the ultimate goal: going home. It’s a race to leisure! Unbind from the clock!

Scientist have discovered that it takes approximately 400 repetiions to create and new synapse in the brain, unless it is done in play, which case it only takes 10 to 20 repetitions. (This link is not a real source)

I’m realizing now that I love productivity, and play is a very good strategy for getting work done, letting go, having fun while still presenting a challenge. Work is a game. If you make it a game, then time kind of disappears. Now I must look for more avenues to make time disappear.