From mucking around to polish: becoming more open to play in work
Find ways to ‘play safely’ and with it, your unique way of communicating. That’s the theory anyway
This week a few things have made me realise that I should be actively trying to play more in my work.
Ever since I was at secondary school, play - or dicking around - was a big part of ‘work’, something that was continued in my first years working in magazines: the AJ news desk was a very funny place to be.
At school, and university come to think of it, some of the dicking around was to my work’s detriment, but it was also an effective survival strategy, so wevs…
Anyway, I’m increasingly of the view that there is a sweet spot between play and application where interesting/unique/exciting stuff happens. It’s probably also the trick to finding a communication style or even type of work that is uniquely yours.
What prompted this? On Friday I unearthed a series of character sketches I’d made of men I’d met. I hadn’t touched these for about 5 years.
They were 150 words long tops, nice & pacey. I made these on and off over a few years, simply writing down short description about the most interesting parts, when I’d met someone I thought was remarkable, or of a type.
I’d started this when I was thinking a lot about different type of masculinity for a client of mine, as well as some of the ‘characters’ I encountered when working in pubs in Durham, and they were in part an outlet for, but also an extension of the copywriting work. These were warts and all men, in a way that the commercial work couldn’t quite allow for - though I think we did get quite close.
Anyway, I shared one with a WhatsApp group and it went down well, and it validated my thought that this was something, that even though it was completely self initiated and started as pure ‘play’, that warranted a bit of love and care, and with a bit of application and completer-finisher discipline, could be made into something quite good. Something that may resonate with a lot of people.
I’d also remembered that in my communicating-in-product-team work, some of the best ways of landing points were when Id made slides or presentations with a heavy dollop of playing around, not just in a playing for gags way: often it helped communicate something quite abstract or complicated in an efficient way which connected.
[stick in slide from great of horse / fish or taxonomy of animals + commodity codes]
The second thing which happened was one of my friends and freelancers-in-crime shared an amusing video on Twitter. It was some immaculately coiffed fund manager doing a morning piece to camera, while he strode through Central Park, ready to seize success by its lapels, or whatever you do.
There was an element of ‘haha let’s us pasty brits laugh at the gauche American being unashamedly slick’, but on looking at a few more of his pieces to camera, it turned into ‘wow, this is a really effective way of communicating, where his personality comes through, it’s useful information - not too serious, a bit of humour - packaged up in an entertaining and positive manner.’
The train of thought continued: ‘my friend would be great at this. He should start doing these’. And what may start with a bit of messing around where he can find his voice through playing - the ‘do 100 of one thing’ https://aliabdaal.com/my-top-10-tips-for-aspiring-youtubers/ approach that Ali Abdaal recommends.
The obvious resistance is: ‘but won’t I look like a total dick?’. Well yes, always possible. I guess the trick is doing it in a ‘safe space’ (a new anonymous account, a blog that noone reads, etc) and then gradually open it out to more people. Anyway: more playing.