There are numerous essential needs that are important for human well-being, but one key component that is often overlooked is play. Unfortunately, play is frequently viewed as a silly activity that detracts from “serious” work. However, what if we were to reframe our understanding of work and recognize the potential benefits of play in enhancing our productivity and creativity?

In this episode, BoredLess Founder Acey Holmes joins us to bring the play to the table. Acey shares with us the importance of play, and how it can positively impact our personal and professional lives. By incorporating more play into our lives, we may be able to unlock new levels of innovation, fulfillment, and joy.

Whether you are a busy professional or an individual seeking greater fulfillment and joy, this episode has something to offer you. Tune in to learn more.

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The Surprising Power of Play with Acey Holmes

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a topic that we have yet to cover on the first 82 episodes of this particular podcast series and that is play because a lot of times we’re talking about personal improvement, how do we get better, how do we achieve the life that we want, but there are other essential human needs and I’ve talked a lot about community, I’ve talked a lot about mental health, and one key component of that actually is play and so my guest today, Acey Holmes, the founder of BoredLess, is bringing play to all of our workplaces and all of our lives.

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Acey, welcome to the program.

Thank you for having me, Stephen.

Thank you. So, Acey, what inspired you to make play your pursuit?

So, during the pandemic, doesn’t every story these days start that way?

Lately, yeah.

Yeah. I was the clinical full-time practicing pediatric speech language pathologist and, of course, schools and therapy, everything got shut down and after that happened for a while and then longer and longer, administrators and bureaucrats started talking about, “Oh, what are we gonna do to catch the children up?” and they were pitching longer school days and extra summer school and who needs breaks, etc., and so everyone in my field, and we all start digging up all of the research. No, absolutely, that’s the opposite of the answer. Lots of people doing really great work for that and making the point of play is how children will learn. As I was studying this and going through it and reading more and more and more research and realizing that I hadn’t really been learning myself for quite a while and I wasn’t that connected and engaged with my own work that I used to love and I was seeing that story happen with a lot of my friends and colleagues and family and wondered if any of that research about play and the wonders of play, the benefits of learning and growth and development would apply to adults and it does exponentially. So, decided to take the left turn away from kind of the pediatric world because there are definitely people out there already working to bring play to adults but not enough so I wanted to add to that pot.

Now, who are the people that are already working to bring play to adults? Because I doubt that many people have actually heard of it, given what adults are encouraged to do on a day-to-day basis in the modern world?

Yeah, absolutely. Consultants, global international consultants, they all kind of have their own niche topic but it’s all based around play so Mike Montague, Gary Weir, Dr. Mike Rucker just released a book called The Fun Habit. Jeff Harry, a lot of folks are working in the realm of helping parents understand play and how they can benefit themselves as well as their children, like Laura Haver and Sharon Calderon. We’re kind of all over the place. And then even in Denver, we have — so we are both in the Denver area so even in Denver locally to us, Stephen, there are some folks doing even like personal coaching for play. So Ashley DePaulis does work with individuals to help them bring more play to their lives. Janet Olmstead is one that focuses on like revisiting exercise as play and how that can benefit you.

Oh, yeah.

She’s like in Canada, though. She’s not in Denver, she’s in Canada, but, yeah, so — and that list is not comprehensive.

Yeah. So there are a lot of people out there talking about adults needing to play as well but the average adult right now probably is never encouraged to play at all. How do you think we got there? How do you think we got to the point where we have this mindset culturally that when you hit 15, 18, there’s a certain age where you’re expected to just no longer want to play and only want to do things that are work or an alternate form of work, such as measuring how many calories you ate and how many calories you burned, right?

Yeah. So it actually started way back when we moved from hunter-gatherer communities into farming communities. So hunter-gatherers, the anthropological research tells us they spent up to 50 percent of their daily hours in leisure activities.

Oh, wow. Even adults?

Yeah, the whole community across the board. So, if they were out hunting bison, I don’t know, whatever it is that they’re hunting, it gets a little hot or they’re just not having that great luck, they would sit down and go fishing instead and not like fishing, “Oh, we need this to eat,” but like just for fun, or sit under some trees with the rest of the hunters and just either rest or play, which fascinated me because I always thought hunter-gatherers were probably just running from lions 24/7. When we switched into that whole farming community, things had to be done at certain times, seasons of the year and times of the day so now you have tasks that are scheduled. So that was the beginning of the downfall and, obviously, I’m not saying that that move from hunter-gatherer communities is all terrible but it’s where we started to lose play. Then we went into the Industrial Revolution, which everyone knows what that did to us.

Now we’re in this lovely digital revolution where we are just overburdened with information at us all the time telling us that we should, should, should be doing something else other than play.

Yes, and also something else other than what we want to be doing and what our natural gut instinct would tell us is right and so when we transitioned from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, did we stop playing altogether as adults or was there still a little bit of time — I come from Long Island, I have always lived in cities so I know I’m very divorced from this world but my ideas come from the Weird Al Yankovic song, Amish Paradise, and one of the lyrics in that is, “At 4:30 in the morning, I’m milking cows.” Now, I imagine that between milking cows and whatever afternoon activity to be done, there’s going to be some in-between time where people would have spare time. Did people ever play as adults during that or did people instantly transition to like a non-playing lifestyle where it’s like once you’re 18, you’re done?

I don’t know as much about the farming community societies, specifically, but now you’ve opened a rabbit hole for me to dive into very soon so thank you for that. Many of our societies, as adults, a lot of us are playing and we don’t realize it.

Oh, wow. Okay.

Fairly often. So I think there was very likely because, again, especially back then before, with the farming communities before standardized and structured school, the children were still at home learning to be adults through playing, imitating what their parents were doing. Generally, there probably was play at that point. And then probably more so the fall off in that Industrial Revolution era, when it was 12-, 14-hour days, six and seven days a week was probably the more drastic drop.

Yeah. Nowadays, it feels like everything in life is really structured, like even I’m going to get a workout in isn’t I’m just going to walk around the forest, it’s I’m going to map this hike, I’m going to get out my Strava app and I’m going to measure myself against other people. Is this all kind of a fallout from the Industrial Revolution or are there other sociological factors that kind of led us to where it can feel almost suffocating where every single minute of one’s life is a task to be mastered or something that’s planned out?

I mean, it’s a huge sociological phenomenon and problem. It’s the shoulds, the hustle culture, the grind culture. If you’re not doing and if you’re not showing, then you’re absolutely wasting time. Our society just has really dug deep into that and I know your work and a lot of us are really trying to get away from it but it’s hard.

It’s an uphill battle because it’s been so deeply ingrained that it’s do and produce and show. Click To Tweet

And it’s hard to even get out of that mindset because, you know, I’ve had plenty to say about our education system and how it’s set up right now but it ingrains this idea of wait for someone to give you a task, do it to the best of your ability then wait to be judged on it.

Exactly, which is atrocious.

Yeah, so 17 years of that, it’s hard to — that conditioning, the conditioning in your subconscious really kind of — it’s hard to really break.

And then for a long time, even the educators with the best intentions and leaders trying to do the right things, we were being told that brain development, especially in our prefrontal cortex, which is where executive functioning is, where we make critical thinking and problem solving, clinically, science was telling us that the brain stopped developing around the age of 25. In your mid-20s, that was it, good luck, this is the type of adult you are, this is the type of leader you are. If it’s not great, too bad. It was too late. But now we know that that’s not true and our brain stay neuroplastic across our lifespan. So I think that really also has a lot to do with it because, clinically and scientifically, when we thought that it stopped, then why bother? Just put your head down and work. It’s not up from here. So now that we know that we have the power and physiological capability to change our brain structure, hopefully, we can open some new paths.

So no matter what age you are, everyone out there listening, even if you’re beyond 25, when they say that their prefrontal cortex is fully developed, you can still develop something new in your brain. You can still overcome whatever subconscious conditioning that is there as we all know and you’re still a work in progress.

Yes, absolutely. And the best way is to carry out all of that learning and growth and development, especially for children but I think most people know that but even as adults and in the same capacity, not less than children, is through play.

So, when we’re playing, the neurochemistry and the neurobiological activity that goes on during playful activities is phenomenal. Click To Tweet

I mean, it can literally — like what area do you want to benefit, I will show you how play can do it in your brain.

Now, you also said that, even though we don’t value it and no one tells us that we should be doing it are doing it, us adults are often playing. What does that look like in the life of the average person where play enters normal day, today is a Wednesday so perfect example of just a typical day, it’s a Wednesday in February.

Well, Wednesday in February for us and hopefully everybody does not have to go outside and see eight inches of snow but, generally for adults, it’s starting with sports. So maybe pick up basketball. We’re not talking elite athletes here so play comes at a level where competition is not too high when we’re talking about the neurological benefits of playing. So sports is usually the first one but then also interpersonal relationships. So, you think about the number of things that you’re doing with your family, your friends, your loved ones, and the type of experiences that you’re having and the feelings that you’re having during those activities that might be as simple as going to dinner can be very playful. Defining play is very difficult, even for researchers and scientists like at universities studying just play, they cannot come to an agreement on a definition for play. I have ten characteristics of play and the most important one is that it’s personal. So play is really different for everybody else so if you think, “Well, I don’t play basketball every week, I’m not playful,” then that’s absolutely not true because you love to play Catan and you do it every Friday night. You know, just different things like that. So, a lot of times that comes into, yeah, video games, board games, sports, physical activity are the most common adult ones.

But then people that do work and have jobs that they really enjoy and a culture that is supportive of them will often end up actually being pretty playful at work.

So graphic design is a really easy way to show play at work, writing, obviously, any creative endeavor, but also, really, I mean, just project management can be very playful.

So, hosting this podcast and picking different guests, having different conversations, am I playing right now?

A thousand percent. A thousand percent. So the ten characteristics of play are that it’s personal so hosting a podcast would not be something that I would choose to do so that’s our personal difference there. It’s joyful for you. You’re smiling. I don’t know if there’s a video version of this but you’re smiling right now and you’re bringing joy to other people. It’s optional so you are not being forced to do this.

No.

It’s iterative. You’re able to change it every week. It’s socially interactive because you’re talking to someone else. So, yes, podcasting for you is definitely a form of play.

And I can think of other forms of play. Obviously, we have the experience in our business accelerator program when I asked if freestyle rapping is a form of play.

Yep.

Which is something that I also did recently at a neighbor’s house because my neighbor has jam sessions and I went over and rapped about this really weird bus experience I had last week.

That’s amazing.

Yeah.

Music, that’s another one for adults.

Even though the word “play sports” and “play music” are there, adults aren’t viewing it as something playful, and it is, for sure.

Oh, for sure. I mean, I love what my neighbor and everyone else does. They’re just kind of jamming around what they feel and they’re kind of improvising a bit. It’s a very playful endeavor.

Absolutely. That’s awesome.

So are there adults out there that aren’t getting any of this play, that are in a situation where they don’t do any sports, they don’t do board games, they don’t even have playful conversations, every one of them is very linear?

Yeah, and we see that a lot in the corporate world but we also see it a lot in lives that have been full of trauma in some level so this may be a situation where they were deprived to play even as a child. We have the brain circuitry for play at birth, it is still something that’s learned. I mean, we have to learn to eat as a child, we have to learn to walk as a child, we have to learn to play, so if we are deprived of that situation, which, unfortunately, does affect marginalized communities as much as other persons do but, yeah, so we see these folks who — it’s like the even darker side of the grind culture, they’re only working and, in many situations, they’re working and taking care of their family, it’s not optional. They have no other option. They feel completely locked into it. None of the benefits even — it goes back into playing sports. Sometimes, if that seemed just as exercise, like, “I have to do this because I have to get my exercise in,” that completely changes the purpose of that play so, yeah, virtually, in our society, there are a lot of those folks out there.

So it sounds like what you’re also alluding to is that there’s two modes of this. One is people who are in a hard pressed situation where they don’t have any time and I think of like the single mom wants to work two jobs and also raise her child. That woman probably does not have the time to do anything playful, anything other than what’s necessary.

Yeah.

But then there’s also the people who have some sort of trauma in their lives where they’re conditioned to just not be — almost cut off, feel cut off from like that fun aspect. If you start talking about something ridiculous, they’ll be like, “Well, what’s the point of this? What’s this gonna get done?”

Yeah.

In either of those situations, is there a small step, because they’re both limiting in their own ways, that people can take to get out of it?

So, I think my best advice for those type of situations is not looking at it as something you have to add to your schedule. So if we think about it less as something that we have to do and more of a way that we want to be, that word “playful” versus “play,” so just considering, finding something in your day that’s routine, cooking, single mom has to cook.

Yeah, of course.

Not an option. There’s no DoorDash, etc., the kids are there so maybe, again, personal, if that mom really enjoys cooking, just that perspective of, “I get to cook,” and then maybe even if it’s just spaghetti, just changing something up, being a little bit creative with it. And then chores, an easy one sort of is like turn on music and nobody’s watching you. So, generally, everyone likes to dance if no one’s watching. Usually, your hesitation for dancing is that someone’s watching, which is even me so that’s totally normal, and if you want to get out of that box, look up dork dancing, that’s for another conversation. So if you’re at home alone and you’re vacuuming, turn up the music and just dance a little bit. And then the other real simple one you can do is just — well, but it’s kind of the same, is just finding a way to make it a little bit new so because part of what our brain does during playful activities, especially with the dopamine release aspect of it, is that dopamine is actually released in the anticipation of something pleasurable, not like at the moment of the pleasure. So there’s a big push for novelty. This is a fairly common recommendation for other purposes but like try brushing your teeth with your left hand and then laugh at yourself when it’s ridiculous because you can’t and you feel like you should be able to, or like just doing your day backwards again with time but maybe consider taking a different way driving to work. Little things like that and your brain starts to kind of eat that up like, “Oh, this is new, this is different. I like,” and then as you’re building those kinds of pathways for the dopamine and the serotonin and the endorphins, it’s kind of like meditation.

So, the more you are playful, the more you find yourself being playful without even trying. Click To Tweet

Yeah, and so can you be conversationally playful as well?

Absolutely, yeah. So people who feel like they don’t have time and can’t add another thing, just thinking — actually, a really good book about this very exact topic, his name Charlie Hoehn, he’s actually from Denver too, Charlie Hoehn, it’s spelled H-O-E-H-N but it sounds like zone. His book I think is called Playing with Anxiety, I think that’s the name of it, but he talks a lot about that he just made the decision to change the way he talked to his wife. She just made it playful. So that’s absolutely a huge step to take.

Oh, wow. And so what are your thoughts on the song, “Never Gonna Not Dance Again” by Pink?

It is on. I have a master silent disco playlist. I help folks put on silent discos if they so want and that song is on it.

Oh, actually, my last podcast episode was about silent disco.

Oh, what?

Yeah.

That’s awesome.

Oh, yeah, because that’s the one that’s not up yet anyway.

Oh, it’s not up yet. Okay.

Yeah, that’s the one that’s in the production thing but, yeah, I’ll have to facilitate an introduction because one of the things I do offer in this podcast is facilitating introductions with the relationships I’ve built, but I was just trying to bring a little play into the conversation kind of like —

That’s awesome.

Recently, we had a holiday called Groundhog Day, we in the US celebrate on February 2nd, and from a scientific standpoint, it’s completely bunk but every other I watch the movie Groundhog Day and this year, it’s been 30 years since that movie actually came out. I —

Wow, I didn’t realize that.

Yeah, it’s crazy. I finally realized this really major plot hole that no one thinks about when they watch the movie, which is that he wakes up every morning at 6 a.m. and there’s a little shade of light that’s starting to come up but then I looked up the sunrise time in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, on February 2nd and it’s 7:28 so in actual reality, it would have been perfectly dark. Is this another example of kind of bringing play into some things?

Absolutely. I mean, what does that matter, right? It doesn’t really affect the outcome but it’s fun for some people to notice. So, yeah, just thinking about taking aspects and just reducing the pressure of them, so playful activities do that on a neurological basis, we get the dopamine which releases norepinephrine which is what helps us control our levels of stress and our regulation of stress and so taking high pressure things and just maybe thinking about them in a not so serious way, and if it’s a truly, truly serious problem, then focus on it but maybe consider being playful about how you approach the problem.

So is the pressure the main thing that would prevent someone from taking a weird approach, even if it’s like, “I have this movie and I have a weird alternate theory about it”?

I think so, especially in business situations where, even if you are a leader, the pressure to perform and produce and prove and succeed is really, really heavy and a lot of our sort of leftover 80s capitalist business culture that I think are definitely on the way out, which is wonderful, our HR people are doing a great job of that, but it’s still there and so, yeah, if you’re not seeing that modeled in your environment, then it would be really hard to do.

Like what you’re around is what you become.

Yep, yep.

And what prevents people from releasing this pressure, whether it’s being in business, which we also kind of have a clear understanding of sometimes business cultures are very pressured, but does that seep into everyday life where if someone’s in a very pressured culture in business, they’re going to come home and if someone says, “Oh my gosh, what if I take this novel and this self-help book and mash it up into a freestyle rap song,” and that person is going to be like, “No, never gonna happen. That’s a pointless activity.”

Yeah. I mean, absolutely. You think about — and it was me, right? What does burnout look like? Burnout at work totally affects our interpersonal relationships everywhere and our life at home. I mean, we’re not Severance. Have you seen that show?

No but I’ve heard about it. I’ve been afraid to watch it because of my own feelings about things.

Oh, yeah. So in this show on Apple TV, Severance, the workers, they literally — their consciousness is separated, work consciousness and at-home consciousness. We don’t have that capability so we walk out of the office or we shut our laptop and all of the feelings and everything that we experienced is still there. So much of our emotions and our experience, we take them in into our body because our brain is what’s producing them so it’s physiological and you can’t turn it off so approaching it at work is a great way to start helping our folks be healthier at home.

And do you think some of our work environments that we experience is the primary reason why so many people have gotten to the point where we’re too, I don’t want to say depressed but we’re in that state of mind where we don’t think play is useful, anything playful, those little playful things that we’ve been talking about?

Yeah. I mean, think about how much you’re at work. Some people are at work a lot more than they are at home or with friends and family.

Very few people have something they do for more hours in an average week than they do their jobs.

Right. Right. Yeah.

I also want to talk about your experience starting BoredLess. It seems like you left what seemed like a stable job, you haven’t told me if that job was in that stable range, and took a risk. What did that experience feel like? What were you feeling when you decided that you were going to take this big risk and give up the stable job?

It was stable. It was very stable. Speech language pathologist, we have the lowest unemployment rate of generally any industry year over year, the jobs are just always available so if you’re an unemployed speech pathologist, it’s probably a bad choice. So, yes, very stable. Pretty well paying, honestly, like it wasn’t bad, I did not leave because I needed more money, but I did leave because I was burnt out. It was something that I used to love and there’s tons of potential reasons for that but reflecting on it, I literally played for a living at that time. So, I was on the floor with toys and children’s books and bubbles for six hours a day, six to eight hours a day, and I was also in the car a lot. So literally playing for a living and, granted, I designed it but my option for the play, it wasn’t for me. It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t personal play so I was not getting the benefits that I teach on about the play. I just got completely burnt out and so had to go and it was definitely a huge risk. I decided to do it in July of last year and July to October are honestly a complete and total blur. So I started Co.Starters where I met you and through that startup accelerator, I joined the second virtual startup accelerator. I was on fire but it didn’t feel like the hustle culture because I wasn’t doing it for anybody else. I was interested to see if I could do this. My husband, a little bit of a lunatic, was very supportive of this.

Yeah.

Still not sure why but I’m grateful that he was because here we are now. So risky but it was for me, looking back. It was very playful. So I took an idea, I was iterating it, it was optional, it was intrinsically motivating for me.

Did you get some pushback from other people in your life that maybe don’t want you to take that kind of risk? I’m trying to avoid using certain words.

That’s all right. I actually did not. What I what I heard was more of — and honestly maybe even a little internalized but the whole fallacy of sunken cost —

Oh, yeah, sunken cost fallacy, yeah.

Yeah, so I’m still paying for my degree in speech language pathology, my son will probably adopt that debt but so it was expensive and I was very good at it. Some of it was guilt that was just internalized, like why would I not keep doing this? And so just some friends and family, maybe three were like, “But it’s so good what you have now.” It was more out of curiosity rather than, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. I think you’re an idiot. Good luck.” I didn’t get any of that so it was good.

So you had to overcome your own feeling of, “I worked so many years to get to where I am with speech pathology and why would I give up this well-paying, stable job over just this burnout about…” and it seems like the burnout was mostly around like lack of agency, like you weren’t the one deciding any of these activities and you weren’t able to be creative around it. Now, is that something that’s common in your field or is that something more specific to your organization? Because some organizations tend to be a little bit more controlling of the specifics while others tend to set the general direction and let things go.

So that’s what was even a bit more of an enigma about it is because I was in full control of exactly what we did every day. Every kid could be different if I wanted it to and the types of things that I was working on, all up to me. Across the whole field of speech pathology, probably not schools and hospitals, quite a bit different, but home health, itinerant kind of settings, it usually is that way, but I think it was more just about being at the — because I was home health so it was this weird intersection of education and healthcare for the past five years so it was even more just the red tape of life and then I’m talking to people who are saying that children shouldn’t play, they need to be in school at three years old, that kind of thing. And I was weary.

So was part of it this feeling inside you that you need to focus on the play aspect of it? Did that motivation kind of throw you to where you needed to go?

I went down a lot of paths to try to get out of direct speech therapy. I tried the toy industry. Lego has probably 15 applications from me. Obviously, they never called. But I tried a lot of things, but I knew that I wanted to not be doing therapy but the mission behind speech therapy was always very important to me so communication and play. So I had been working for probably about three years just inside my head trying to come up with ideas about how to still have that as part of my mission or whatever kind of work that I was doing and I hit the sweet spot with this, I think.

Yeah, so with BoredLess, who are the people that you’re working with? Are you engaging primarily on a corporate level or other levels individually too?

Yep. Corporate, yeah. So I mentioned Ashley DePaulis that does some like one-on-one personal coaching in the realm. That’s not a path that I’ve taken yet so it’s mostly teams, organizations. The types of corporations are generally smaller and midsized companies. They might be growing and they are starting to acknowledge that culture is a thing that needs to be addressed within their organization. Maybe they’re seeing a drop in engagement, maybe they’re seeing retention, and they — my ideal client knows that and sees that something’s up and they want to do something about it but their HR department is either a department of one, which is very common, or a very small department and they just have to do onboarding and benefits, like the basics, and so asking them to add on something to build and create an improved culture is a huge undertaking. So I’ve been toying with the idea of saying like fractional chief HR officer for the companies that would need it, but, yeah, so teams like that.

And toying with the idea, pun intended?

Not at all.

Well, had to ask. And so you’re looking at these companies and hoping to bring play into the workplace. What’s the impact that you’re hoping to have on a more societal level through these engagements?

Yeah. So back to what we’re talking about that if you’re miserable at work, it’s going to be really, really hard to not be miserable at home. Some people are really, really great about shutting it off and, generally, those are the ones who are the best at self-care.

For most of us, even just self-care is really hard and that’s a really common thing, but knowing that spending more time at work, even if you sleep well, eat well, hydrate, stretch, meditate, all that stuff, going to work and having Bob the Toxic Boss breathing down your neck all day, it’s not going to matter.

It’s just really hard to turn that off. So, my work, even though it does focus on office walls but including Zoom, space walls, Zoom windows, etc., because it can be in person, hybrid, or remote, that the work will carry over because as those people are benefiting from play throughout their day at work, it’s our brain and you take your brain home so that brain is still going to have those benefits so I think it will translate.

So can it help the people with the toxic boss or is this mostly for people who are in a more of a neutral situation where they’re not really that inspired but the play is going to help them have a more positive part of their day?

Yeah. I think both. I’m not too delusional about my offerings in my studies to think that I can sway even the most Toxic Bob, right? I’m sorry Bobs that are very nice. I’ve fully acknowledged that this won’t be for everyone and I think that they will then learn because the younger generations are done with it. They’re not putting up with it. So if they walk in the door and they realize that’s what’s going on, they’re leaving. They’re out. So I’m going to let that take care of itself, that kind of situation that’s happening. But from an even more skeptical standpoint, it can definitely help on that leadership down, like a top down trickle effect, and when I work with teams on a consultation basis like longer term, the leadership is required to be involved with the playful type changes because it’s — I mean, that’s just how company culture works. But then also, employees and individual contributors may have their own types of benefits that aren’t directly even related to the culture itself.

Now, when you’re looking at these team leaders and especially when you’re looking at some of them that are maybe of the older generations, I don’t need to be generationally biased but I know that there are still a lot of people leaving companies now that don’t really want the work culture changes to happen and were very comfortable with the punch-in nine-to-five hierarchy, run it up the chain of command, all that garbage, do you see more people embracing this because they’re feeling the changes versus the people who are, say, more reluctantly, to put it in a stereotypical way, “We can’t hold on to those darn millennials, now we have to do this”?

Right, right. So I have been getting to know people in the HR space. Sometimes people call them people people. So they are the people in the organizations who are in charge of the people. They’re making sure they’re getting paid. They’re making sure they get their time off. They’re making sure they have their insurance, but they’re also making sure that their desk chair isn’t broken and that the person in the cubicle next to them isn’t bullying them or harassing them. So they are these people people. I have been so pleasantly — and I don’t know if surprised is the right word because I don’t know what my expectations were but I love them. I love people people. They are the communities that I’m in, these directors of culture and engagement or VP of people ops, they care so much about their employees and they want so badly for it to be better and a lot of them, again, like I said before, are so busy and overworked, they’re generally a very overworked population, that they don’t have the mental bandwidth to come up with creative ideas for getting people engaged in that kind of thing. And then, also, they’re generally almost fighting with the old school boss, the leadership that is not ready to move down this because, “Why should we have to change? Why can’t the millennials change?” neither of that, but I see a lot of really impressive trends and it might just be the spaces that I’m in but I think we’re on the right track.

I envision that if someone chooses a career in HR, that that’s the reason they’ve done it. They didn’t really do it to enforce bureaucratic policy, to be the person that says like, “Well, your timesheet had the wrong code,” or whatever you can think about with that.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. They care so much.

What do you see for our work culture going forward? I know we’re in a period of transition. From a millennial perspective, I see that it doesn’t feel like it really works for us in the sense just that like back in the 1950s, the total amount of time that a family needed to work was one person working 40 hours. Now we have two people working 100 hours to afford the same house and that’s what I kind of attribute this kind of reduction in birth rate to, to be a 100 percent honest, so what do you see going forward as — I don’t want to say like the old guard moves on or something like that, but as we embrace something new, are there other dangers of, say, moving too far in another direction or other unforeseen, unintended consequences, kind of like what we saw with social media where the unintentional consequences were probably worse than what we had before?

What I’ve been reading and talking with people in this space, that the future of work is flexibility, period, end of story. And that goes from setting, in-office, hybrid, remote, whatever situation, but also it’s a job design type of thing. Development and growth are a huge feature that the younger generation is looking for. They want mission-driven companies that provide them opportunities to grow and develop and that might be within their role or being given the option to move in to another role within the company.

So flexibility I believe is the future. Click To Tweet

I’m sure that has some kind of dark side but there’s always the argument of being too flexible, being too playful, will let people take advantage.

Yeah.

I believe that employees that get caught taking advantage, their motive should be analyzed because it’s very likely coming from an area of fear or a scarcity mindset. And all of that comes from existing in a toxic culture. It is my belief that people, humans, when handled with care, over time, granted, will do the right thing. So when we’re providing environments where people can thrive and trust and grow and be in relationship with each other, that that wouldn’t need to be a concern. I mean, obviously, there’s going to be outliers and there are just some super terrible people but when you give everybody the flexibility and the things, then the people that are taking advantage on purpose are going to stand out and you can move them on to your competitor.

You can figure it out, and it sounds like it also requires a reliance on what you brought up earlier, the intrinsic motivation that someone wants to do the job well because they genuinely care about the people they’re working with, they genuinely care about the mission of their organization and how their work shows to other people.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. If you’re in an office and you know that what you are typing out has a bigger future, amazing purpose, and that you’re able to say, “I am doing that,” then you’re not going to cheat the unlimited PTO system and you’re not going to not work because you want to help. So, yeah, exactly.

And it sounds like there’s this need to overcome fear, which is what leads to like the excessive amount of bureaucracy, the excessive amount of permissions and paperwork involved in a lot of large organizations.

They’re afraid they’re going to lose money so we’re just going to throw all this stuff at it, which then trickles down and then you’re afraid you’re not going to make money or that you’re going to get laid off.

Yeah, fear is definitely a barrier to play, for sure. Click To Tweet

Definitely. Well, Acey, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, telling us all about play. Do you have any last piece of advice for my listeners out there as to how anyone can incorporate play right now as you’re finishing up this episode? What’s the next thing you can do to just feel more playful and creative in your life?

If you are pretty mobile and not currently injured or recovering from a surgery, I recommend that the next time you are somewhere in a safe five-foot space to skip across that space instead of walking. Just a simple skipping. And for those that may have some limited mobility, for whatever reason, take 20 seconds, close your eyes, and draw your favorite animal eating your favorite food while your eyes are closed.

Oh, wow. I’m going to do that right now, actually. Well, thank you again and I’d like to thank all my listeners out there for tuning into Action’s Antidotes, for engaging some of these stories around people who are pursuing the things that they are truly passionate about and I’d like to encourage you to pursue what you’re passionate about, if you know what it is, and if you don’t know what it is yet, find the way to give yourself the space to find that out, whether it be through play, through meditation mindfulness, or through just putting down your phone and giving your brain time to think as opposed to constantly overloading it with information.

Yes. Thanks for having me, Stephen.

Thank you and have a wonderful rest of your day.

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About Acey Holmes

A southerner by birth, Acey was pulled to Colorado by the mountains. She spent much of her professional life helping children of all abilities communicate (mostly through play!). With a cliche pandemic pivot away from pediatrics to adults, she now focuses on bringing play to adults through consulting and facilitation all based in the neuroscience of play. Her fun and fully interactive workshops cover topics such as “The Power of Play at Work”, “The Neuroscience of Play”, and “Personal Play Identities”. She facilitates Failure Awards for organizations and provides strategic conference scheduling play breaks to improve the attendee and presenter experience. Her education and experience as an educator and speech-language pathologist make her a unique expert on communication and brain development with special application for organizational development and team dynamics. When she’s not convincing adults to play, you can find her on a bike, skis, or in hiking boots on the side of a mountain somewhere!