Another Reason Internet Businesses Fail: The Myth of Work vs. Play

Bang on Glenn! I wish more of my friends would understand this, I have led this lifestyle all my adult life.

I know of public servants and teachers who know the day 20-30 years from now when they will ‘retire’ That to me seems like prision, but thankfully there are fewer and fewer people in society who have a pre set retirement date, it has disappeared from the private sector years ago.

Work is play! I still love turning ‘water into wine’ in the online world, metaphorically speaking.

Glenn,

This message would be absolutely terrifying to many, many people. Given the premise that an honest person would have to agree with the theme of the “Work vs. Play” article, it would leave only two alternatives. The first would be to go back to the drudgery of their ‘work’, only now with the awareness of how suffocating and, ultimately, futile it is. The second alternative is to change (maybe even significant, life-altering change) and, oh, how scary this can be. Even when we know intellectually and intuitively that change is needed, we’re still averse to implement change because of all the unknowns involved coupled with our own insecurities. Does not fear of change rank pretty high on our hierarchy of phobias (right behind public speaking)?

Thanks for hitting me square between the eyes with this.

While I agree with you that the ideal situation is where we can enjoy what we do, what we enjoy is not always commercially viable. That’s why people have hobbies, while something else “brings home the bacon.” The idea of the broke artist or musician who love what they do but simply don’t have any commercial talent is so common as to be a cliche.

And I really think you’re off with your animal analogy. If a cat is hungry, the cat will hunt mice. If you feed the cat everyday, he will concentrate his efforts on finding the the most effective nap spots. Sure, he might play with the occasional rubber mouse, but it would be the rare cat who would wait outside a mouse hole for hours to stalk a mouse if he wasn’t really hungry. Hunting mice is the cat’s job. Napping is the cat’s hobby.

Glenn,
Wow – what a flashback for me! I remember my first direct report at my first employer. He was 59 and I was 27, fresh out of graduate school. During our first meeting, he said to me, “Ken, don’t mess with me, I have 3 years left.” To which I, divinely inspired, replied, “Jack, it sounds like you are in prison.” That led to a great conversation about how he was hurt years prior, but felt trapped with no options for another career. Bottom line, we turned the whole thing around for him and he left there with a great legacy – we even got a patent issued due to some of our work. You have to love what you do – create your own world!

Glen

I completely agree with you. I still have always felt rather sorry for those people you meet who say things like ‘thank goodness it’s nearly Friday’!

But I also recognise Ron W’s commnets – it can sometimes seem like hard work to get yourself into that place where work is always fun.

I have a friend who is constantly \"on the go\" work, running, marathons etc.
She and I have a line of \"Lexie\’s Jewelry\" with most of the profit given to Cancer Research. The other day, I told her that I was just \"thinking\" / daydreaming and solved our design problem. She couldn\’t understand what I meant. But I\’ll be you do. I \"play\" a lot and also accomplish a lot by doing so.
Bev at http://www.bevsjewelry.com

This is a thought provoking post. I would substitute your word “play” with “leisure”.

“Work / play” implies an “either – or” dichotomy of (and is, I believe one that is often used by many to manipulate in selling internet marketing business models (i.e. the “sitting on the beach while your web site rakes in the cash” mantra with the obligatory pictures of houses, cars etc).

I believe leisure is a better description for what you were talking about with your walks in the mountains. It implies that we need to step back from the grind of “doing” to experience “being”. This can take place in many forms, whether it’s walking in the mountains, working on your car, attending a church service, or changing your baby’s diaper. This helps us realize that we are more than we “what do”.

I recently saw a BBC documentary titled “The Trap”. The series consists of three, one-hour programs which explore the concept and definition of freedom, specifically “how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today’s idea of freedom.” In Part 2 titled “The Lonely Robot”. It shows how “economic man” has become so focused on “doing”, measured by productivity targets, upon which our very livelihoods become dependent that we have lost sight of the bigger view of who and what man is.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1087742888040457650#

In other words, by reducing man to a few mechanical principles, we have become “human doers” instead of “human beings”, and as a result, we have lost sight of who and what we really are, and where we are going. If “who you are” is totally wrapped up in “what you do” and “how you do it”, you are setting yourself up for a huge disappointment. When (for what ever reason) you can no longer do it, as Glen points out, there’s a good chance you’ll end up on the couch paying a psychiatrist to try and figure it out. Along the way you have to take time to “stop and smell the roses”.

It reminds me of the scene in the movie “The Karate Kid” where young Daniel has been working his rear off on Mr. Miagi’s house as part of his training and on his birthday he gives him a car as a gift. He then tells Daniel that there is more to life than karate, hands him a picture of his girlfriend and says “go find balance”.

Glenn,

You really hit on an important key to success.

I have literally taken 2 years off and actually had my income GROW. But the key to doing that was working almost all the time for a couple years. During that period there was no distinction between work and play. Work WAS play… because it was fun.

When I took those two years off it was to work on my true passion… playing and recording music. So even during my two years off, I was still working… but for me it was all play.

Thanks for sharing this, Glenn.

Best,
Doberman Dan

Couple of things:

@Jim Bryant: thanks for the link the video – I hadn’t heard about that one before. The ideas are not new, by any means, but they are still relevant – perhaps more than ever.

I appreciate your contribution to the conversation, but I’m going to suggest that your correction (leisure, not play) is actually the wrong way to think about what Glenn is talking about – dead wrong. Worse, changing “play” into “leisure” keeps you 100% entrenched in the very horrors of modern, robotic life that we are supposedly trying to free ourselves from.

“Leisure” is the thing that was invented as the counterpart to “work.” It’s this false dichotomy that was so important to the success of the Industrial Revolution, where for the first time in history people were “trading hours for dollars” in a sphere of life that was entirely separate from the “rest of life.” This was never the case beforehand. This view of life is of course integral to the whole notion of “going to work” – a view, by the way, which many of us as entrepreneurs allow to guide our existence, even though it’s not actually necessary. When you’re not clocking in to work for the man, you have no real reason to make “work” a sphere of your life that is fully separate from “the rest of life.” And yet, many of us (myself included) do this because we’re so socially conditioned to the idea that “work is work” and you gotta just bear down and roll up your sleeves and keep your nose to the grindstone and not have time for anything that isn’t work.

And if that’s the case, it follows that “leisure” is the the other half of your life (the yang to work’s yin, if you will). So we bust our buts “so we can get to the beach for the weekend” or have that vacation to the tropics or whatever else. We work until 2am so we can have everything done and get up at 5:30am to get to that 7am tee time and “get our leisure on” with our buddies.

Now, I’m not exactly cracking the code of the modern corporate world when I say that work, more and more, trickles into leisure. Tomes have been written on the subject by people much smarter and better informed on the topic than I. But look around you. I have a very successful friend in NYC – a partner at one of the most highly respected corporate law firms on the island of Manhattan, and if you can have a dinner out with this man during which he gets and responds to fewer than 20 work-related emails, I will personally fly to your home city and give you a crisp new five dollar bill.

So leisure is basically screwed ANYWAY. I understand that the above scenario is perhaps extreme, but at some level, we all have “office bleed.” And if you can hermetically seal off your workplace so that it doesn’t infringe upon your non-work life, hey – congratulations! Seriously. But how many of us hermetic sealers, upon leaving work (whether at someone else’s office or our own) actually “do leisure”? Kids, house repairs, half-hours on hold with Comcast – this you call leisure? No – in fact, one of the things that defines us as human is work (or “labor” in the case of the house repairs and Comcast calls). So we’re always in the balancing act not between work and leisure, but between leisure and labor, which are happening, in most cases simultaneously. Add to the mix the fact that many of us are ALSO expected to work (like, our jobs) while also leisuring and laboring, and you have the recipe for a society of robots.

But see, what Glenn is talking about is very different. He’s talking about something elemental in human life (both child and adult) called “play.” Play is actually integral to the creation and sustenance of human culture. Read Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens for an in depth (and difficult, admittedly) study of the topic. It’s fascinating and it’s a great argument for what Glenn is talking about here. As human beings, adult, child, whatever, we have the desire and need to play etched in our DNA. Ever have one of those moments where you allow yourself to completely inhabit your children’s mental world – if only for a moment – and feel that total release, that total joy that comes from being truly free of all your real-world concerns? THAT is play. Ever go out on the weekend and get drunk and find yourself doing all kinds of crazy things you never would have imagined? Guess what? That’s PLAY – and while it may not be a sustainable model for play, it’s pretty darned salutory for many of us.

So how do we integrate play into work, so that “life” is just “life” and not some arbitrary division between work and leisure that was cooked up by factory owners to keep their workers from revolting? Well, first we acknowledge it’s possible, and then we start to find ways to try it out and see how good it feels.

I live in Boulder, Colorado and I hike like a mofo around here – have for years. Best thing to happen to me in recent memory? iPhone 3 with voice recorder. (I know, the Blackberryers among us are chuckling in that special way they do when iPhoners get all excited about a feature they’ve had on their device for, like, 3 years.) Now I get out on the trail, where my creative juices are flowing much broader and faster than at my desk, and I record blog posts, business ideas – all kinds of awesome stuff. And to me, it feels like play.

Last thing, and then those of you who are still reading this interminable comment can go take a nap: one of my recent ventures (still in the idea phase, truthfully) involves a guy I’ve worked with a lot, an amazing coder and idea man. He’s also a certified practitioner of Chinese Medicine and a very spiritual cat. During a few of the meetings for this venture, there has been some grumbling about things like needing a time line, needing a strategy, needing a project manager. Now, I would be an idiot if I said these things weren’t 100% necessary at some stage for business success. But my friend’s response to all this was (I’m paraphrasing) “I’ve started a bunch of companies. The one’s I’ve started the typical way with schedules and timelines and directives and creative briefs and project managers have all failed. The ones I’ve started by PLAYING have all been successful. We’re still sort of feeling our way into what it means to start a business through playing, but I have to say the results so far have been nothing short of amazing. And unlike many of my other business activities, this project has never once felt even remotely like WORK. Weird. Cool. Fun.

Peace people – keep it FUN!

Hello, Glenn!

There’s an old-fashioned concept that seems to be in short supply today. It’s called common sense.

Your message is a fine example of common sense. (In this hyper-sensitive world full of tender egos, is it OK to say that?)

It’s common sense that you can’t enjoy what you’re doing and be all-stressed-out at the same time.

An elderly friend of mine who worked as a technical consultant to large corporations (and loved what he did and the people he met) used to say, “I’m never going to retire. I see people retire from work, then they die within two years because they don’t know how to do anything else.”

(He was well past a rollicking 90 before he decided it was time to move to a new adventure.)

Workers of the world: Enjoy!

This discussion gives more depth to the phrase “Labor of Love”.

I’d like to add another idea to the pile: that the distinction between work and play is largely about our perceived feeling of control. Work is “work” to many people when they feel it is thrust upon them by others – in other words, when they feel they lack control over their time and movement. When we play, we often feel completely in control.

There was a study done in the Canadian federal government some time ago that looked at the stress levels of all sorts of workers. The study concluded that the employees who feel the highest levels of stress are…secretaries. Surprising conclusion? Not really, when you think about it. Of all people in an organization, secretaries have the least amount of control over their work. Essentially, their job is to wait until others pile work on them. Not very empowering.

But we can choose how we perceive work (and play). Viktor Frankl said it best:

“Everything can be taken from a man but …the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Great post, as always, Glenn.

Spot on! My wife is always asking why rich people keep working. “That’s just greed!” she says. I have to keep reminding her that it’s not about the money. It’s the love of the hunt. Like her shoe shopping.

Ken Kurtz
LeadsGopher.com

Find your joy in work that lets you learn something new everyday, earn your daily bread without stress, meet new and interesting people and help your clients. It’s hard to not rejoice in work like that.
Phil Cullum
Host, Your Social Marketing Workshop

It\’s so good that somebody has the courage to tell it like it is without all the pap and tripe which comes from those who haven\’t succeeded. The vast majority of successful and wealthy individuals have said this for generations. Who disagrees? That\’s right – those who don\’t believe, therefore they\’ll never be a success. Just because they can\’t do it doesn\’t mean others can\’t.

It\’s posts like this which make your blog so enjoyable. No matter how uncomfortable some may get, just keep telling it like it is, Dr. Livingston!

Hi Dr. Glen

I completely agree with you. Here is why I do.

I have been called a “workaholic”, “obsessed”, “nerd” and all sorts of weird things. My “work” is an expression of becoming completely immersed in what I am passionate about. It is so much fun that I cannot get enough of it, so it has nothing to do with being a “workaholic” or being “obsessed”. I have never worked, I play every day the whole day for a long time every day because I am passionate about what I do. I have a perhaps simplistic view that if someone believes that they are working at a hectic pace and rewarded with stress then they are perhaps doing what they are not passionate about.

Forcing yourself to forget what you are passionate about is justified when you believe that you have to do what you don’t like to do because you have to pay the bills and care for your family etc. But if anyone can afford to play all day, then whey don’t they? Well, I can only tell you what I think it might be, and being a psychologist you will know whether there is some truth in what I believe.

Just like money, marketing can be applied for good or for greed. Marketing applied for greed have conditioned us to believe that you need to make money, and once you have money then you can buy what you need which will then make you happy. It would be difficult or impossible to get you to spend your money on things you don’t need if the message was different. The sequence of events of this belief system is: make money first -> can afford to buy what you need -> will then be able to satisfy your emotional need. In short money -> instantly satisfies emotional need. Money is the motivation regardless of what you do.

Now imagine what happens when you do the exact opposite and reverse the order of events like this. Do what you love and you will be happy and fulfilled, even if you don’t have any money -> being passionate about what you are doing, you end up doing what you do better than anybody else, because they are mostly doing something they don’t like to do so they can never be as committed as you are -> money then comes to you as a result of what you are doing. So the inverse of most advertising conditioning is: Satisfy your emotional need first -> make money as a result. Passion is the motivation for what you do and money is just a consequence.

If you want to play all day, then conceive how to monetise your passion, put the outcome in your mind, believe it has already happened, and then live your passion. The money then comes by itself, and it really does. I can understand why that may perhaps sound unbelievable.

According to modern aeronautical principles and aerodynamics it is clearly proven that it is impossible for a bumble bee to fly, but fortunately the bumble bee does not know that so it goes ahead and flies anyway. Science clearly proved that it was impossibly to fly, but the Wright brothers were passionate, intensely committed and went ahead to fly anyway, despite the fact that everybody else believed it was impossible. They achieved what was “impossible” because they put it in their minds, and completely believed and visualised that they were flying before they actually did.

I have been living like the bumble bee for more than 40 years, so I can say that money does come as a result of what you do, and you can do anything that you want to do if you put your mind to it and believe that it has already happened. I can also say that money almost always eludes you when it is money itself that you are passionate about.

Did Bill Gates make money as a result of being passionate about software for microcomputers, or did he first make money doing what he did not want to do, so that he could afford to buy IBM to become the largest IT company in the world. Is Honda the largest motorcycle and internal combustion engine manufacturer in the world since 1963 as a result of Soichiro Honda living his passion, or did he make lots of money doing something he did not enjoy so that he would have enough money some day be able to buy Toyota. They both lived their passion. They both played all day. They were both driven by their passion and their money came as a result of what they did.

Play is when you are happy, living your passion, and having fun meaning that you never work, because work is when you are doing what you don’t like to do while forcing yourself to continue believing that making money will someday allow you to buy what will make you happy.

How anyone chooses to make their money is entirely their choice, and you can make money either way. But I think that if you do make make lots of money for the sake of money alone then the tendency is greed, and if it is as a result of being motivated by passion then the tendency is to share.

So I just want to thank you for being motivated by passion, which is why I believe you are giving by teaching me and countless other people to share in the fruits of what you know. I have recently started an Internet business, and applying what you teach is far more valuable than you may realise, as that is what enables me to continue living my passion and those fruits are shared as well.

Gys

Dr. G,

Great post!!!

I love this saying….\"If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life\" I know we have our humanistic frustrations and obstacles to over come, but in the end if your seriously passionate about something, the positive far outweighs the negative, and the neg. is very manageable.

Like working in the garden (if you do) its \"Fun\" work.

Ron

Hi Dr. Glen,
Good article. Too many people look for the day that they don\’t have to work anymore. But rapidly discover that a) the pension is not sufficient, b) nobody is asking for their opinion and help, c) black hole.
I don\’t know how we can prepare people (early) for a \"second life\". I tried it in different ways but not much response.