Things that Don't Matter
You can’t practice playfulness when you’re all caught up in the daily game, so to speak, doing things you really care about, when things are really tense, and have consequences.
You need things that don’t matter. Things you just don’t care about winning or losing or being good at or impressing people with or demonstrating your real self in. You need things you don’t have to do, things people do for, you know, fun.
-- De Koven, 2014
Playfulness is a tricky thing. You can choose it, but you can't force it; you can practice it, but it is theoretically driven by freedom, often equating to a lack of tangible output.
This week I started my new job as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Play on the Wellcome Trust-funded Medicine Without Doctors project at the University of Edinburgh. I'm stepping away from teaching animation, but I'm stepping into the role of - as I keep being introduced - 'Play Expert'. Which is nice, because in many ways it feels like the same, but different.
There are many, many interesting things about the project - which I'll be discussing repeatedly and at length I imagine - but one of the key things is that I'm coming into the project almost at the very beginning, and having the ability to define my role and my way of working. Faced with this responsibility, I wonder - is it possible to purposefully design playfulness into a role? What are the implications of defining specific time for "things that don't matter"? And how would that time impact the wider project?
That's why I'm ring-fencing specific time within my working week to practice playfulness. I've blocked out time on Mondays (everyone's least favourite day anyway) to prioritise the practice of being playful, and hopefully bring this into the rest of my working week.
Isn't this just a blag for some more time off? Absolutely not. As De Koven says above, to practice playfulness, you need to be removed from the "daily game" and be able to focus on "things that don't matter" - fun, non-specifically-outcome-driven things; things that aren't (to grossly oversimplify) work. By setting aside specific time that prioritises practicing playfulness, I believe I will be able to be more playful in my work on the project itself. The key case point is that this is not 'wasted' or 'free' time - this is necessary time within the project dedicated to being playful, with the specific aim of maintaining my own playful attitude.
My thought is that playful practice, and the practice of playfulness, will contribute to the project in two ways. First, it contributes the question of how and where we think about play as researchers; how do we include play in our work, and our working lives? Should researcher playfulness not be a serious consideration when constructing play-based methodologies? If "culture shapes sense making", then how does creating a workplace/research culture that priorities playfulness shape the sense making of the subject matter? Second, it contributes by potentially allowing me to engage with the research itself more playfully. Play, as Scott Eberle (2014) argues, leaves us primed to play some more. By practicing playfulness, I might not only become more playful myself, but I may maintain the curiosity, spontaneity and divergent thinking that would benefit not only my own health, but subsequently my work on the project.
There are considerations and concessions to be made, of course. As playful as the job is, it is still a job - I have contracted hours and can't expand my play time to the entire week. I will also need to be flexible - as ring-fenced as my time is, it's not all about me. There are also research-related concerns: the ethics of doing this, and how it is recorded, for example. Which is another point - the recording of it. If this is a specific move to be part of the project, it should be recorded somehow. But one thing my PhD research highlighted was the complexities that come with attempting to be creative (to play) and research the creative process (to work) simultaneously. When attempting to research my own practices, I often became frustrated with the duality of researching/making, which led to creative stagnation. This will need addressing in some form of methodology.
For now, however, I am leaving lots of things open. At its core, it feels important that research that involves playfulness considers playfulness from the ground up i.e. not just in the research, but in the researchers. I'm curious to see how setting aside specific time to do "things that don't matter" affects the things that do. Watch this space.
References
DE KOVEN, B. L. 2014. practicing playfulness. A Playful Path [Online]. Available from: https://www.aplayfulpath.com/practicing-playfulness/ [Accessed 08-08-2025].
EBERLE, S. G. 2014. The Elements of Play: Towards a Philosophy and Definition of Play. Journal of Play, 6, 214-233.