Are we born knowing how to play? In fact, yes. Humans are hardwired to “play” in their given environments. This was the gist of my thesis in college (I was a cog sci/child dev person–go figure, I work in advertising now…) and I remember spending copious hours in the lab (well, the sandbox) playing with kids, observing and piecing together the “whys” and “hows” of this thing called play and what it meant to their development into *awesome* adults.

Fast forward a few years to life in behavioural science as it relates to marketing and the topic still fascinates. But now I’m looking at “grown ups”–and our innate INability to play. Need proof? IKEA commissioned the world’s largest play study, PlayReport International some disturbing facts began to emerge out of the poll of 11,000 parents and kids…26% of parents are too stressed to play with their kids, 50% of parents want play to be educational, while the overwhelming majority of kids just want to have fun (big surprise, but hang onto this thought). And many parents say they’ve simply forgotten how to play.

So hold on a second. If we’re hardwired to play then why do we forget how to play by the time we’re grown up? Transactional nature of our lives. Actions require a hard outcome (hence, adults wanting kids ‘play’ to be educational), however what we’re actually wired for is the human interactions garnered through play. That’s the “reward”–learning how to play in the sandbox with others. Understanding the nuances of interaction is massively important and often overlooked, but as a creative person, we must understand each other (who else are we creating for?)  This is also why some of our very “adult” problems surface-not being able to play in that proverbial sandbox, as we’re expecting our “gains” out of every time we play. The reality is, sometimes we just require play to be a time to interact and (gasp) have fun.

As creative professionals, we can never lose that ability to play for playing’s sake. Of course we need to produce. Of course we have deadlines. But we also have to take the time to just interact with our friends, colleagues and creative teams–PLAY and see what happens, no strings attached. Chances are it’ll be something quite amazing.

Image Via: Alex Beltechi