Put on your game face

Put on your game face

I used to hate to study for tests in high school. Nothing could have been
more boring. But one day Terry Hill and I decided to make a game of it.
We decided to challenge each other by making up mock tests for each
other. The only rules were that we had to ask 30 questions, and the
answers had to appear in the text that we were going to be tested on in
the classroom the next day.

Because we were both competitive and loved games, we worked very
hard to come up with the most ridiculously difficult questions we could
devise. "What was Magellan's middle name?" "How many of Custer's
children were daughters?" "What is the 23rd word in the Gettysburg
Address?" We also tried to anticipate the other's toughest questions and
learn the obscure answers.

On the morning of the real test we presented each other with our own
tests, always twice as hard as the real test. As we each took each other's
test there was much happy yelling and laughter. But by the time we
took the real test in school, we were more than ready. In fact, we often
looked across the classroom at each other during the real test and rolled
our eyes with disdain at the simplicity and stupidity of the real exam.

By changing our study into a challenging game, we had taken the
"work" out of the task and replaced it with play. Did we work as hard?
Harder! But by transforming work into play, we increased our energy
and our sense of creativity.

Most people who play a lot of golf or tennis work much harder at their
games than they do at work. All people work harder at play than they
do at work, because there's no resistance. Golfers are working harder on
the golf course than they are at their professions. They don't always
know this (although their spouses usually do) because it doesn't feel like
work—it feels like fun. They bring more energy, innovation, and zest to
what they're doing out on the course because it's a game. They also
bring an ongoing commitment to increasing their skills. Everyone is
interested in getting better at the games they play.

As for the effect of games on energy, consider a bunch of guys playing
poker all night. Because poker is a game, people can play it all night
until the sun comes up. When they finally come home to sleep, you
might be tempted to ask them, "How did you manage to stay up all
night? Were you drinking coffee and cokes?" No, they confess, they
were drinking beer. "But shouldn't beer slow you down and make you
tired?" Not if you are playing a game! In fact, you'll also learn that they
were probably smoking cigars and eating junk snacks as well. Not
generally known as stimulants. What was stimulating was the game. The
joy of competition.

Playwright Noel Coward once said, "Work is more fun than fun." I
included that quote in a seminar guidebook for a sales group a year ago
and one of the participants in the back of the room raised his hand and
said, "Yeah, Steve, who is this Noel Coward guy? I figure with

a quote like that he's either a porn star or a professional golfer."
That line got a great laugh at my expense, but it also revealed a truth
(which almost all humor does). People believe that the fun jobs are
always somewhere else. "If only I could get a job like that!" "If only I
had been a pro golfer." But the truth is that fulfilling and fun work can
be found in anything. The more we consciously introduce game-playing
elements (personal bests listed, goals, time limits, competition with self
or others, record-keeping, etc.) the more fun the activity becomes.
I recently worked on a project with a young man in Phoenix who was
selling three times as much office equipment as the average salesperson
on his team. He said he didn't understand his co-workers who got
depressed easily, took rejection hard, and struggled with putting their
deals together.

"I don't take this that seriously," he smiled. "I love all my sales
challenges. The tougher the prospect is, the more fun I have selling.
There is absolutely nothing personal or depressing in any of this for me.
When I meet a new sales prospect, it's a chess game."
Whatever it is you have to do, whether it's a major project at work, or a
huge cleaning job at home, turning it into a game will always bring you
higher levels of energy and motivation.

I'm reading: Put on your game face