This is Anne with your Coaching On The Go.

Two additional facets that you get from playing as an adult are your productivity increases and your problem-solving ability.

Kids today aren’t outside playing.

You rarely see them on their bikes, riding around in groups, or at someone’s house playing.

Adults have taken the fun out of childhood in many ways by over-scheduling and they do it to themselves as well.

I have done it.

I didn’t do it to my children because I wanted them to have the free play that I had as a kid.

I’ve done it to myself at times as an adult where I would get so engrossed in the importance of my work that I would find myself working 8 or 10 or 12 hours in a day.

You better believe that working that long is a lot of sidetracking and multitasking.

One of the things you get from allowing yourself to play is productivity.

When you are playing, you are productive at play.

When not playing, you are productive with your work because you give yourself a break between.

It’s statistically said that you can’t be productive for more than two hours at a time.

One of the principles of Trevor Blake’s five-hour workday is that you work for no more than a two-hour block at a time, having at least a two-hour block between to let your mind do something else.

I’ve mentioned many times that when I’m meandering around my home, unloading the dishwasher and relaxing my mind, I get incredible ideas.

When walking on the beach, I’m picking up beach glass or colored stones.

My mind can solve problems and get hunches.

Just all of a sudden an idea will pop in.

Productivity is one of the things you get from play as well as time during that play to creatively problem-solve.

If you think back to when you were a child and you had the opportunity to be kind of cast out of your home in the morning, you immediately started creatively thinking about what you wanted to do for the day.

You would pick up friends to do it with and pretty soon you and your friends would be problem-solving about what you would like to do and how to do it.

A delivery truck would come with an appliance and all of a sudden you would be inside the box of the appliance cutting out windows and doors, making a house.

It was wildly creative.

Adults typically create a life where their play is drained out.

If you add that back in, when you do, you benefit in the same way you did as a child where you have this free time to think and play.

When you get to work, you are more productive and resourceful in the way you problem-solve.

Last week I had a squirrel break into my home while I was gone.

When I returned I found quite a mess.

My window sills were chewed up and some art glass was shattered on the floor.

When I went to sweep up the art glass and throw it away, I’m sure the gathering I do at the beach with glass and stones, affected the way I picked up the glass.

It ended up at the bottom of a giant vase, looking beautiful, I can enjoy when I do a flower arrangement.

It was so beautiful when I got done putting the pieces in there that I ended up putting it in the bay window to enjoy.

If I wasn’t somebody who played as an adult, I would probably not have seen the beauty of the shards I was throwing away.

But no, I saw them and was able to do something creative instead.

This same thing happens when I want to make tweaks in business to solve a problem.

I’m used to being playful in the midst of problems; it’s a default, so I start wondering what’s possible with the elements available.

If you haven’t been playing, get going!

Figure out what you can do today.

If it’s just taking a two-hour break, making sure you are not working during your play, seeing what you fill into the space, that will start you on the road to heightening your ability to play.

Have a beautiful day.