Productivity & Play

The answer to us feeling more aligned and energised in our work lies in our childhood play 🛝

“Adama has shown a particular continuing interest in imaginative play, role play and story telling.” That was one of the quotes from my nursery review, when I was around 4 years old.

I’m reading through this review book and realise so many of the interests and passion I displayed through play all those years ago are the things that energise and excite me today.

“Adama has a wide vocabulary and is able to articulate her ideas and needs clearly, talk about the past, present and future events and make detailed observations.” - I’ve literally been making content online for over 4 years tapping into this very thing, it’s felt natural from the start and it makes sense.

“She particularly enjoys noticing fine details in books, pictures and the environment around her.”- A lot of my work as an SRE involves making detailed observations, noticing detail and being able to articulate these. An interest in fine details and understanding why has always been there and lends it self well to a dynamic role like site reliability engineering.

It’s interesting how when we go back to how we behaved and what we enjoyed as kids (before the influence of society, norms , media etc) that we tune into the signs of the things we should be focusing on and leaning in to.

Understating why some activities and people leave us feeling drained and others invigorated.

I was encouraged in part to dig this review out after finishing Ali Abdaal’s book Feel Good productivity (which is great btw).

Success shouldn’t equate to suffering and productivity shouldn’t be painful (not that grit isn’t needed and times can get tough). The more we can align ourselves with the things that energise and excite us and bring them into our everyday work the more fulfilled we’ll feel.

There’s so much data and insights from this nursery review book that I’m keeping it out from now on.

I hope in the new year you too look to the things that energise you and make you feel good whilst achieving more ✨