Time to Play

By Peter Nevland - Jul 28 , 2009

Google does it. 3M does it. Honda used to do it in a big way. It’s part of my daily routine, but not part of my work.

I didn’t try to write this as a riddle, but it’s kind of turning out that way. What I’m talking about is play; fun; time spent that has no seeming connection with productivity; pursuing projects for the sake of our own enjoyment. What good could possibly come of that in the face of the deadlines I have to meet?

As a writer, I remember how it started. Out of nowhere, words popped into my brain. They contributed nothing to the homework I needed to finish or the studying that my first year engineering coursework required. They seemed perfectly happy to bippity bop around my head and say, “We’re here, ready for your new adventure!” I listened. The adventures have been incredible.

Honda’s website tells the story of the “I-Con,” a companywide idea contest started in Japan in 1970 by Mr. Honda himself. “We hold I-Cons because it’s fun,” he said. “I-Con is not work; it is play. When one is at play, one does not feel as though one is being ‘made to do something.’” It’s not difficult to see why I-Cons became wildly popular at Honda. “Oval wheelers,” turbo-prop cars, the “portable motorcycle,” a “Gondragon”—anything and everything that Honda employees could think up got entered into the I-Con. Once it concluded, all works were scrapped.

“I wanted to make something unlike anything that had existed in the world,” said Koichi Sukamoto. “It was our first experience finishing a work we created ourselves, and we had seen it move. We’d had so much fun and were simply very happy.” No purpose but fun. No ulterior motive but to experience the joy of creation and see their dreams come to life. Honda rapidly produced industry-changing technology in the ’70s, like the CVCC engine, a cleaner burning powerplant that required no catalytic converter or unleaded fuel to meet emissions standards. They attributed their success to the joyful atmosphere produced by I-Cons.

After the 5th I-Con, Honda noticed that employees had begun to submit more practical products as opposed to projects made purely for their entertainment value. Competition reared its head. People became obsessed with significance. The joy of team discovery, personal creation, and the birth of dreams became harder and harder to find and eventually disappeared. Organizers limited the event to every 2 or 3 years and eventually discontinued it in 1993, citing “the collapse of the bubble economy” and “a major reduction in recreational funding.” The connection from fun to purpose disappeared when they looked for it.

Something in me hurts that they didn’t succeed. I wish the I-Con had stayed alive. My experience knows all too well how easy the demands of time and bills can choke the simple pleasure out of activities that spring from nowhere in the first place. Writing started as a useless diversion from my engineering life but became much harder, albeit more productive, when I started doing it for a living. It’s why I turned to graphic design, disc golf, photography, and racquetball. I even traveled to other countries, immersing myself in their culture and language just so I could avoid having to squeeze some rent juice out of the once-beating art that had made my heart come alive in the first place. Every time I tried to figure out how to make the fun return, it was nowhere to be found.

Thankfully, that’s not the end of my story. The addition of an income as a marketing consultant has removed a hairy-gorilla amount of pressure from my artistic shoulders. Writing jumps in front of my eyes in the morning again. The delight of expressive freedom in front of a wide-eyed audience tickles my tongue with its sweet nectar in the absence of financial worry. It’s good to feel hope wooing me beyond the horizon into an undiscovered country.

A month from now, I’ve got a trip planned to England, mostly for the sake of spending a week creating and dreaming with a producer/musician friend who has a studio in his home. Who knows where it’s going to go or what will come out of the explosive, mad scientist creative sessions we have. I don’t care. It’s the most excited I’ve been about a trip that I can remember.

But enough about me—why does Google, who went from 0 to $22.8 billion in revenue in 10 years encourage their employees to spend 20% of their time on projects that have no direct contribution to the bottom line? Why does 3M designate 15% of their employee time to creativity? If you look for the connection between their fun and their companies’ continued successes, you won’t find exactly how it works. I just think that it’s exactly how we’re made.

And people whose hearts pulse with unreasonable delight and passion seem to come up with ideas that change the way we live.

Isn’t that how we started this journey in the first place?