My Thursday has been terrific! Hope yours is too.
Today was my good friend Vivek's birthday and he was kind enough to come and celebrate it with me while also helping me with a project. This was a project I ideated yesterday.
Ideated is just a fancy word for imagined.
Imagination is my nation, the country I'm most patriotic to.
India is incredible but my imagination knows no borders and happily includes every nation on this planet and beyond.
Talking about borders, my friend Michael Koutsoubis crosses the borders of reality at the speed of thought. He writes on Twitter as Metaverse Mike, who writes a newsletter as Duke, and is launching with 3 essays this weekend. You will want to make room for this in your information diet.
Coming back to my project, I wanted to turn my room into a more colorful place to play in. You know by now that play is the guiding spirit of my life and everything I do. I'm assuming that's why you're following me and reading each of these letters I write to you daily.
But I hadn't sprinkled play into my room. I wondered why and it struck me!
I only enter my room to sleep. And get on Zoom. That's a lot of zzzzz...
The rest of my time is spent outdoors, sunning myself like a languid crocodile. Oooh! That gives me an idea for what I'll be today - Crocodile Dundee (if you're wondering what I'm talking about, refer to yesterday's issue). Cam Houser did find this game rather amusing, and I find it rather amusing imagining him in Dundee’s outfit.
Child’s Play
I soon learned that playing with crocs is not as hard as planning as completing a project. But it did turn out to be child’s play when I chose to embrace my lazy, utilize managerial skills, and delegate. What was supposed to be a DIY project was completed in a few hours. How did I do it? Simple.
1 Electrician
2 Painters
2 Friends
Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends - Beatles
Not only did I complete my entire project, but we also celebrated a friend's birthday, devoured tonnes of cheesecake, and discovered what and who I'm writing this newsletter for.
All in a day's work, eh? Nope. Make that all in a day's play.
There's plenty of valuable management lessons in here I could take a masterclass in. But I'll let you in on a bigger secret. Everything I learned about getting things done AND having fun was not from management school but from a little book I read at the ripe age of 8.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Whitewashing the Fence from 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'. In this story, you'll learn how this young lad turned punishment into play.
“he would now have comprehended that work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” - Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
My friends didn't just help me complete my physical project in record time. Jose was sharing some insights about a call that I'd missed. And voila! I realized what I had been looking for. So now I can tell you why you ought to be following me. I'm here to remind you that it's always playtime and life can be kindergarten for adults.
Now that you know, I trust you’ll be looking forward to the next issue.
p.s. don't forget to read how Tom Sawyer turns work into Play