At a conservative estimate, I’d say that 95% of all mobile Apps are designed for fun and filling time. Most have no other function apart than that.
Extreme sports, bungee-jumping, sky-diving and a host of other high-octane activities have far less to do with keeping fit and healthy than they do with providing an adrenalin rush.
Social media for most p
eople is less about keeping in touch and making friends, and more about feeling important and significant…and passing the time.
Gadgets, apart from emptying our pockets and bank-reserves quicker than a RBS Executive, are for many people just a way of bringing a bit of glamour and excitement to an otherwise dull day.
I’m not a Luddite. I’m not against all this technology and the fantastic things it allows us to do. And I’m really glad that thrills (whilst not cheap) are much more widely available today than I remember when I was younger.
What concerns me is the question: why is our work so dull, boring and unstimulating that we have such a craving for distraction which these things provide?
A quick dart into Marcus Buckingham‘s book, ‘Go Put Your Strengths to Work‘ quickly reveals an apparent universal truth that less than 20% of people feel they are playing to their strengths for most of their time at work. When we play to our strengths we feel energised, focused, inquisitive, fulfilled. In short, we don’t feel bored! So 80% of us feel sufficiently bored (or stressed) by our work to need distractions. Lots of people find their work a misery. We need things to take our mind OFF our work. We feel the need to inject some life, energy, and excitement into our dull routines. We need to have FUN and we find it wherever we can.
Work just doesn’t do it for most people. And when people do appear to be having fun at work, I’ve seen managers and other colleagues start to get a little paranoid. “What do they know that I don’t?” It’s often frowned upon when there’s laughter in the office; when people make an attempt to brighten up their work space; or when staff get playful. Somehow, it seems to go against the grain.But when did it become a bad thing to have fun at work? Who decreed that ‘work’ needed to be a drudge? Where did the idea surface that having a stifling work experience is as inevitable as death? How sad that so many of us need to compensate for our work by accessing a multitude of distractions that stop us thinking about it.
So managers get hung up on how long someone might be surfing the internet, or checking their Facebook page on their smartphone, or rifling through a holiday brochure at their desk. They do this instead of asking: “why do they feel the need to do this whilst they are at work?” or “why is this so much more appealing than what we are paying them for?”
I’d like to propose a new mantra for work. It goes like this:
Work will be joyful, Work will be fun
We’ll want to do more, When our day is done!
What will this mean for all of us who work and all of those who manage workers? Maybe we’ll focus more on:
Outcomes – what people actually achieve
Productivity rather than presenteeism
Playing to Strengths
Getting the Culture right
Releasing Potential
Generating Trust
Creating appropriate Challenges
Building work streams that take full advantage of people’s Talents
Designing work environments that stimulate us rather than deflate us
Recognising and celebrating Successes
Giving people a break!
Having fun
This seems to be a far cry from what most of us experience…and that’s not a fun place to be! Which is why we need distractions.
I want my work to be a distraction. I want it to absorb me, impel me, nourish me, invigorate me, delight me. I don’t think I’m asking for too much. It’s asking for too little that has got us into the state we’re in.