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In case you haven't heard, my brand new book, Feel

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Good Productivity, is now out, and it's actually a New

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York Times and also Sunday Times bestseller. So if you've

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ordered a copy, thank you so much. If you've read

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the book already, I'd love it if you could leave

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a review on Amazon. And if you haven't yet checked

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out the book, you might like to consider checking it

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out. In this bonus episode of Deep Dive, I'll play

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a snippet from chapter one of the book, which is

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all about how we can harness the power of play

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to make our work more energizing. It

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was a starlit evening in the late 1990s

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at a small university in Ohio. A

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young graduate research assistant stood in the lab holding

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a rat in his palm. He

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delicately stroked the rat's white belly with a

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dry paintbrush, hoping that something interesting would happen.

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At first, nothing. But then

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suddenly the rat cried out. Except

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not in distress. If anything, the rat

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seemed to be laughing. These

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scientists weren't tickling rats just for the fun of it.

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In fact, they were investigating the biological effects

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of play on the human brain. What

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lead scientist Yark Panksepp called the biology

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of joy. At

1:06

the time, the prevailing belief in the scientific

1:08

community was that only humans experienced emotions. It

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was thought that emotions stem from the highly complex

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part of the brain that is unique to us,

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the cerebral cortex. But

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Panksepp's discovery that rodents could laugh suggested

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an alternative, that emotions must come from

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much more primitive areas of the brain

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like the amygdala and the hypothalamus. Joy,

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Panksepp showed, is a deeply primal

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experience. One of

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Panksepp's key findings was that rats love to

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play. He spent much of his

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experiment recording the sounds made by rats when they were

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playing. The noises were joyful, he

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later said. It sounded like a playground. The

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reason, play releases dopamine, it made the

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rats feel good. We

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can learn a thing or two from these rodents. Panksepp's

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rats showed that if we want to find joy

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in what we're doing, it won't be solely down

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to the higher and most complicated parts of the

1:57

brain, those associated with the cerebral cortex. down

2:00

to the more ancient, basic parts of

2:02

our neurology, the same feel-good hormones activated

2:04

in those rats. We too

2:06

can release little dopamine hits that keep us

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happy and engaged. But

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how? The answer can be

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found by studying what specifically elicits dopamine.

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As one article published by Harvard Medical School

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puts it, the hormone is activated by, quote,

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sex, shopping and smelling cookies baking in the

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oven. In other words, by the activities

2:24

we find fun. So

2:26

if we want to harness the revolutionary effects

2:28

of play, our second step is to seek

2:31

out fun everywhere we go. And

2:33

that starts by paying a visit to a

2:35

Disney-fied version of Edwardian London. Experiment

2:39

number three, the magic post-it note.

2:42

During a particularly exhausting phase working as

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a junior doctor, my housemate Molly and

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I decided to revisit a childhood favorite,

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Mary Poppins. We hoped that

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immersing ourselves in a world of animated

2:53

birds, extremely bad cogniacs and musical hits

2:55

about suffragism would provide some relief even

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if only for a couple of hours.

3:00

At the time, I was struggling to find motivation

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to study for my postgraduate medical exams. When

3:05

combined with my hospital work, the looming

3:07

deadlines and complex material felt overwhelming. The

3:09

idea of sitting down to read textbooks

3:11

at the end of my shift felt

3:13

nightmarish. But

3:16

as I rewatched Mary Poppins, something

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unexpected happened. The movie wasn't just

3:20

a frivolous tale of a quirky nanny

3:22

with magical powers, it held a profound

3:24

truth. One of the

3:26

film's most famous songs is A Spoonful of

3:28

Sugar, which Mary sings to the children when

3:30

they're complaining about chores. I

3:32

didn't remember many of the lyrics from my childhood other

3:35

than the chorus, A spoonful of

3:37

sugar makes the medicine go down in the

3:39

most delightful way. And

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I wanted to sing that line, but we can't for copyright reasons. Watching

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this familiar yet forgotten scene twenty something

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years later, I heard how the song

3:50

begins. In every job that

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must be done, there is an element of fun. You

3:54

find the fun and snap, the job's a game.

3:58

The rest of the song describes various ways in which... larks,

4:00

robins and honeybees make their tedious tasks

4:02

more enjoyable by singing while they work.

4:05

Robins apparently sing their merry tune in

4:07

order to move the job along. An

4:10

analysis I was subsequently sad to learn is

4:12

not ornithologically accurate. I

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decided to apply this idea to my own life. In

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a late-night burst of inspiration, I grabbed a

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sharpie and a post-it note and wrote nine

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simple words. What would this look

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like if it were fun? I

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stuck the note to my computer monitor and went to sleep.

4:30

By the time I spotted the note on my monitor the following

4:32

day, I'd forgotten that I put it there. I'd

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just got back from work and was making a

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start on relearning some biochemistry pathways for my medical

4:39

exam. I sat down

4:41

with my usual grin-and-barred expression, but

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when I saw the post-it, it got me thinking, what

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would this look like if it were fun? The

4:48

first answer came to me immediately. If

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this were fun, there would be music. I

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realized that memorizing tedious biochemistry pathways magically

4:55

became a lot more interesting with the

4:57

Lord of the Rings soundtrack playing through

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my headphones. Suddenly music

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became one of the most important ways for me

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to bring more playfulness into my work. I

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also began to apply this method at work. At

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the time, I was on my geriatric medicine placement

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where the doctor's office was a small, scantily decorated

5:13

room in the corner of the ward. On

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one particularly grueling afternoon, when I was sitting

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in the office with an enormous list of

5:20

tasks before me, I decided to apply the

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musical fun method. I didn't have

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any speakers with me, so I grabbed a bowl from the

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kitchen and put my phone in there to use as a

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makeshift speaker. I opened up Spotify

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and spent the rest of the day doing my

5:33

tasks with the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack playing

5:35

at a low volume. The effects

5:38

were transformative. It just felt better. What

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would this look like if it were fun has now become a

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guiding question of my life, and it's

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surprisingly easy to draw upon. Think

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of a task that you don't want to do right now and

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ask what would it look like if it were fun. Could

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you do it in a different way? Could you add

5:55

music or a sense of humor or get creative? What

5:58

if you set out to do the task with friends or you'll promise

6:00

yourself a treat at the end of the process. Is

6:03

there a way to make this draining process

6:05

a little more enjoyable? Experiment

6:09

number four. Enjoy the process, not the

6:11

outcome. There's

6:14

another way to find fun in everything you're

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doing, and it doesn't even involve rewatching Schofen's

6:18

films from the mid-20th century. In

6:20

fact, it's best demonstrated by a

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five-foot-seven Spanish teenager with bleached blonde

6:24

hair. In August 2021, Alberto

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Hínez-López stepped

6:29

onto the podium as the inaugural gold medal

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winner in sport climbing at the Summer Olympics

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in Tokyo. Over

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the preceding weeks, the world had watched

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transfixed as he completed a series of

6:40

astonishing physical feats on the multicolored walls

6:43

of Tokyo's Aomee Urban Sports Park. Most

6:46

impressive of all was the speed climbing, where

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you clamber up a wall as fast as

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possible, spider-style. Lopez reached the top

6:52

of the wall in a dazzling 6.42 seconds. But

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as the crowds watched Lopez and his fellow

6:58

climbers scramble up the walls at dizzying speeds,

7:00

they also noticed that this was quite an

7:03

unusual sport. It wasn't just that

7:05

the competitors tended to look rather more bohemian

7:07

than your regular track and field athletes with

7:09

locks of colourfully dyed hair and brightly coloured

7:11

harnesses. They also seemed to be

7:13

more relaxed. Rather than avoiding

7:15

eye contact and watching tensely as their competitors took

7:17

to the walls, many of the

7:19

climbers seemed to be chatting jovially at the bottom

7:22

and even sharing tips. When they

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did take to the walls, their faces displayed

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none of the agonised intensity that most sprinters

7:28

or even footballers tend to exhibit. In

7:31

fact, they seemed to be positively enjoying

7:33

themselves. Those climbers

7:36

hint at our second way to find the fun,

7:38

by emphasising the joy that comes not from the

7:40

outcome, but the process itself. According

7:44

to the Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,

7:46

the biggest difference between climbing and,

7:48

say, football is that most climbers

7:50

are completely immersed in the process,

7:52

climbing the wall, rather than the

7:55

end result, winning the game. The

7:57

pioneer of the study of flow that sta- in which

7:59

we're so immersed in a task that the rest of

8:01

the world seems to melt away, Chick

8:04

sent Mihai first developed his theories while watching

8:06

climbers in the Alps as a teenager. Chick

8:08

sent Mihai argued that if we can learn

8:10

to focus on the process rather than the

8:12

outcome, we're substantially more likely to enjoy a

8:15

task. But how? It

8:17

might be easy enough for rock climbing, which is inherently

8:19

fun, to some anyway. But what if

8:21

you find yourself in altogether more mundane

8:24

or even unpleasant situations? Arguably,

8:26

this is where the power of focusing on the

8:28

process becomes even more powerful. Because

8:31

with a little creative thinking, you can find

8:33

joy in any process, however mundane it might

8:35

seem. Take the story

8:37

of Matthew Dix, today a world champion

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storyteller and bestselling novelist. Years

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before he published his first book, Dix worked

8:45

in McDonald's, and he hated it. The

8:47

days felt endless, Matt once told me.

8:50

It was the same routine over and over

8:52

again, taking orders, flipping burgers and handing out

8:54

fries. There was no excitement, no spark, no

8:56

challenge. And so Dix decided to

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see if there was any joy to be

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had, not in the job's outcome, his infuriatingly

9:02

meagre paycheck, but in the process instead. He

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landed on a classic tactic, upselling.

9:08

Some days I'd decide it was barbecue sauce day,

9:10

he recalls. So for the rest of the

9:12

day, I'd add a mini sales pitch to each order I took.

9:15

The customer would order a Big Mac and fries, and I'd

9:17

ask them if they'd like any sauce for that. If

9:19

they said no, I'd smile and say, well, I'd

9:22

really recommend the barbecue sauce, there's nothing that beats

9:24

that. Usually at this point, they were

9:26

a little taken aback and they'd say, okay, then I'll take

9:28

the sauce. If they still didn't bite, I'd

9:30

say, that's okay, but you're really missing out. My last

9:32

customer was reluctant, but when she tried the sauce, she

9:34

knew she'd made the right decision. Dix

9:37

says that the effects of these little changes

9:39

in his routine were unexpectedly significant. They

9:41

were the kind of mini tasks that might, in

9:43

his words, just make the customer's day a little

9:45

better and definitely made me feel more energized on

9:47

days that felt like they were dragging. And

9:50

they worked. Dix found himself looking forward to his

9:53

shift, eager to see how many people he

9:55

could convince to try the barbecue sauce. The

9:57

process was not inherently enjoyable, but Dix... had

10:00

created a way to enjoy it, and in

10:02

doing so, he had found the fun in

10:04

an uninspiring situation.