Finding work that feels like play

hey friend, it’s your friend: jack 👋. today we’re going to talk about Finding Work That Feels Like Play.

To me writing is play, building things like an app to end doomscrolling is also often play. Yes it’s often hard, but its a game I enjoy playing.

Writing multiple books, building an app, documenting myself daily — This may look like to you as a ton of work, but to me, a lot of it is just play.

Now I want to help you find the game that YOU enjoy, feels like play to you, but looks like worth to others.

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes, 12 seconds

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Creation log update

It’s been a bonkers week. Curiosity Quench just released on the app store for iOS and in the first 3 days we hit 2,000 downloads!!

Android should be out any day now as it’s just in the final review stages to go live. You can check the website to see if it’s live on android, i’ll also likely send out another email.

I bought a mac this last week too so I can develop faster and test on iPhones, it was quite hard to do that on my windows computer; im excited to be able to make curiosity quench SO Much better and help so much people now.

YouTube has been seeing some real growth in numbers, many videos on our mission to end doomscrolling have gotten quite a bit of traction.

You can watch those here, but honestly… you do not need to, the mission is simple: END Doomscrolling, do it with curiosity in mind: so people naturally gravitate to doing what they are interested in > scrolling.

My second book “Consumption Control” has been coming along nicely, we’re at ~40,000 words now, I’m going to start cutting soon. Someone even bought it :’) — THANK YOU!

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Finding Work That Feels Like Play

“Do what feels like play to you, but looks like work to others” - Naval Ravikant

A big part of making progress is always prioritizing the work. This was easier for me in the last year of my life because work was not really work, it felt much more like play, a lot of the time.  How is work playful?

Of course, work as you know it right now is probably not your first choice of activity in a world with TikTok only two taps away, but (big but), there is something out there for every human that is their form of playful work. A form of work that does not really feel like work at all to them. It feels like play instead (only others see it as work).

The only way to find this is to try a lot of things. And the best way to try a lot of things that have a higher chance of being your “thing” is to explore your curiosity.

Explore your genuine curiosities by letting your curiosity live and taking away unnecessary distractions (scrolling, television). Embrace boredom more often than you do now (it won’t last that long anyways). If you have no ideas on where to start: Find books you want to read or topics you are interested in researching to help you get ideas. Act on those ideas in whatever means true to yourself and in totality you will be following your genuine curiosity. Do this as your search for your work that feels like play to you, this is the best way I know of for how to find your own way. 

Try a lot of things you're interested in. There is likely a constant curiosity inside of you that is interested in learning more about something, follow that. Follow your curiosity. Not the curiosity that wants to see what happens next in the television or video necessarily, but the curiosity that is eager to learn more about something on a deeper level. The curiosity that is attempting to understand things you find interesting or intriguing. This is your best friend in the world of finding your play inside what others deem as work. This is the most likely way to mix your vocations with your avocations.

“I’m always “working.” It looks like work to others, but it feels like play to me. And that’s how I know no one can compete with me on it. Because I’m just playing, for sixteen hours a day. If others want to compete with me, they’re going to work, and they’re going to lose because they’re not going to do it for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week.” – Naval Ravikant

Learning and progress will almost always be found to be joined with struggle or strain, their two best friends. When you’re learning something you’re genuinely curious about the struggle is not gone, but it is much quieter. You don’t care to not struggle because you want to learn more than you don’t want to struggle. So it feels like a much easier and more fluid process.

It’s often still quite difficult, especially viewed from outside eyes, but if it feels like playing most of the time then it is by nature much more fun. And We all want to have more fun of course, so we do this “work” for a lot of time each day, because it’s often a lot of fun. In turn work is fun for specific people, it’s not a burden but a creative outlet, a worthwhile activity to spend ample time on. Work is no longer a dread, it's play time.

This is very optimistic ideal thinking of course, I’m not trying to tell you that you will find your “thing” in 3 months and stay on this very thing for life. That would be rather boring anyways. The whole point of life is the journey isn’t it? So go try some things, see what doesn’t work, take notes. See what you enjoy, see what you despise, take notes.

Try some more things, read some new things, experiment as much as you can. Experiment with your own capabilities, beliefs, world views, perspectives, limits, like, dislikes. Have fun, enjoy some hard work: you have to do the work still to find the work that feels like play, it’s a recursive ideal, but as far as I can tell all good things worthwhile come from raw work and strained effort still. As of this century at least.

Find work that feels like play to you, yes. But also; enjoy the hard work and your time here on this earth as much as you can regardless if you’ve found your “thing” yet (much easier to type this out or read it, than it is to live up to it)

Great book recommendation if you enjoyed this letter or want to lean even further into related wisdom for wealth and happiness: Almanack of Naval Ravikant (navalmanack.com) It’s also free to download and read on all versions on the website I’ve linked above by the author.

Whenever you're up for it, there are 3 ways I can help you:

Curiosity Quench: Destroy your scroll —addiction— and get on a roll with the stuff that actually matters. (app)

Consumption Control: Learn how to control your consumption tendencies and get on a roll with the stuff that actually matters. (eBook)

You Were Built To Create Cool S**t : Click to start. (book)