The importance of being playful as an adult

We all know how important play is for children, but the benefits of playfulness are arguably even bigger for adults.?

We often forget what it's like to be playful. But playfulness is a biological imperative - even for adults. It's not just about having fun; it's about growing and learning in ways that make us more productive, creative and successful.?

We all know that children learn primarily through play, but did you know that these pillars are applicable to adulthood too? Play is a powerful tool for learning and development - particularly when applied to an informal learning environment.

As children, we learn through play. This can be extended throughout our foundational schooling career - often in the form of Montessori education. In adulthood, we can still learn through play. The key is to ensure that the environment is conducive to learning - particularly when it comes to informal learning.

A common theme across most forms of adult unhappiness is rigidity. For all our fancy educational attainments, steady careers, and big vocabularies, we adults tend to get stuck in our ways, often to our own long-term detriment. Our routine becomes set in stone, and we reject the idea of change, even if it is as simple as having unscheduled fun.

Playfulness is a biological imperative - even for adults

You may be surprised to learn that playfulness is a biological imperative for all animals, including humans. Play is essential to healthy development in children and it can be helpful for adults as well.

A child's capacity for play and imagination allows them to explore their environment, test boundaries, and work through their emotions and feelings. They use these skills when they "pretend" they're astronauts exploring the moon or firefighters saving cats from trees (and sometimes both at once).

Playfulness also has benefits in adulthood too:

• It improves creativity by encouraging divergent thinking—the ability to come up with new ideas or solutions by looking at things from different angles.
• It boosts self-confidence by providing opportunities for mastery experiences (building a toy car out of Legos)
• It relieves stress through laughter

Consider gamification principles

No matter our age, humans have a deep desire to learn new things. The ability for adult students to use and explore their full potential is a requirement for optimizing informal educational methods. We all learn differently due to intrinsic and extrinsic factors that are not only related to age but also to the stage of development and maturity, personality, experience, genetics, and environment.

Gamification, a phrase used to describe the use of game features in non-game environments, is a movement in education that tries to increase student engagement and motivation, spark their interest in further learning, and have an impact on their classroom conduct. Even though games are now frequently used in educational settings, the practice is still stigmatized, and its application is restricted for a variety of reasons, including (1) limited access to technology, (2) a lack of professional expertise in integrating new technologies, and (3) resistance to change.

Why is gamification (play) effective?

The visual and auditory pathways of the brain are used to process information in the working memory. The brain may hold more new knowledge in working memory when information is supplied through both channels. However, information overload may make it more difficult for new information to be assimilated into long-term memory. Small pieces of information must therefore be presented in an orderly manner. This enables the brain to organize fresh information in accordance with current schemas stored in our long-term memory.

Gamification in education can improve motivation and engagement. Game elements such as immediate feedback and earning badges for completing the challenges successfully are strongly influential on increasing the learners’ drive in engaging in these games, often learning unknowingly.?

Gamification offers a way for engaging and interactive education; plus, gamification actually aids in memory. According to Foerde and Shohamy, during gamification learning, a strong hippocampal activation makes the content easier to remember and recall.?

Let’s take a look at the numbers, according to a 2022 study by LXA.?

• The largest user of gamified learning solutions is the corporate sector. The industry has seen a whopping 47.5% growth rate in the last few years alone.?
• Game-based learning and education have been predicted to generate a revenue of more than $24M by 2024.
• Adult learners benefit from gamified environments. In fact, gamification results in 14% higher scores on skill-based tests, and 11% on factual knowledge tests.?
• 85% of employees show more engagement when gamification solutions are applied in their workplace training programmes.?
• Large companies, like Microsoft, Google, and Coca-Cola, have invested recently in gamified training programmes.
• Learners tend to only recall 10% of what they read, and 20% from what they hear. But they can remember up to 90% of an interactive gamified task.?
• Only 3% of people remain unproductive during a gamified training.?

A look at maturity-based amnesia

The concept of maturity-based amnesia, which refers to the idea that we tend to forget how much we’ve learned as we grow up, is important for understanding why you should prioritize play.?

While this may seem trivial, it has major implications for how you live your life as an adult. When you stop playing and start trying to get serious about things like work and relationships (and forget about all the fun stuff), it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters in life. You can find yourself driven by a sense of obligation rather than genuine motivation—without playfulness and creativity in your life, this can be a problem!?

Our to-do lists tend to grow along with our age, focusing on “serious” pursuits like advancing our careers and paying taxes. Most people have also been told not to “act childish” (often when they were, in fact, children). And the challenges of the modern world are more conducive to anxiety than joy.

Instincts that drive the urge to play

• Play is a natural way to learn.
• Play can be a way to release stress.
• Play can help us learn new things.
• Play can help us connect with others.
• Play can help us learn to be resilient.

It's important to remember that play is an instinctual behavior in all mammals, and it's something we've lost touch with as adults in many ways (with the exception of activities like sports).

Playfulness helps us replace worry and anxiety with curiosity and passion. It’s a state of mind that can help you get out of your head and into the present moment. It's an essential part of creativity, as well as problem-solving, connecting with others, and feeling good about yourself.

The benefit of being playful

It’s also self-care. Psychologist Dr Gail Saltz says that one way to practice playfulness is "to find a way to laugh at yourself." In other words: don't take yourself too seriously!

Playfulness increases dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps with focus, learning and memory. Dopamine is also linked to pleasure and reward-seeking behaviors. Not only does play stimulate the growth of your cerebral cortex and brain cells in general, but having fun also releases endorphins, which can lend you the energy and excitement little kids never seem to lack. For some people, making a habit out of card games and puzzles may help fend off Alzheimer’s disease.

Fun doesn't have an age limit

Playfulness is a necessity, whether you like it or not. We have the capacity to be playful because we have a brain that can imagine, dream and create. And playfulness is a way of learning. We learn best when we’re active; that is, our bodies are in motion and moving through space, often for extended periods of time. But most importantly, playfulness is a way of being and being playful: it puts us in touch with who we really are at our core—our essence—which allows us to access things like joy, creativity and wisdom.

Playfulness is a trait that many of us have lost after growing older. We’ve been taught by society to give up our childish ways and grow up, but it’s time we take a step back and reexamine the concept of play in adulthood. With all the benefits that come with being playful, there is no reason why adults shouldn’t continue having fun, regardless of their age.?