What is Play

Play is the experiences worth having for their own sake: leisure, creativity, travel, and adventure. It is the pillar that asks what you would enjoy doing simply because you want to. Rest sustains ambition, and without Play, we would lose out on many of the memories we retire on.

How we define Play

At optml, we treat Play as the experiences that do not have to justify themselves through performance. It is fun for the sake of fun.

Research has found leisure to be linked to higher wellbeing, and leisure satisfaction predicts wellbeing later on when people are followed over time. What matters is how often and how varied, not how many hours. Psychological detachment from work is the thing that most reduces fatigue, and control over your own off-work time is the thing that most raises energy. So a life with no Play in it is not more ambitious. It is more tired.

Play is also often where magic moments are made: the dawn swim, the night the whole table laughed until it hurt, the view from the top after the climb. We retire on our memories, not on hours worked, and the memories have to be made while the people are here and our knees still work. That is why the Sunday Check-In asks what was magic this week, and why this pillar has to be prioritized.

We break Play down into: leisure, creativity, travel, and adventure.

Leisure

Leisure is the ordinary, weekly fun: the novel on the sofa, the pickup game, the long lunch, the Saturday with no obligations.

The weekend is the best natural experiment we have. Unsurprisingly, researchers have found that everyone (from laborers to lawyers) felt better from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon: better mood, more energy, fewer aches. The weekend effect is based on two things: the freedom to choose what to do and time with people you love. That is the recipe for leisure.

It is also more effective to schedule leisure roughly ("Saturday afternoon") rather than precisely (2:15pm), because a fixed time makes it feel like work and can take away both the anticipation and the enjoyment.

So we recommend dedicating at least one loose slot a week to Play, with two or three things you might do written down so that time isn't spent deciding. Bookings and other people still need real times, and that's fine; it is the solo pleasures that lose most from precision. And if you can, do something phone-free. Research shows that a wandering mind is a less happy one, and a phone within reach invites wandering.

Creativity

Creativity is making things for their own sake: a sketchbook, sourdough, a new ceramic bowl.

In a study of young adults, people felt more upbeat and more strongly that their lives were flourishing on the day after they had done something creative. There's no need for the creativity to be good, produce something, or become a side hustle. Play is a biological need across the whole lifespan, not a stage we grow out of.

So we recommend a block every two weeks for something creative, with no audience and no goal. If you can't choose, run one trial a quarter: a single class is enough to find out whether you like something or not.

Travel

Whether it's a long weekend a drive away or a month-long trip you've imagined for a decade, we believe that travel is important.

In a study of adults, the people with a trip coming up were happier than the people without one, in the weeks before it. Afterwards, most were no happier than people who had stayed home; only a very relaxed trip carried its glow past the return. So the happiness of travel lives mostly in the looking forward and the remembering, which argues for planning several trips a year, not one enormous one, if we're trying to maximize pleasure.

We also know that experiences tend to make people happier than material purchases do. Interestingly, younger people get more happiness from extraordinary experiences, and as we get older the ordinary ones — the Sunday walk, the coffee with the same friend — come to matter just as much.

At optml, we do our best to put the year's trips on the calendar in January, with dates, and estimate how much each will cost. Of course, things happen and plans change, but at least we have a rough idea and we can plan (and budget for) a larger, bucket-list trip.

Adventure

Adventure is something difficult: one challenge a year you are not sure you can do.

The modern misogi, popularized in Michael Easter's 2021 book The Comfort Crisis, is a yearly challenge with roughly a fifty percent chance of success and one condition: you can't die. Jesse Itzler adopts this misogi principle and does something extremely hard once a year, plus six mini-adventures.

Research shows that novelty keeps working when comfort stops. The good feeling from a positive change in life fades unless two things are present: continued appreciation of it, and continued variety in how it is experienced. We get used to everything except the things that keep changing. This, plus personal growth, is the case for one thing a year you have never done.

So we recommend one adventure a year with a date, chosen in the annual review, and trained for in weekly blocks like anything else. It should be fairly difficult, and something you would have called impossible in January.

How we prioritize Play

Here is how Play gets planned in optml, following one example the whole way through.

The rating. On a Sunday in June, Ben, a founder who has not taken a full day off since the company started, rates his Optml Six. Play is rated a 2: his last trip was a work conference, his guitar has a layer of dust, and Saturdays have become the day he catches up on email.

The vision and the year-long goal. On Play's card in optml he writes the vision, three to five years out and in his own words: "Most Saturdays are work-free, I have one adventure a year I would have called impossible, and I take a real trip every quarter." Under it, the goal for the year, written so he could check it in December: "Two trips, a phone-free Saturday afternoon every week, and one hard thing accomplished."

The quarter. For every pillar, optml supports multiple quarterly goals, so the year's goal breaks down into this quarter's: "By September 30, a long weekend away, Saturday afternoons kept free for twelve weeks, and a swim across the lake at the end of September." From now on the card shows whether the quarter is on pace.

The first Sunday Check-In. In Weekly Capture he empties his head: book the cabin for the long weekend, find a lake swim group, swim twice this week, keep Saturday afternoon empty, pick up the guitar. Each of these items falls under Play. He stars two must-dos, booking the cabin and the first swim, then drags everything into the week beside his existing calendar events, in Play's color: fifteen minutes Tuesday at 12:15 to book the cabin, swims Wednesday and Saturday at 7am as recurring actions, twenty minutes of guitar Thursday at 9pm, and "Saturday afternoon" as a loose block with no start time.

Following the day. On Tuesday, the Today tab shows the cabin first, and it is booked for July 18. On Wednesday, the swim happens. On Saturday, a customer emails at noon; he does not open it until Monday, and the afternoon goes to a bike ride with no destination. He is too tired for the guitar block, but he moves it to Sunday rather than deleting it.

The next Sunday. The Weekly Overview shows Play: five hours planned, four completed. Both swims happened, the Saturday afternoon survived, the guitar happened once. He rates Play again: a 3. The swims and the Saturday afternoon stay, and he adds the lake group's Sunday session, which counts for People at the same time.

The end of the quarter. In the quarterly reflection he scores the goal. The long weekend happened, and he did not open his laptop the whole time. Ten of the twelve Saturday afternoons were phone-free. The lake swim happened on September 27, and he is not sure he would have finished without the group. Call it 90 percent. Next quarter's goals build on this quarter's: the Saturday afternoons stay, the next trip gets a date, and he'll find a guitar teacher. The year goal is on track, and Play is a 5.

The year. In the annual review, he asks whether Play still deserves the most effort or whether it is now maintenance while another pillar takes the lead, and he puts next year's trips and the next hard thing on the calendar before the year's work fills in around them. That is the whole loop: rate, name, plan the quarter, plan the week, follow the day, look back on Sunday, adjust.

Play is the sixth of The Optml Six, between Purpose and, around the circle, Power. The annual review is where the year's adventures get their dates.