The Surprising Power of Play with Acey Holmes

Action's Antidotes

There are numerous essential needs that are important for human well-being, but one key component that is often overlooked is play. Unfortunately, play is frequently viewed as a silly activity that detracts from "serious" work. However, what if we were to reframe our understanding of work and recognize the potential benefits of play in enhancing our productivity and creativity? In this episode, BoredLess Founder Acey Holmes joins us to bring the play to the table. Acey shares with us the importance of play, and how it can positively impact our personal and professional lives. By incorporating more play into our lives, we may be able to unlock new levels of innovation, fulfillment, and joy. Whether you are a busy professional or an individual seeking greater fulfillment and joy, this episode has something to offer you. Tune in to learn more. --- Listen to the podcast here: The Surprising Power of Play with Acey Holmes Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about a topic that we have yet to cover on the first 82 episodes of this particular podcast series and that is play because a lot of times we’re talking about personal improvement, how do we get better, how do we achieve the life that we want, but there are other essential human needs and I’ve talked a lot about community, I’ve talked a lot about mental health, and one key component of that actually is play and so my guest today, Acey Holmes, the founder of BoredLess, is bringing play to all of our workplaces and all of our lives. --- Acey, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me, Stephen. Thank you. So, Acey, what inspired you to make play your pursuit? So, during the pandemic, doesn’t every story these days start that way? Lately, yeah. Yeah. I was the clinical full-time practicing pediatric speech language pathologist and, of course, schools and therapy, everything got shut down and after that happened for a while and then longer and longer, administrators and bureaucrats started talking about, “Oh, what are we gonna do to catch the children up?” and they were pitching longer school days and extra summer school and who needs breaks, etc., and so everyone in my field, and we all start digging up all of the research. No, absolutely, that’s the opposite of the answer. Lots of people doing really great work for that and making the point of play is how children will learn. As I was studying this and going through it and reading more and more and more research and realizing that I hadn’t really been learning myself for quite a while and I wasn’t that connected and engaged with my own work that I used to love and I was seeing that story happen with a lot of my friends and colleagues and family and wondered if any of that research about play and the wonders of play, the benefits of learning and growth and development would apply to adults and it does exponentially. So, decided to take the left turn away from kind of the pediatric world because there are definitely people out there already working to bring play to adults but not enough so I wanted to add to that pot. Now, who are the people that are already working to bring play to adults? Because I doubt that many people have actually heard of it, given what adults are encouraged to do on a day-to-day basis in the modern world? Yeah, absolutely. Consultants, global international consultants, they all kind of have their own niche topic but it’s all based around play so Mike Montague, Gary Weir, Dr. Mike Rucker just released a book called The Fun Habit. Jeff Harry, a lot of folks are working in the realm of helping parents understand play and how they can benefit themselves as well as their children, like Laura Haver and Sharon Calderon. We’re kind of all over the place. And then even in Denver, we have --- so we are both in the Denver area so even in Denver loc...