What I Do to Stay in the Online Writing Game When I’m in Desperate Need of Play

A little fun goes a long way

Can’t wait to hop off the content treadmill? I get it.

And of course.

Everything is about speed. Type faster. Ideate faster. Inspire ourselves faster. Edit faster. Publish our work faster.

And then the cycle repeats tomorrow, ad infinitum.

That said, taking care of ourselves matters. A fresh mind is everything when it comes to writing. We need bread, breaks, and play.

And here’s why.

I Am My [Own] Golden Goose

My ex-colleague told me so.

It explains why human beings need a mirror. We are blind to ourselves. We are the last to know when we get too lazy. We also need someone to tell us when we are scratching the wall of burnout.

I know what it feels like when I get sick and tired of the work I enjoy doing. I want to sleep a little bit more.

And more, and more, and more.

Once, I got more proactive. I dragged myself to meet an ex-colleague for lunch. She could tell that I was off.

And so… she shared the parable of the farmer, his wife, and the golden goose.

It was my first time hearing it.

The goose that looks like any other laid 1 golden egg a day. The farmer and his wife were pleased. Selling 1 golden egg a day made them money and more.

Then, they got greedy.

They wondered whether the goose had all the golden eggs in her stomach. They hatched a plan to take all the golden eggs out, once and for all.

They killed the goose.

Surprise, surprise.

They found nothing inside the goose’s stomach. It was like any other bird they had.

That was the first whammy.

This is the second.

They no longer have that 1 golden egg a day.

I sat there wondering why my ex-colleague was telling me this. I thought she was feeding me content ideas.

“This is a good sidebar for workplace articles. Thank you.”

She stared at me dead in the eye and said this.

“Don’t you get it? You are your golden goose. And you are the farmer and his wife trying to kill off the productive you. You are killing you.”

And in that instant, I got it.

I am killing my Golden Goose [read: Me] with sky-high expectations and a barrage of work. Fatigue from consistent writing has caught up with me.

Head for Practice, Drop the Intensity, and Up the Fun.

Should we head straight into a writing hiatus and allow our motivation tank to fill fully on autopilot?

I struggle with this question.

I struggle because I never had this experience. When I stop, everything stops. Positive thinking, motivation, the urge to improve, and the whole nine yards.

It bugs me to lose those intangibles. It took me years to build them.

So, I seek the middle ground.

My approach to combat fatigue is summed up in 9 words and 3 bullets.

• Head for practice,
• Drop the intensity,
• Up the fun.

I still type but without expectations.

I would take the headline of an article I just read, rewrite it, summarize it, and scribble it out of point.

No expectations. No pressure.

• The same points are repeated? Okay.
• Out of point? Okay.
• Incoherent? Okay.

This is how I derived articles on intergenerational conflicts at work. I scribbled and went off tangent.

The magic happened after.

I noticed Gen X’ers all over the place after reviewing my sacred paper of doodles. I circled, double-boxed, and wrote about them subsequently. I unearthed a spun-off genre that deals with intergenerational conflicts at work.

It was fun. I had no stress.

There was no intention to write for publication or the money. It was a way for me to keep up with practice as silly as possible.

I call it ‘play’.

Practitioners of Brainstorming call this ‘The Osborn Method’, or ‘The Osborn Checklist’.

God! That sounds boring. I prefer ‘play’.

Science endorses this idea of play, too.

According to Helpguide.org,

“While play is crucial for a child’s development, it is also beneficial for people of all ages. Play can add joy to life, relieve stress, supercharge learning… Play can also make work more productive and pleasurable.”

I find this to be true. My personal experience says so.

And play can be simple.

Pen fiddling. Whistling. Purposeless scribbling.

What happened next was incredible. I started writing headlines subconsciously. Then introductions. And punchlines. Then 2-word sentences. And 1-line paragraphs.

It does, truly, supercharge learning. Inspiration followed swiftly.

I started circling words, phrases, and lines that got my attention. My creative juices returned. In an instant, these scribbles filled my brain with ideas.

I am back in business.

And it happened because I started fiddling with my pen.

The Close

We are our golden goose.

And we are our [own] farmers acting on short-term interests and impulse.

We want to ace it fast. Make money fast. Gain followers fast.

We end up killing ourselves.

Avoid that.

Instead, schedule some playtime in between. Be deliberate about it.

These are the 9 words you can refer to. They work for me.

• Head to practice,
• Drop the intensive,
• Up the fun.

Learn to have fun.

That is the secret sauce to online writing or workplace longevity. No one goes on and on for 30 years with pure greed, grit, and grudge.

Chew on it.

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