Summary

Amy speaks with Dara Simkin about why adults forget how to play and what we lose when life becomes too focused on productivity, achievement and keeping up.

Dara explores play as a mindset, not just an activity, and shares why it can help us reconnect with curiosity, creativity, joy and each other.

Guest

Dara Simkin is the founder of Culture Hero and co-author of Full Stack Human.

Her work explores play, creativity and human connection, helping people and teams build the human skills that technology cannot replace.

Overview

From achievement syndrome and success amnesia to the pressure to always be doing, this conversation looks at why play is not childish, but deeply human.

Dara explains how small, low-stakes moments of play can help us feel more present, connected and alive in a world that often asks us to optimise everything.

Key Outtakes:

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  Why play is a mindset, not just something children do

  How achievement can stop us enjoying the life we've built

  Why adults need permission to be less serious

  How play helps us reconnect with joy, curiosity and other people

  Simple ways to bring play back without adding more to the to-do list

For more information:

Dara Simkin - https://www.culturehero.co/

The book Full Stack Human - https://www.culturehero.co/full-stack-human-book

Transcript

Amy: Welcome to the Really Good Conversations podcast.

Today I'm joined by Dara Simkin, founder of Culture Hero and co-author of Full Stack Human: The Mindset Upgrade You Need to Stay Human in a World Ruled by Technology.

Dara's work explores the role of play, creativity and human connection in the way we live, work and lead. In this conversation, we'll explore why adults forget how to play, what we lose when everything becomes about productivity, and how play can help us connect, create and stay human in a fast-changing world.

Welcome to the podcast, Dara.

Dara: Hello, Amy.

Amy: Thank you so much for joining me today. You're regarded as one of Australia's leading voices in play at work. So before we get into why adults need to get back to playing, can you explain for our listeners what you actually mean by play?

Dara: I think when we often hear the word play, we think of something quite specific.

Let's have a little go, shall we? When you think of the word play, what immediately comes to mind?

Amy: Having fun.

Dara: Exactly. And I think that's a very universal idea of play, which it is. Play is absolutely about having fun.

But when we ask adults what they associate with play, they often say dogs, babies, kids, sports, board games and so on.

When we talk about play through the lens of serious play, intentional play or purposeful play, it's really about play as a mindset or a mode, rather than an activity.

It's about how we allow ourselves to get into a place where we feel more open, more relaxed and more capable of accessing dynamic thinking. We're able to be more generative in the way we think. We suspend judgement as best we can. We're open to failing, experimenting and giving things a go.

So when I think about play, it's really this capacity to arrive in our lives in a very different way to how we normally arrive: overwhelmed, rushed, up to our eyeballs in things to do, in fight or flight, going, going, getting things done.

I always liken it to those "aha" moments we have in the shower. We solve world hunger in the shower because it's probably the first time in our day where we're relaxed, in our body, by ourselves, and our mind is able to open because of those conditions.

Amy: Yes, I can totally relate to that.

It makes me think of previous roles I've had in other companies, where you're sitting at a desk all day and then you go into a meeting room and it's suddenly: "Right, we need to have a creative brainstorm. Everyone has to be creative now."

You've got a one-hour meeting in the diary where you have to crack creativity, and it can feel like the most forced environment. It's not what you've just described at all.

When you're in the shower, you remember things. You have ideas. You suddenly remember what you forgot to do.

When I was preparing for this podcast, I was reminded of that old phrase: "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." I looked it up and it was first recorded in print in 1659 in James Howell's Proverbs.

It's a saying we all know. We know it from films and popular culture, but I wonder whether we're really leaning into the meaning of it.

Do you think adults have forgotten how important play is?

Dara: One hundred per cent.

I think we've actually created a culture that is suspicious of play.

When we think back to the Puritan work ethic, which dates back 500 or 600 years, there's this idea that work is salvation, play is demonised, and productivity is a form of godliness.

I think most institutions have been created around that perception.

When you think about the Industrial Revolution and the point where we started replacing human labour with machines, we became cogs in a system. I don't think we've really been able to rectify that until now.

I think conversations are being had where we look around and realise so many people are depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, stressed, burnt out or on multiple medications. We are incredibly unwell.

I think we're realising more and more that the lifestyle that has been put upon us, around efficiency, getting a mortgage, having a nice car and this idea of success that's been sold to us, sucks.

Amy: Definitely. The amount of times I've said to Alex, my husband, "I'm not sure about all this adulting."

There's just such a long list of life admin to function as what we perceive to be an adult.

We've both got young children, and seeing them play, and seeing their curiosity, is amazing. It's definitely brought that back to me.

At what point do you think adults start to lose that natural instinct to play?

Dara: I think it starts in adolescence, to be honest.

When we start to gain more of a sense of individuality, identity and ego, we begin to compare ourselves to other people.

My son is only five, and he's already talking about how other kids' clothes are cooler than his. I'm thinking, "Where is he getting that from?" Because it certainly isn't me.

I'm astonished by this need to fit in and conform, but at the same time, it makes complete sense from an evolutionary perspective. We had to be part of a tribe. We had to belong and be included, otherwise we wouldn't survive.

A lot of Full Stack Human is about understanding our evolutionary wiring, the things we are biologically designed to do in order to survive, and how the culture we live in can distort and over-sensitise those things, especially when it comes to belonging.

We now understand so much about the brain, dopamine, reward and motivation. Brilliant people work in advertising and marketing, and when the message is "look like this, smell like this, wear this, buy this, do this, be this", that pressure starts from a very young age.

So not only are we trying to conform and belong when we're young, we're also put into classrooms where we're expected to sit down, be quiet and learn numeracy and literacy.

I've just been on a school tour for my son. He's five, so I was looking at what his primary school experience might be like. I asked the principal, "How much time do they have for imaginative play? How much time do they spend outside?"

He could tell me about morning tea, recess and lunch, but when it came to imaginative play in the classroom, he didn't really have an answer.

Amy: I absolutely feel you because we're in the exact same space right now.

I had the same thoughts when I went on school tours earlier this year. It all felt quite restrictive inside the classroom. I looked at some of the classrooms and thought, "This feels the same as when we were at school."

If we think about how we've evolved as adults, have we attached everything to having an outcome? Are we obsessed with everything needing some form of achievement?

You talk about achievement syndrome. What do you mean by that, and how does it affect our ability to play?

Dara: I came across this concept through a newsletter by a great researcher and writer called Michael Simmons, who is based in the States.

Achievement syndrome is also this idea of achievement addiction, and it's really the thing that happens before burnout.

As a society, especially in Western culture, we have a big obsession with burnout at the moment, and that's an important conversation to have. But based on the work and research I've done around achievement syndrome, the burnout conversation can be too late, because by then we're already at the end point.

Michael talks about going back to childhood, where we get gold stars for doing the right thing. We start to realise that when we are good, smart or achieve something, we get accolades, recognition and validation.

For many of us, especially those who had baby boomer parents, we didn't always get that validation at home. My parents had a hard time telling me they were proud of me, so we start to seek that out in other places, from teachers, sports coaches and so on.

We start to learn that our value is connected to an output or an achievement. That gets reinforced when we go to work, where we get raises and promotions. If you're in sales, maybe you get the trip to Hawaii or whatever it is.

So we double down on output. The more we do, the more we're recognised and revered. Then we start to optimise everything in order to do as much output as possible.

Eventually we reach a point of diminishing returns. The thing we were once passionate about, the thing we studied for, worked towards and felt excited about in our twenties, doesn't give us the same feeling anymore.

We get the raise. We get the promotion. But we're too exhausted to enjoy it or even recognise it.

I think a comorbidity of achievement syndrome is success amnesia, where we forget about our successes because we're already onto the next thing.

I speak from experience. As an entrepreneur, I have very much been on that hamster wheel of constantly doing, because it's endless. There's always more.

Amy: There's no finish line, really.

Dara: Exactly.

When it doesn't feel as good as it once did, we've already created this baseline of chaos in the way we operate and live our lives. We have a mortgage we may be in over our heads with, or children in schools that cost $20,000 a year, or whatever it might be. Then we're on a one-way ticket to burnout.

In the book, we talk about how if we want to stop sacrificing our humanity for success, we need to understand our relationship with success.

How do we define it for ourselves? What does it look like? Is it money? A big house? Fancy holidays? Or is it something else?

Amy: Let's talk a little bit about the book. It's called Full Stack Human. What does that phrase mean for our listeners?

Dara: To keep it simple, it comes from computer programming.

When you're a full stack developer, you can design a programme or an app from end to end. You understand the zeros and ones, the bits and bytes, the backend, and you can also design the shiny interface, the UX people interact with.

From a people perspective, it's about knowing your own programming. Understanding your relationship to success, how you navigate change, what your biases and assumptions are, and the things unconsciously driving the way you behave and act every day.

That's the backend concept of the first few chapters.

Then the shiny user interface is about mental health, how we show up at work and how we lead.

In the middle is what we call the five-layer stack, or the upgrade. That includes serious play, radical curiosity, embodied adaptability, intelligent optimism and strategic hope.

There's a word in front of each concept: serious, radical, embodied, intelligent, strategic, because we're interested in the idea of being active. How do you become an active participant in your own life?

I think we've created a society where we are so comfortable that we have a hard time being uncomfortable. We've created so many ways to maximise comfort, and I think that's doing us a massive disservice.

When we talk about embodied adaptability, for example, it's about understanding how your nervous system responds to challenge. How do you adapt in a way that allows your nervous system to stay regulated and grounded even when things are hard?

Strategic hope is about believing you can do it and that there is a way forward. There's agency in that. It's not just, "I hope this is going to be okay."

The same applies to optimism. Optimism can be blind positivity or "good vibes". Intelligent optimism is about seeking fact-based evidence that a better future can be built, rather than just doomscrolling and listening to sensationalised media.

Amy: And then filling your head with all the doom and gloom and coming offline in a panic.

You talk about the human operating system. What do you think we need to protect or strengthen in ourselves right now?

Dara: I think it starts with the responsibility to understand ourselves.

A concept that emerged for me while writing the book was this idea of intelligent self-compassion. We're able to have compassion for ourselves and our situation because we are educated and aware of how we operate.

I often say comprehension creates compassion.

When we understand that we have nearly 200 documented biases that help us navigate the world, it gives us context. When there's too much information, not enough meaning, or when we need to act quickly, we make assumptions about ourselves and the world. Those assumptions are also inherited from when we were young, from our parents, caregivers, religion, background or whatever else shaped us.

We also have an immunity to change. We are wired to evolve and not die at the same time. A lot of people don't realise that.

We have this need to learn, grow and become a better version of ourselves, but we're also wired not to take risks because we want to survive. There is a psychological tension inside us that most people are unaware of.

So when we try to change and have the best intentions, we sometimes can't do it and we don't know why. A lot of it has to do with our assumptions, and also our relationship to success.

In the book, we talk about creating a clear-eyed view of what's breaking us. A lot of it has to do with our resistance to change, our biases, our assumptions and the way we navigate success and achievement.

From an operating system upgrade perspective, we need to understand that as a baseline.

A lot of people who have read the book have said it freed them from thinking, "It's me. Why aren't I coping? Why can't I keep up? Why is this so hard? Why am I so overwhelmed?"

We berate ourselves as if it's a deficit of our own, when actually it's often society's pressure around technology, keeping up and all the expectations placed on us.

So I think it starts with getting a baseline understanding of how our brain works.

Amy: When people have that understanding, so much of it can feel like environmental factors. Whether it's your workplace or somewhere else, people might be listening and thinking, "That's great, but I can't really change how things operate at work. I don't make those decisions."

So for people listening who think, "Great, I can read the book and understand this, but what action can I actually take in my everyday life that doesn't feel like another thing on the to-do list?"

Dara: For me, it's about being an active participant.

It's easy to say, "I can't do this. I don't have control." And yes, if you work in a toxic culture and you don't have the luxury of finding a new job, I totally understand that.

But there are other environmental factors that affect your bandwidth and capacity that you do have control over.

Look at the people you spend time with. Are you hanging out with people who fill your cup, who make you feel good, who energise you?

Are you connecting with people physically, or are you just texting, calling, Facebooking or messaging?

We need physical connection as human beings. That fills our cup, and we are often disconnected from that because we don't prioritise it.

A great psychiatrist I follow, Ned Hallowell, calls it vitamin C: vitamin connect. We sometimes forget how important relationships are. Not just with our partner, child, mum, dad, brother or sister, but with friends and even colleagues.

If work is hard, having a person you can go for coffee with, have a chat with and vent to can lighten the load.

I also think we need to prioritise ourselves and prioritise play.

The way we approach play is often backwards. Play becomes a reward. It's the thing we get after everything else is done.

But everything is never done. It's endless.

So if we treat play as a reward, or book one holiday and then get sick because our nervous system finally has a chance to come out of stress mode, we're missing the point.

We need to prioritise small moments where we walk outside and notice where we are and what we're doing. We don't have headphones in. We don't have our face in our phone. Moments of wonder, awe and novelty.

We need to look at play as an on-ramp to living more sustainably, being more connected and being more joyful.

A lot of that comes down to thinking about what makes you feel good, and doing more of that. It's not rocket science.

Sometimes, with self-improvement and the wellness industry, there's so much stuff we get overloaded with. Don't overcook it.

What brings you joy?

And I don't mean alcohol or Netflix. I mean things where you are participating, using your hands, using your brain, creating new neural pathways and getting involved.

It could be going for a walk, seeing a friend, playing basketball or being present with your child while doing Lego. There are micro moments.

When people think, "How do I change? What do I need to do? I'm going to join the 5am club and go to the gym every day," it can become another source of pressure.

How can you do things that are low stakes, easy, accessible, doable and repeatable? Things that give you positive feedback, where you think, "That felt good. I want to do that again."

You don't need to enrol yourself in a 12-week clowning course unless you want to. That would be my thing, but not everyone's.

Go back to basics. What did you like doing as a kid? If you loved tinkering, go and do a woodworking workshop.

Amy: I love it.

So much of what you've said connects with other conversations I'm having, and with a lot of the wider narrative we're seeing online. It feels like we're in an era of waking up to how comfortable we've made life for ourselves, and all the technology we've brought into our lives.

Now we seem to be in a phase of having to teach ourselves how to be human again and take ourselves back to the basics.

All of the quick fixes or recommendations we see online, go do this, go do that, can end up giving us more layers.

Dara: Can I just say: fuck the hack.

For me, this idea of hacking anything is like, "Give me the quick shortcut. What do I have to do?"

Just pause. Take a breath.

Play is in all of us. We are biologically wired to play. It is part of our emotional system. It is as baked into our brain as fear, lust and seeking.

Play is a part of us. It's not something you have to learn. It's something you have to dig up. Something you have to remember, recall and reconnect to.

I'm not here for a play hack.

It's about saying, "I was playful at some point in my life. I have felt joy before. What was I doing? Where was I?"

Amy: If people listening are thinking, "I can't even remember how to play or what I used to find joy in," what could they start doing?

Dara: I don't believe you.

If you're listening and thinking that, I don't believe you. You just have to pause and give yourself a moment to remember.

This idea of "I don't remember how to play" or "I don't remember how to feel joy", you do. You just have to give yourself enough time and space to unravel a little and access that part of yourself.

Sometimes the best thing we can do in order to play is pause.

Sit on your couch for five minutes with a cup of tea and no distraction. Take a few breaths.

A lot of people turn their nose up at mindfulness and meditation, so let's call it the practice of nothingness.

Can you do that? Can you do absolutely nothing for a minute?

Amy: It's a struggle. I know when I try it, I immediately start thinking of all the things I need to get done. It takes time.

This has been fascinating. Obviously, we are all about conversations in our world, and I know you are too in a lot of the work you do.

I always ask: has there ever been a conversation that has profoundly shaped you or changed the direction of your life?

Dara: I feel like every therapy session I go to is a life-changing conversation.

But I think a conversation that really shaped me was with our friends Graham Panther and Honor Eastly, who are amazing mental health advocates. We interviewed them for the book.

They run an amazing community called the Big Feels Club, which is very much about community-based mental health support and normalising conversations around mental health.

When I was speaking with Honor, she talked about bandwidth, and the idea that we don't have a resilience problem, because resilience is really indicative of our bandwidth.

If we're having a really difficult time in life, we've lost a parent, we've been sick, work is hard, whatever it might be, our bandwidth is low.

So our ability to bounce back, which is often how people define resilience, becomes inaccessible. That's okay. It doesn't make us a non-resilient person. It means we need to fill our cup again. That might be through recovery, rest or something else.

For me, I have ADHD. I operate at a very different frequency to many people, and I can crash and burn. I don't really identify with burnout. I know that when my body starts telling me I'm not okay, I need to take the time to respond.

Having that language around bandwidth, and understanding that bandwidth is not infinite, changed things for me.

Each of us has a cup of a particular size depending on who we are and how we operate. We need to realise how our bandwidth expands and shrinks.

Once I started thinking about that in my own life, I thought, "Where am I putting my energy, and am I getting it back?"

A lot of the time, we put energy into things and don't get it back.

To have a real conversation, I'm 40 years old. I've been separated for three years. I have a five-year-old. My dating pool is small. I also have ADHD, which means rejection sensitivity, hyper-focus and dopamine seeking.

Dating for me takes a lot of bandwidth. Getting on apps and doing the whole thing was depleting me. I was suffering. I wasn't being present with my child. I had "boy brain", and it was taking away from the things that needed my focus, like my child and my business.

So I stopped. I went on a six-month hiatus to recalibrate.

That conversation around bandwidth changed the way I think about what I'm actually able to do.

Amy: It's such a good reminder. I know I'm guilty of cramming more and more things in and almost thinking they all have the same level of priority, when often they don't.

Thank you for sharing that. I think so many people can relate.

Now I'm going to ask you three questions on the spot from our pack of cards.

Question number one: if you came with a warning label, what would it say?

Dara: Can be incredibly hyperactive.

I'm late-diagnosis ADHD. I've had my diagnosis for a year, but I can connect to being this way my entire life.

I can be very high octane. As a younger person, I definitely put my foot in my mouth a lot. As an adult, I've learnt not to be as impulsive in that way.

While ADHD is a great way for me to think differently, be creative and do the amazing things I've done, it can also be really difficult.

So my warning label would be: can be hyperactive.

Amy: Question number two, which feels appropriate because we've been talking about play and childhood: what was there to do when you were a teenager?

Dara: Go to the mall.

There was a place I loved getting pretzels from called Auntie Anne's. We'd go to the movies and then hang outside after the movie.

Because I grew up in Miami, there were also these all-age clubs you could go to. They don't exist anymore, but I have a very distinct memory of being 15 with my best friend, Melissa.

My mum would never let me go, but my best friend's mum was super cool, so I would spend the weekend there. Her mum drove us to this club called Mad Max. We dressed up, went dancing and hung out, and her mum slept in the car park waiting for us to come back.

So I was clubbing and hitting the dance floor at a very young age, having grown up in Miami.

Amy: Brilliant. I love that.

Amy: Question number three: what is one piece of wisdom you want to pass on to future generations?

Dara: I could try to say something really profound, but for me it's: never forget to play.

We play when we're young and we play when we age. What happens in that 40-year period in between?

Even children are playing less now because of technology and devices. I know in Scandinavia, GPs are prescribing play for children, which I think is devastating and really highlights what's happening in our world today.

But yes, don't forget to play. Do things that bring you joy.

Amy: And the last question I ask all of our guests is: if you could ask someone a question, dead or alive, who would it be and what would you ask them?

Dara: I took a bit of time to think about this, and I'm going to keep it on theme with play.

There's a quote attributed to Plato: "You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation."

I'd love to have a cup of tea with Plato and say, "Where did that come from? What did you see? What were the Greeks doing that made you think that?"

I'd love to chat with Plato and ask, first of all, "Did you actually say that?" Because who knows when we're quoting Greek philosophers.

But I think it's brilliant and so true, and I'd love to unpack that with him.

Amy: Fantastic.

Dara, thank you for everything you've shared today. This has been a really thought-provoking episode, and I hope people listening take some of these ideas into their own lives and worlds.

As we wrap up, where can people find out more about you, Culture Hero and the book?

Dara: The book is available through most online retailers, so wherever you are in the world, you can get it on Amazon. You can also visit fullstackhumanbook.com for more information.

If you're in the professional world, you can find me on LinkedIn, where I share different insights.

My business is Culture Hero, and the website is culturehero.co.

If you're looking to engage your people in interesting and dynamic ways in the learning space, around developing human skills, that's my thing.

I like to say I design experiences that boost human capability around what algorithms can't replace.

So yes, hit me up.

Amy: Fantastic. I'll include all of those links as well. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Dara: Thanks, Amy. It was a really good conversation.

Amy: Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed the episode and that it's left you with something to reflect on or talk about beyond this conversation.

Be sure to check out the show notes for more information on today's guest. And if really good conversations are your thing, share this episode with a friend, hit subscribe and join us next time.