Play & Productivity

✍ by Justine Anweiler, reproduced from Miki Agrawal's Disrupt-Her: A Manifesto for the Modern Woman, p. 38.

As I am slowly making my way through Miki Agrawal's book Disrupt-Her: A Manifesto for the Modern Woman I discovered the graph below (which I have reproduced from the book for legibility purposes).

I have 3 thoughts:

1. I often have difficulty communicating the value of being playful, receptive, whimsical, non-conforming – and yet, I believe we are where we are because we lack it. This comes quite naturally to me, and I have been more and more intentionally communicating this in my brand/business and leaning into it when working with clients. 🔮

2. 🎩 Rubens Filho is a lovely human who runs Abracademy, and his business is booming! From my occasional encounters with their Magilitators gatherings, I clearly understand that it's because they easily invoke play through magic, immediately putting teams at ease and in a state of awe. It's by far the coolest L&D approach going! 🪄

3. Miki ends the chapter with an exercise that I recommend you do right now: the next time you feel yourself adulting too hard and need to get back to your awe-ing state, please puff out your cheeks, then put your hands on either side of your face, pop your puffed-out cheeks loudly to make a fart-like sound. (see how many times you get too serious in a day) 🌬️

"We must value both. To the degree we are disruptive is when we honour both productivity + playfulness" – Miki Agrawal.

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Article FAQs generated by AI:
1. How can integrating playfulness into professional and personal environments enhance performance and creativity?
Integrating play shifts people out of the stress-driven, left-brain logic of “doing” and into a right-brain, embodied state of “being.” This allows for divergent thinking – the ability to see connections others miss and to respond intuitively rather than reactively. For teams and leaders, practices like magic (as modelled by Rubens Filho’s Abracademy) or Miki Agrawal’s cheek-puff exercise can reset nervous systems, foster psychological safety, and invite curiosity back into the workspace. When play is restored, productivity doesn’t disappear; it becomes regenerative rather than extractive.

2. What does it mean to be “disruptive” through balancing productivity and play, and how can this redefine leadership?
Being disruptive means refusing the binary that productivity and play are opposites. It is a reclamation of “soft power” (leading through aliveness, intuition, and awe rather than hierarchy and control). Leaders who embody both productivity and play create cultures that are dynamic rather than rigid, fertile rather than depleted. In this balance lies the future of work, one where success is measured not by exhaustion, but by the quality of energy, enthusiasm, and ease we bring to what we create.

3. How can we bring play back into the workplace and our everyday adulting lives?
Bringing play back begins with remembering that play is not the opposite of work – it’s the life force that fuels it. We can start small, by creating micro-moments of levity: a shared laugh before a meeting, a walk instead of a sit-down brainstorm, a ritual that sparks awe or surprise. These moments regulate the nervous system and reintroduce curiosity, which are two conditions essential for creativity and collaboration.

At work, play can be designed into culture through unstructured time, sensory prompts (music, colour, movement), and activities that disrupt linear thinking. From creative warmups to facilitated “wonder breaks.” It’s less about ping-pong tables and more about psychological permission to be real, silly, and imaginative again.

Individually, it’s about noticing where life has become overly serious and inviting joy back in. Singing while cooking. Dancing between emails. Trying something new for the sake of delight, not mastery.

Because play is how we metabolize intensity. It’s how the nervous system resets and the soul integrates. When we honour play alongside productivity, we reclaim our natural rhythm: inhale (wonder), exhale (output). It’s the pulse of a regenerative life – and of a future where work feels alive again.