I created worlds of adventures, my daughter creates entire houses
Being a (late) middle-aged father of a pre-schooler (with two older kids) I’ve seen a lot of make believe unfold around me. It’s a wonderful thing to see a mind bloom and imagine a whole new world. And not reading too much into a three-year-old’s choices for imaginative play, I’m pretty sure this kid is going to make big things.
Literally.
We create the world we want to inhabit
When I was a wee lad I played with plastic army men, Micronauts (man those were cool), action figures of all sorts, and anything that could escape this world and go to another. My play was all about exploration, battles, good vs evil, and creating fantastic vehicles. Typical for most boys my age I think.
My youngest, man, she’s operating on a whole other level here. She makes houses. Seriously. She moves her play kitchen, easel, chairs, kid-sized table, and pretty much anything she can push around the room to make her house. It has rooms, doors (to the outside and to interior rooms), and sometimes you’re invited in (and you usually are offered a chair to sit on).
This is on top of designing wedding dresses for Barbies with tissues and tape (messy, but creative) while singing songs of her creation and the Disney songbook. Creativity is encouraged and I avoid interfering with her solo play. If she asks for help, I help. If she asks me to play with her, I play with her. If she’s about to get into trouble…she is three after all. I’m focused on just letting her mind create new worlds around her. To discover the power of her own imagination on her own.
First we imagine, then we refine, then we build
How we play and imagine as kids must give some sense of the person they will become. I can’t imagine it not. I still imagine fanciful worlds, and some worlds and people much less fanciful (that’s called marketing to personas). I have no idea what this young mind is going to become, but I can’t wait to see it.
As I was mulling all this over in my head, I think there are a lot of parallels we can draw in our word lives. I don’t think we play enough. We have given up toys and things. We don’t just sit and imagine nearly as much as we should. Actually I haven’t given up toys at all. I have lots and my desk and shelves are covered with them. This isn’t finding your inner child. This is reawakening the wonder and imagination we had as kids and bringing that to bear on the adult challenges of today.
There is no impossible in your imagination.
When I’ve been faced with intractable problems I try to take the problem apart and just start hitting it with “why not”, “how about”, and “what if” questions. Some of the ideas are outlandish to the extreme, but sometimes the completely out there reveals a solution.
In my imagination nothing is impossible, only something a little more extraordinary than normal.
So I challenge you. Play with toys. Put together some LEGO. I have my eye on a LEGO set from Tron…
https://shop.lego.com/en-US/TRON-Legacy-21314
and this ship in a bottle
https://shop.lego.com/en-US/TRON-Legacy-21314
Of course I still haven’t assembled my LEGO TARDIS, so there is a backlog to work on.
Keep things at your desk to play with to be purely creative (I keep colored pencils at my desk for sketches, UX/UI layouts, and designing stuff) and use them. Unlock the impossible. Unlock your imagination. Create. Wonder. Question.
If you’d like me to help your team with writing, strategy, or value proposition development, reach out and let’s chat.
https://shop.lego.com/en-US/TRON-Legacy-21314
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