We can all learn skills. It is also incredibly hard or enjoyable based on how you see learning as fun or as work.

I have been researching this topic for many years, especially Talent – which I think can be easily created, a book one day.

This blog is about learning as play.

For most animals to start playing, there should be three elements coming together.

1) There should be no immediate risk present,
2) They should not be hungry and
3) They should be bored.

As soon as these two things come together, you will see lion cubs and other animals start to play.

Playing is the primary way animals learn to hunt, social skills, etc.

I believe humans are no different. When it is ok to fail, and you have to take a few vacations, enough to get bored, work and learning become play.

Schools do the maximum damage in this area by making things binary, you passed or failed, got a certificate, or did not complete a course. Suddenly the risks start to be high, and the growth mindset is killed. You are punished for being wrong. Again and again. You are trained to obey and not question.

After my Christmas holidays, I was a bit bored of waking up, going to breakfast, swimming, lunch, lazing around, dinner, party till 4 am, and sleep again cycle and was eager to get back to work.

One of the first tasks lined up was project managing the creation of an explainer video for our new product, Decision pyramid.

Jedai ( Judi, our designer) had made the designs ready, so I headed over to fivver – I call it a junkyard of Talent. Just like a google search results basically brings you to a junkyard of information. You have to spend your life shifting to something useful with the risk of consuming the wrong information.

After talking to a few guys from different countries, I was confused. Should I trust the guys ready to do the work for $50, and what is so complicated that some guys ask for $5000 and 4 weeks to do it?

I calculated that I would spend no less than 15 hours finding the right person, giving instructions and managing corrections, etc. Then I asked an excellent question.

What if I spend those 15 hours learning Adobe After Effect? I zeroed in on 3 courses and did not care if I finished them or got any certificate. I decided to play for the next 7 days, a couple of hours a day.

Here is the result.

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