Many adults treat play as something they can do only after the important work is finished. Why is that “earn it first” rule so hard to escape, especially for neurodivergent adults—and what does it cost us?
I think a lot of us were taught, directly or indirectly, that play is the reward you get after you've been productive. Finish your work. Handle your responsibilities. Clear the list. Then you can have fun. And to be fair, that message can work when we're younger because the work has boundaries. My dad instilled that work ethic in me growing up: Get your work done, then you can go play. At the time, it was motivating because there was a clear finish line. Homework got done. Chores got done. School ended. Then I could go outside, play video games, or hang out with friends.
Adult life doesn't work like that. There's always another email, another load of laundry, another project, another thing you could be doing. If play only happens when the work is finished, it may never happen at all. For neurodivergent adults, I think there can also be a layer of shame wrapped around this. Before I was diagnosed with ADHD and had the right support, I procrastinated a lot. Who am I kidding? I still procrastinate. But back then, I often interpreted that as me doing something wrong. If I had already “wasted” time, how could I possibly justify doing something fun?
That shame can make play feel even more forbidden because we've been taught to see it only as a reward. The irony is that, for an ADHD brain, play can sometimes be part of what helps us engage in the first place. Novelty, curiosity, movement, humor, and challenge can wake our brains up. Play can help us regulate, reconnect, and find our way back into focus.
That doesn't mean play only matters because it makes us more productive. I think that's another trap. Play matters because we need joy, curiosity, connection, and space to be fully human. Sometimes the most helpful thing we can do is stop asking, “Have I earned this?” and start asking, “What do I need right now?”
What makes something genuinely playful? Is play defined by the activity itself, or by the freedom, curiosity, and choice someone brings to it?
I don't think play is defined by the activity itself. I think it's defined by the spirit you bring to it. To me, true play is doing something for the sake of doing it—not because you're trying to be productive, improve yourself, hit a goal, or get a specific result.
That's why almost anything can become playful. For one person, play might look like improv, LEGO, video games, or tossing a ball around. For someone else, it might be gardening, cooking without a recipe, doodling in a notebook, organizing a shelf because it feels satisfying, or taking a different route home to see where it goes. The activity matters less than the experience of freedom, curiosity, choice, and presence.
The moment we start asking, “What am I getting from this?” we can accidentally turn play into another assignment. That's especially easy for adults because we're so used to measuring whether our time is being used “well.” Play gives us permission to explore without needing the exploration to lead anywhere. That's part of what makes it so powerful. When the outcome stops being the point, we create room for surprise, experimentation, creativity, and joy.
Sometimes the best sign that something is playful is that if someone asked, “What was the point of that?” your answer would be, “I don't know. It brought me joy.”
Neurodivergent adults may have spent years being corrected for their enthusiasm, intensity, movement, curiosity, or way of joining in. How can that history shape a person’s relationship with play?
I think that history can make play feel a lot less safe than we assume it should. When we truly play, we tend to show more of our unfiltered selves. We get louder. We move more. We get excited. We follow curiosity. We take up space. We make weird connections. We let ourselves be seen. That requires vulnerability.
But if you've spent years being corrected for those exact things, you may start to hold back without even realizing it. You learn to dampen your enthusiasm, second-guess your instincts, or watch the room before deciding how much of yourself is “acceptable.” If you've been told you're too loud, too intense, too sensitive, too distracted, too curious, or too much, then play can bring up uneasiness because it asks you to loosen some of that control.
That's where masking can show up. Instead of fully joining in, you may perform the version of yourself that feels safest. You might participate, but not completely. You might stay on the edge. You might hold back the joke, the idea, the movement, or the excitement because you're still scanning for judgment.
That's why play can't be forced. You can't tell someone to “loosen up” and expect real play to happen. People need enough safety to risk being seen.
I experienced that in my first Level 1 improv class more than 15 years ago. There was something powerful about being in a room where I could be weird, make mistakes, try things, and not feel judged for it. I'm still close with several people from that class today, and I think part of that bond came from being seen in that kind of playspace. When someone feels safe enough to play, it can open up a version of them that has been tucked away for a long time. And when that version is welcomed instead of corrected, it can create a kind of connection that sticks with you.
In Gary's words
“Sometimes the most helpful thing we can do is stop asking, ‘Have I earned this?’ and start asking, ‘What do I need right now?’”
What can play give us that productivity, achievement, and self-improvement never will?
Productivity, achievement, and self-improvement are usually pointed toward an outcome. There's something to finish, prove, fix, earn, or become. Play gives us a space where none of that is required.
One of the ideas I love from Primed to Perform, by Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi, is that play is a form of intrinsic motivation. You're doing the thing because you genuinely enjoy doing the thing. The activity itself is the reward.
That matters because so much of adult life is driven by external expectations: deadlines, goals, performance reviews, praise, money. Even self-improvement can become another way of saying, “Who I am right now isn't quite enough.” Play interrupts that. When we play, we can become absorbed in what we're doing because it has captured our attention. That's also where I see a strong connection to flow. You stop monitoring yourself so closely. You lose track of time. You're not standing outside the experience judging whether you're doing it correctly. You're in it.
Play gives us permission to be curious without needing the curiosity to lead somewhere. We can try something and be bad at it. We can laugh, experiment, make a mess, change our minds, and follow what feels interesting. It also reminds us that our value isn't tied to what we produce. You don't have to become a better version of yourself every minute of the day. Sometimes you get to be a person having an experience because it brings you joy.
Ironically, when we have more opportunities to experience that kind of intrinsic motivation, we often become more engaged in the things we choose to do. But I think it's important not to make that the reason we play. Sometimes the experience itself gets to be enough.
How can play help someone reconnect with themselves during stress or burnout without becoming one more wellness assignment they have to do correctly?
I think the key is to approach play as an experiment, not a prescription. There's nothing wrong with being intentional about using play to recharge. In fact, intent matters. The problem starts when play becomes another item on the wellness checklist: “Meditate. Exercise. Drink water. Play for 20 minutes.” Now we're back to performing wellness correctly, which is probably the last thing someone experiencing burnout needs.
Instead, I like the idea of a play experiment. One of my favorite examples came during the height of the pandemic in 2021. Someone came to me feeling stressed and burned out. Travel had always been one of her main forms of play, and with stay-at-home orders, that disappeared. She replaced it with work, work, work.
We did a play history, and she remembered how much she loved playing with dolls when she was younger. She did not want to go out and buy a Barbie, so we dug a little deeper. What did she love about that experience? For her, it was the nurturing. So we experimented with a new way to access that same feeling. She bought one succulent. Instead of skipping lunch and continuing to work, she started using some of that time to learn how to care for it. Then she learned how to propagate succulents. One plant became a few. Eventually, that one little experiment grew into a collection of more than 200 plants.
That is what I mean by experimenting with play. You don't have to recreate an old activity exactly. You can ask, “What did I love about that?” and find a new way to experience that quality now. Maybe you set an intention like, “I want to see if this gives me a little more room to breathe,” and then notice what happens. Did you feel lighter? More curious? More present? More like yourself? If yes, follow that thread. If not, try something else. You didn't fail at play. You're learning what brings you back to yourself.
Play can help us rejuvenate. We don't need to squeeze all the life out of it by turning it into another thing we have to accomplish.
What has improv taught you about uncertainty, mistakes, and participating before you know exactly what will happen? Why might that matter for neurodivergent adults?
Improv has taught me that you don't have to know what happens next to participate fully. That was a big lesson for me. In improv, there is no script. You have to listen, respond, make a choice, and trust that you can deal with whatever comes next. Sometimes the choice works beautifully. Sometimes it falls flat. Either way, the scene keeps going.
That changes your relationship with mistakes. You start to see them less as proof that you did something wrong and more as information. Sometimes they even become the thing that makes the scene interesting. I think that matters a lot for neurodivergent adults because many of us have spent years trying to avoid getting it wrong. We may overthink, wait until we have enough information, rehearse what we're going to say, or hold back until we feel certain that our contribution will land the right way.
Improv asks you to practice the opposite. You enter before you know. You contribute before you're certain. You make the best choice you can with what's available, and then you adjust. That doesn't mean throwing caution out the window. It means building trust in your ability to respond.
For me, improv helped loosen the belief that I needed to have the “right” answer before I could join in. Participation itself creates information. I can take a step, notice what happens, and make my next choice from there. There's something freeing about realizing that uncertainty doesn't have to mean stop. Sometimes it means, “Okay, let's see what happens.”
If someone feels disconnected from play—or isn’t even sure what they enjoy anymore—what’s a small, low-pressure place to begin?
I'd start by looking backward before trying to figure out what you should do now. Dr. Stuart Brown of the National Institute for Play developed something called a play history. The idea is to look across your life and ask: What did I naturally gravitate toward? What brought me joy? What did I do when no one was telling me what to do? What did I lose track of time doing?
I love this because when adults feel disconnected from play, they often put pressure on themselves to come up with the “right” hobby. That can make the whole thing feel like homework. A play history takes some of that pressure off. Maybe you loved building forts. Maybe you made up stories. Maybe you organized neighborhood games, took things apart, collected rocks, performed for your family, rode your bike for hours, or cared for dolls and stuffed animals.
The important part isn't necessarily recreating that exact activity. Ask what was underneath it. Were you creating? Exploring? Competing? Nurturing? Moving? Performing? Solving? Connecting with other people? That can give you clues about what play might look like now.
Then start tiny. Pick one clue and run a little play experiment. Try something for ten minutes with no commitment to become good at it or turn it into your new hobby. Afterward, ask yourself one question: “Did that bring me any joy?” If yes, follow the thread. If not, try another one. You're not trying to find your one perfect way to play. You're getting curious about yourself again.
