درسنامه تفسیری

Play – Commentary

There I was, standing in front of eight Korean middle school students. They glared at me. They didn’t look happy. They looked bored. They looked frustrated. They looked irritated as I taught an English lesson to them.

Because they were tired, because their motivation was low, I pushed them. If they were not paying attention, I would point it out to them, “Hey, you need to listen.”

I made them write essays about our lessons. I made them answer questions publicly in front of the whole class. And the more I pushed them and pushed them and tried to make them more and more disciplined, the more they resisted me.

This was not in middle school. This was an English school that they came to after their regular school, so these kids, these middle school kids in Korea had already been in school all day.

They had been studying and working all day long for many hours in their normal Korean school and then, after doing that all day, they came to our English school to do even more work, specifically for English.

So of course, they were tired, these kids were tired. They were bored. The last thing they wanted to do was learn about grammar.

They didn’t want to study some serious English book. They didn’t want to study a textbook. They didn’t want to take tests. They didn’t want to write essays.

Looking back, I can’t blame them, of course not, but at that time that was my very first teaching job. I didn’t know, so I did what every other teacher did. And I just tried to push them and be a tough teacher, and make them work, work harder, willpower, work-work-work.

The results, honestly, were terrible. I think by the end of that, by the time I left, they hated English. I think they probably already hated English because to them English was just hard work.

For them English was boredom. For them English was embarrassment, answering a question and getting it wrong, having the teacher correct them in front of everybody else.

The results were terrible, terrible for them. They did not improve very much and emotionally it was even worse, they learned to hate English.

Let me give you another example. Last year, I’m dancing with 3000 English students in Hanoi, Vietnam. Three thousand crazy English students were playing some loud music and were doing an air guitar contest.

Air guitar is where you pretend, you’re playing guitar and you play some loud rock n’ roll music and then you pretend you’re a rock star and you pretend you’re holding a guitar and then you make a bunch of moves and funny faces, you jump around and act crazy.

And now, in most of my events, my live classes, we do a little air guitar contest. Does that help them improve their English? Not really, it’s not an English lesson it’s just for fun. It’s just play. It’s a little break that takes about 5-10 minutes or something like that.

So, we’re playing this loud music, Ozzy Osborne and everyone is jumping around acting like a rock star, shaking and banging their heads. A bunch of them ran onto the stage and they were playing around with me, pretending to be rock stars. It was this huge, fun, crazy activity, crazy event.

Then everyone sits down, they’re all laughing and having a great time. And then we start into another mini-story, we start into another English lesson.

But I tell this funny story about my friend Kristen, who wants to have a boyfriend who’s famous and it’s funny and during the story they’re all shouting their answers, “Yes!” “No!”

And they’re shouting crazy answers. Sometimes I ask questions, like who did Kristen want to date? They’re shouting, “Brad Pitt, Harrison Ford, AJ, Joe,” And then I choose one of their funny answers. I think I chose Brad Pitt and then we made a story together. And we’re all just being fun and silly and having a great time.

That middle school class in Korea was about two hours long. I believe they came a couple times a week just for two hours and that two hours was painful and it felt like a very long time.

I know it felt like a long time for the students because they looked so tired and bored. It felt like a long time for me to, as the teacher.

The Hanoi event was six hours long, yet felt very short, because we’re just laughing, playing and having a great time. Whoosh, six hours was gone and I thought, “Oh my God that was very fast.”

At the end of six hours, all those English learners in Hanoi were still laughing, had huge smiles on their faces, many of them stayed longer, even when the event ended. They stayed and wanted to get pictures with me. They wanted to chat with their friends and they’re laughing. Some of them wanted more.

At the end of that six hours, many of those English learners in Hanoi at that fun crazy event, were speaking more confidently already in just six hours, one class.

They felt more happy about English, more confident about their speaking, more willing to speak English. And yet, the group in Korea, after almost a full year with me in my class felt worse.

This is the difference between work and play. Because in that Korean class we were working. It was a work mentality. Work hard. Use your willpower. Force yourself to keep going. Very serious and therefore, very tiring and exhausting.

That event in Hanoi, Vietnam was a play mentality. Yes, they were still learning, they were still learning a lot of English, they were still doing lessons, but the lessons were designed to be playful and fun, and we took little breaks and did crazy things.

We did dance contests. We did air guitar contests, even during the lessons. They shouted and made crazy stories. It was fun. It was very, very, very playful.

And as a result, it was a high energy lesson. They were still energized even after six hours of English. That’s the difference of play and work.

See when you play you become more energized, you tend to become more energized, so even after doing it for many, many hours, you feel better than when you started.

You can keep your concentration for such a long time when you’re playing, when you have a playful feeling, a playful mentality, even though you’re still doing maybe hard work, even though you’re challenging yourself, even though you’re learning a lot.

When you’re doing it through play, you can keep your concentration and you can keep going and going and going and going and you don’t want to stop. It’s addictive almost.

That’s why even after six hours many of those people in the Hanoi event wanted to keep going. They wanted more. They probably could keep going for 10 or 12 hours. It was crazy, fun, whereas the middle school kids in Korea after 10 minutes they wanted to leave.

See work tends to be about willpower, and willpower is limited. Willpower is that ability to force yourself to do something, to use your mental energy and your mental discipline to make yourself do something. That’s usually unpleasant.

Can we do this? Yes, we can. We have that ability as human beings to force ourselves to do things that we don’t like, that we don’t enjoy. But we have a limited amount of that ability.

It’s exhausting to do that and the more you force yourself with willpower to do something, to study a vocabulary list, for example. To do some English lesson. To work through a textbook. To attend a class that’s not very fun.

The more you do that, the more tired you get and you use up your willpower and eventually it’s gone and you just can’t make yourself do it anymore.

That’s why with work, with that work mentality, the willpower mentality your amount of productivity, the amount of time that you can concentrate, that you can get things done, that you can learn, they’re all very limited.

That’s why, again, with the middle school kids in Korea that after a fairly short time they were done, they didn’t want anymore. They couldn’t force themselves to keep going and so their concentration would just be gone. They would be in class but they couldn’t keep listening to me.

The great advantage of play is that no willpower is necessary. You don’t have to force yourself to do it, in fact, quite the opposite, it’s in a positive way.

You want to keep doing it more and more and more and more and more. So, if you have playful learning, you’ll learn and learn and you’re so excited and having so much fun you want to keep learning and you want to do more and more and more, there’s no willpower, there’s no forcing.

And because of that, the productivity is almost unlimited. There’s almost no limit to how long you can do it. You can just keep concentrating like for a whole day when you’re playing.

You can see this with kids, they can just play and play and play and play, they never seem to get tired. The magical trick is to sort of make our work into play, to change our work into play.

There are things we must do in life that are necessary or that are useful that will help us in the long-term, but if we do them with a work mentality, we become exhausted, we burn out.

But when we’re skillful, when we change those things into play, when we do them playfully, then we can get these things accomplished in a very fun way. We can be much more productive. We can keep going, we don’t get tired and in fact, we get more and more excited, have more and more fun and we get more and more done.

Let me give you another example. I recently learned how to snowboard. We went snowboarding up in the mountains and I started snowboarding and I fall a lot. I was falling all the time because I’m just learning.

And so when I fall it hurts. Some people think oh, the snow is nice and soft but not always, sometimes it’s kind of hard. It’s packed together and it’s like hard ice and when you hit it hurts. I banged my head several times. It didn’t feel good. I hit my elbows, my hands, quite painful.

And then just the action of snowboarding was physically exhausting, physically tiring. It took a lot of energy and effort, especially as a beginner. When you’re a beginner, you’re forcing it a lot you’re not relaxing enough.

So, on one hand, it was very, very tough. But I was doing it in a playful manner, right? It was play. It was not work. I’m not doing it for a job. I’m not doing it with a work mentality. I did it with a play mentality.

And because I was just playing and having fun, I just wanted to keep going and going and going, even though I was falling, even though it hurt and even though I was getting physically tired, mentally I didn’t get tired. Mentally I wanted more, it was addictive. So I just stayed out there and kept doing it for hours and hours all day long.

I would have a short break to go the bathroom or get some food and water very quickly and then back onto the mountain again to snowboard more. Of course, that night I was physically exhausted and slept very well.

But if I had done that with a work mentality… “I must learn to snowboard. I’m going to seriously practice snowboarding. I’m going to train in a disciplined manner. This is work. This is serious.” If I had done that, then after an hour I would have been done.

It would have been too much willpower, too much work and too difficult, but because it was just play. I wasn’t trying to discipline myself. I was not using willpower at all. It was just fun and play, and if I fell and made mistakes I would just laugh, get up and keep going.

And because of that, because it was a playful process, I could go hours and hours and hours without stopping. Then the next day, even though I was super sore, my body was sore, I got up and I went out and I did it all again.

So you can see this playful mentality, this playful approach is super powerful. As adults I don’t know why we don’t do this more. We get this idea that I’m an adult and we must be serious, but that’s actually much less efficient.

So let’s talk about you, you and your English. You need to have a play mentality with English. This is the main problem I see with most people, people who ask me questions on Twitter.

People who meet me face-to-face, they’re always, “Oh AJ, how can I learn more vocabulary? How can I get a better score on my TOEFL test? How can I have more motivation for English?”

And the thing I notice about these people who are struggling is they’re always so serious. They’re always so damn serious and for them English is a serious subject. English is work to them. English is something that requires discipline and willpower.

And the thing I notice too is those people, the people who treat English as work, who have a work mentality, they get worse results. They don’t succeed as well.

On the other hand, the best members that we have, the people who achieve the highest level of success with English, that are the best speakers, who make the biggest improvement, they have a play mentality, they’re just playing with English. They just enjoy it. They have fun.

When we do mini story lessons, they just have fun and go crazy. They shout their answers. They’re jumping. They have big smiles on their faces. They listen to the VIP lessons as they go out for a walk in the woods, on their phone or something, just smiling and relaxing and enjoying the stories.

They don’t worry about mistakes. They don’t worry if they forget some vocabulary. They just enjoy the topics and try to use them in their own life. They enjoy the crazy mini stories and that’s all.

It’s a very play, they’re playing with it. They’re playing with English. They’re having fun, having a great time in a very relaxed enjoyable manner. It’s not discipline. It’s not work. They get the best results, always, always, always they do.

Here’s the same thing. In your job you can do the same thing. I’ve noticed in my own life. When I’ve had jobs that I focused on in a very serious way and I thought, “This is work and discipline and I must do this serious,” I didn’t do such a great job.

And, I didn’t enjoy those jobs. And because I didn’t enjoy them, I put less energy into them and I had better results when I had jobs where I just played, where I thought of them as enjoyable and fun and I had a very playful mentality in the job, as I do as an English teacher.

As an English teacher, maybe you can tell with my voice or when you see me live, I’m playing and having a great time.

Yes, on the one hand I’m doing serious things. I’m teaching you serious information that’s useful. I’m trying to help people, that’s all serious.

But, my mentality, my attitude, my feeling is very fun and very playful. As I mentioned in Hanoi, that’s how all my events are, all my classes. They’re fun. It’s not just fun for you. It’s also fun for me, I’m having a great time when I’m up there teaching.

I love doing the mini stories and telling crazy stories. I love running around and pretending to be different characters and using different voices, it’s really fun. It’s not serious, I’m not using willpower.

And so for me also, even after six hours of teaching and using a lot of energy, sweating, jumping and going crazy, I usually feel more energetic at the end of the class than when I started at the beginning. That’s the power of play and a playful mentality.

So your job this month, I want you to identify two areas of your life to be playful and one of them is English. I’m giving you this assignment.

With your English learning, with this VIP program, don’t be so damn serious. Don’t look at it as work. Don’t look at it as something that needs willpower.

I want you to be playful, not just this month but every month as you continue for many months, for a long time as a VIP member. I want you to have a playful fun approach.

Just enjoy the stories, have fun, be a little crazy, enjoy the topics and don’t worry if you forget some vocabulary. Don’t worry if you make some mistakes. Don’t worry, “Oh am I improving enough this month? I don’t know.” Just relax and have a good time. Play with English. That’s your first assignment.

Your second assignment is to identify another area in your life where you’re going to be playful. That might be with your family. What an idea! Be more playful with your kids instead of always having to be the big boss with them.

Or, maybe it’s at your job, to just have more fun and be more playful at your job. Or, maybe it’s with exercise and your health, instead of looking at it as something serious… “I must train and work out.” Find some fun, enjoyable playful sports and activities and just enjoy it. Don’t be so serious about it.

This should be a fun month for you. Tell us about it on our social site. I’ll see you there. Bye for now.