The last thing I – or anyone – wanted to do after a three-day planning session was a team building activity. An Escape Room? Working together to solve problems so that we can escape from an asphyxiating room – hang on, that’s what we’ve just been doing for three days! Anyway, we came up with a good alternative. Despite my aloof reservations about doing a team building activity, we came up with an idea that actually had a positive impact and a significance on all of us as a team and as individuals.
Ben suggested we do lego. Of all the ideas we came up with, it just seemed right. So we bought 60 quid’s worth of lego (and about the same value in cans of IPA and lego-green tex-mex dips) and then dumped the whole lot on the table and just got going. It was like the opposite of what we’ve just been doing for three days. No planning whatsoever – and it was pure joy and a remarkable success. (Why can’t everything be that straightforward?)
We decided to build train carriages. We all agreed: we would build our own individual and funky carriages …
and then …
slot them together at the end to make a huge train.
The fact that we made a train was also interestingly symbolic. Of course, since the train is a vehicle, it’s a nice metaphor for any project, but unlike rockets, cars, ships or planes, there’s something reassuringly steady about trains. They just keep chugging along at a steady pace.
At one point the concentration was so intense, that all conversation and banter simply stopped. We were all zoned in. It felt good to reconnect.
Reconnect to what?
Upon reflection, it became clear to me that we live and work in a world that is abstract, cognitive and remote.
The product we’re building is made of data (!).
Our day to day tasks are all cognitive: strategizing, designing, programming, testing, learning.
We work remotely with people across the globe, interacting via digital media.
The extent of our reality has been spread so widely and thinly that … suddenly, doing some lego felt remarkably refreshing and almost novel. We were reconnecting to the immediate present – enjoying the act of doing only ONE thing and enjoying the company of those immediately with us. That was what we were reconnecting with.
But it was also more than that.
It reminded me of Carl Jung’s observations and how he was able to reconnect with his inner child (thus coining the term) by playing with pebbles and stones. He made little houses, like he did when he was a child and he was able to connect with his past and find answers to many of his questions. By connecting with his past, he could also connect with his future.
In those moments, play and creativity were one. He learned to love the simple things – and yet how difficult it is, these days, to do the simple things.
And that’s how it felt with the lego (Danish: leg godt – play well). We were happily playing and creating. It was something so simple but something our consciousness needed. And yet we deny ourselves that opportunity because, well, you tell me – why? I reckon, in our abstract, cognitive and remote world, it is all too easy to become distracted and disconnected. If we’re too distracted and too disconnected, we can feel lost. The simple things are a connection to reality, like the string on a child’s balloon to stop it from floating away.
And since our mental health is important and something we should look after (hence why I am referencing Carl Jung, and, in fact, why I am writing this) the lego now remains in our workplace so that everyone has the opportunity, at any time, to do ‘something simple’.
Reflections
As a team building activity, it was spot on: a mix of fun and focus; creativity and team work.
As something to have in the office, I think it’s already had a small but positive impact. In the past weeks, I’ve seen lots of little vehicles and creatures appearing, like little sprites of our deep subconsciousness joining us briefly in the office only to disappear again into the pool of lego – till someone else comes along and takes a moment to play, create and reconnect …