{"slug":"game","title":"Game","date":"2026-05-06T11:30:57.479Z","excerpt":"","tags":["game"],"order":75,"published":true,"content":"

The opposite of play isn't work, it's depression

When we're depressed, according to the clinical definition, we suffer from two things: a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity. If we were to reverse the two traits, we'd get something like this: an optimistic sense of our own capabilities and an invigorating rush of activity

In our real lives, hard work is too often something we do because we have to do it: to make a living, to get ahead, to meet someone else's expectations, or simply because someone else gave us the job to do. We resent that kind of work. It stresses us out. It comes with too much criticism. We're afraid of failing. We often don't get to see the direct impact of our effort, so we rarely feel satisfied. Or worse, our real work isn't hard enough. We're bored out of our minds. We feel completely underutilized. We feel unappreciated. We're wasting our lives.

When we don't choose hard work for ourselves, it's usually not the right work, at the right time, for the right person. It's not perfectly customized to our strengths, we're not in control of the workflow, we don't have a clear picture of what we're contributing to, and we never see how it all pays off in the end. Hard work that someone else requires us to do just doesn't activate the happiness system in the same way. It doesn't absorb us, doesn't make us optimistic, and doesn't invigorate us.

There's high-stakes work. It's fast and action-oriented, and it thrills us.

There's busywork, which is completely predictable and monotonous. Busywork usually gets a bad rap in our real lives, but when we choose it for ourselves, it actually helps us feel quite contented and productive. When we're swapping multicolored jewels in a casual game like Bejeweled or harvesting virtual crops in social games like FarmVille, we're happy just to keep our hands and minds occupied with focused activity that produces a clear result.

There's mental work, which revs up our cognitive faculties. We feel a rush of accomplishment when we put our brains to good use.

There's also teamwork, creative work, and discovery work.

When we seek out passive entertainment and low-engagement activities, we're using them as a counterbalance to how stimulated and overwhelmed we feel. But by trying to have easy fun, we actually wind up moving ourselves too far in the opposite direction. We go from stress and anxiety straight to boredom and depression. We'd be much better off avoiding easy fun and seeking out hard fun, or hard work that we enjoy, instead.

But during eustress, we aren't experiencing fear or pessimism. We've generated the stressful situation on purpose, so we're confident and optimistic. When we choose our hard work, we enjoy the stimulation and activation. It makes us want to dive in, join together, and get things done. And this optimistic invigoration is way more mood-boosting than relaxing. As long as we feel capable of meeting the challenge, we report being highly motivated, extremely interested, and positively engaged by the stressful situations.

We're much happier enlivening time rather than killing time