Brian Johnson and Emerson buy a robot vacuum and turn cleanup into a speed game: beat the clock to tidy a Lego-filled playroom in under three minutes. By matching the challenge to your skill level, boring tasks become flow states instead.
Hi, this is Brian.
Hi, this is Emerson.
Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. Plus one. Big news at the Johnson house. We recently got a new robot vacuum cleaner. Pretty exciting, huh?
Yeah.
Now, given the 18,000 plus reviews on the one we wound up getting. I realize we're late to the party on this, but it's still been fun to play with our new robot that is now affectionately named Robey Robey. I call him Robey Robo, but Robey too. So the new place out here in the country has concrete floors. It collects an astonishing amount of dust. Mr. Robey has been very helpful in helping keep the house clean. Thank you, Robey. Note, we actually do thank Robey nearly every time he cleans, huh? Yeah, only we thank him. Or is it her? And who else do we think?
The people who made him, all the.
People who created him. Or her? Seriously, Nearly every time. Thank you, Robi and everybody who made you. We appreciate you and don't take you for granted, but as granted. But that's not quite what I want to talk about today. Today I want to talk about a little game Emerson and I have been playing lately. It's called the Cleanup Game. Yes, very creative title. I know. It's a pretty cool game, huh? Yeah, let's talk about it. Well, the quick context. Emerson and Eleanor have a little playroom in the middle of the room. There's a circular rug on which you have, what?
Legos.
All of your Legos around that rug. What do you often have? Legos and other stuff. A ton of stuff laying on the ground. So there's little space left on the floor. Now, Mr. Robey, what happens with him?
He would get choked up and broken.
He'd get choked up and broken. He can't do his job in such an environment. So we've got to do some cleanup to give the little guy some space to operate. And as you know very well if you're a parent, the cleaning up part is often not quite as fun as the playing part. That is, unless you can make the cleaning up a game as well. Enter applying some mihaly csik semi high flow wisdom to create the cleanup game. Recall that Csikszentmihalyi tells us that when the challenge is way lower than our skill, we get bored. And when the challenge is too high for our current skill level, we get anxious. Now we get into the flow channel when the challenge meets our skill. Important note. The subtitle to his book is the Psychology of Optimal Experience. So mastering the process of getting into this optimal state often is a wise idea. So how did we get into flow? What did we do?
How do we make it fun?
Yeah, how do we make it fun?
Doing it fast.
We made it fast. Why is cleaning up perceived to be so boring? Because, in essence, the challenge is so low. So if you want to make it fun, all you have to do is dial up the challenge. And the super simple way we do that is what again, buddy?
Do it fast.
Do it fast. Let's see how fast we can clean this up. Buddy. I bet you we can do it in less than three minutes. What do you think?
Yes.
Let's go see who wins. Right? Boom. We're in joyful flow. And that's today's plus one. You want to play the cleanup game with us and. Or apply those basic principles to any. Any boring thing in your life? Note for parents. It works for all your boring stuff too. See how fast you can do the admin at work, or how kind you can be with customer service reps or whatever. Or how perfectly you can mow the lawn. Whatever's going on, there's a chance to get into flow. When challenge meets skill, we drop into the moment and experience the optimal state of flow. Let's do that in more and more moments of our lives today.
Yeah.
Yeah. Right? Boom.
Boom.
Have a great day.
Have a great day.
See ya.
See ya.
