From learning about the human anatomy, colour theory or just starting to work in a new medium, regardless of how wonderful that YouTube Coach describes the process to us or how motivating he or she is — learning new things is never easy and takes a tremendous effort to do.

But an interesting thing happens when we start learning and doing something new; at first it’s hard — really hard — then it gets a bit easier, but still quite hard. And after a few days, or sometimes weeks (depending on what it is we are learning), it gets easier and actually a bit fun to do.

It’s not that it gets so much simpler to learn something new after a while just because we were persistent and diligent — after a few rounds of laborious practice, we enter a state of play, where whatever we do is actually delightful rather than tedious and foreign.

And it all has to do with the fact that we have learned enough of the basic “moves” of the game, so that playing a game of Watercolours or even Draw The Human Skull becomes logical enough for us to be enjoyable to play.

It isn’t that we should strive for speed or efficiency and god forbid perfection when learning new things, I think we may only loose interest too soon because of the added strain of that well known and destructive mantra: “I have to do this right!”

Play is and should be the building block of any learning experience. Without it, we can quickly make something as beautiful and creative as learning how to paint with watercolours into a more tedious endeavour than having the official job title of Printer Paper Feeder at a print shop!

While most non-creatives might tell us that what we do is magnificent and fantasise about the fact that we are free to do whatever we like at our “jobs” — the greatest irony in creative work it that many of us still do not find that wonderful playfulness in our jobs and in the end become nothing more than grumpy paper pushers, enslaved by our own inability to play. While all could have been solved a long time ago by the most obvious thing a creative should do: Having some fun at work.