Your game

An easy way to step out of your comfort zone and learn something new is by playing. For this, you must not take yourself too seriously. A good dose of play increases your creativity, problem-solving ability, and reduces stress. So, what’s stopping you? Create your own game or use an existing game to play. 

A well-known agile game is “the ball game” which shows how quickly we can learn. The aim of the game is to try to pass balls to each other as often as possible. There are only two rules: every team member must touch the ball once, and the ball must spend some time up in the air. After everyone has touched it, you get a point. The game is played in three iterations of one minute. Before the start, the team estimates how many points it can score in that minute. After the minute, the score is written down, and the team reflects on how it went and what it can do differently to score more points. As a final iteration, you can indicate as a game leader that you know a score of 300 is possible. That seems unlikely but challenges the teams to really think out of the box. Creative teams come up with innovative ideas (within the rules, of course) that make a high score achievable. It’s fun, energizing, and a nice exercise to show that stopping and reflecting helps to improve. 

Do you already know this game? Then create your own game. The conditions of a game are that you choose to participate, you can stop whenever you want, and you perform it in an active but relaxed state. They can be very ordinary things that you see as a game because you imagine them that way. For example, always take the stairs instead of the elevator, and after a series of a certain number of days, you earn a nice prize. Even better if you get others to join in the game. It’s not only fun but also has an underlying goal: it’s good for your fitness and health, you get others moving, and it creates a connection. Can you think of a game with these criteria in mind?