What Are You Setting Yourself Up For?

I've noticed that some of my better mornings actually start the night before.

If I know I need to get out early and my clothes are already sitting there, it helps. If my bag is packed and I already know what I am doing first, that is one less thing for my brain to negotiate when I wake up.

None of this is groundbreaking, but it works.

The more decisions I can remove from a busy day, the easier some things become. Decision fatigue is real. By the time we have worked out what to wear, what to eat, what needs doing first, who needs a reply, what problem needs fixing, whether we remembered the appointment and what we are making for dinner, our brains have already made an enormous number of tiny decisions.

Sometimes another simple choice just feels like too much effort.

And I have been wondering how much that affects play.

It is not because we do not want it. It is just that we have not always made it particularly easy. Or at least, some of us have not.

I know this about myself.

I love dance. Even when I am exhausted and my brain is tired. Especially when those things happen. Dance gives something back to me, which is exactly why the things I love doing, the things that energise me and the things that feel like play are often the things I book in first.

Because if I leave them until everything else is done, there is a very good chance they will not happen.

Work will expand. Emails will keep coming. There will always be another thing that feels more urgent.

So I try to make the decision before I am tired. I put the things I want more of into my calendar while I still have the capacity to choose them.

In a way, I am setting myself up for success.

Not just success at work, but success at actually living the life I want to be in.

A success orientated environment

My conversation with Rochelle Callard made me think about this in a different way.

Rochelle has spent more than 30 years in education and now runs a tutoring business. During our conversation she talked about creating what she calls a "success orientated environment."

For her students, that means creating a space where they can relax, build confidence, make mistakes and enjoy learning because the conditions around them actually support them to do well.

I loved that phrase.

We do this for other people all the time. Good teachers do it. Good leaders do it. Good coaches do it. We think about what somebody needs in order to thrive, and then we try to create those conditions around them.

We remove barriers. We give them the right tools. We make expectations clearer. We encourage them. We celebrate their wins. We try to make it safe for them to get things wrong and keep going.

Rochelle does this with her staff too. She introduced a spinning wheel at the tutoring centre where tutors can win little rewards after a good shift or celebrate a breakthrough with one of their students. It is simple, but at the end of an intense three-hour shift it creates laughter, chatter and a moment where people get to acknowledge what went well.

It made me wonder whether we give ourselves the same consideration.

What are you making easy?

We are pretty good at setting ourselves up for productivity.

We use calendars, reminders, lists and systems. We pack bags, meal prep, automate payments and organise our days so that the things we need to get done are easier to get done.

But what about the things that make us feel good?

What about connection, creativity, movement, rest and play?

If the paddleboard is buried behind twelve other things in the garage, you have created twelve tiny reasons not to use it.

If the paints are packed away somewhere difficult to reach, there is a decent chance they are staying there.

If seeing the people you love always gets fitted in around everything else, weeks can disappear before you realise you haven't seen them.

If going to dance relies on tired-you deciding at 5:30pm that leaving the house sounds like a fabulous idea, tired-you may have other plans.

Sometimes the thing standing between us and something we love is not a lack of motivation.

It is friction.

And friction matters because the more effort something requires, the easier it becomes to choose something else.

My reflection

Later in our conversation, I asked Rochelle what play means to her in this season of her life.

She said freedom.

She also talked about feeling time poor and wanting to make changes that would give her more freedom and therefore more opportunity for play.

I understand that completely.

There are plenty of times when I look at everything happening in my own life and wonder where exactly play is supposed to fit.

But I also know that if I keep waiting until everything else is finished, I will be waiting forever.

There will always be another email. Another job. Another person who needs something. Another genuinely important thing that could take priority.

So maybe part of creating more play is not about finding some magical pocket of extra time.

Maybe it is about making the things that give us energy easier to choose in the life we already have.

What could I decide earlier? What could I book before the week fills up? What could I leave somewhere visible? What could I prepare while I still have energy? What could I remove so that there are fewer steps between wanting to do something and actually doing it?

Not because play needs another bloody productivity system.

Quite the opposite.

Maybe it just needs fewer obstacles.