{"text":[[{"start":5.1,"text":"In a small black box, in a cupboard just out of reach of my desk, I keep one of my few treasured possessions: a set of Oblique Strategies cards, signed by their co-creator, the artist and musician Brian Eno. The cards, each carrying a brief instruction, are a prompt for creative people."}],[{"start":22.34,"text":"Some are practical: “Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list.” Some are gnomic: “A line has two sides.” Some are guaranteed to annoy most professional musicians: “Change instrument roles.”"}],[{"start":37.04,"text":"The prompts are aimed at triggering useful conversations between members of a band, reminding producers of options or perspectives they may have forgotten and, above all, forcing skilled artists to abandon their comfortable clichés and find a new approach. My 2016 book, Messy, praises the cards and explains why they, and related annoyances, are such powerful stimuli to solve problems. Strange, then, that I almost never use them."}],[{"start":63.56,"text":"I’m not alone in that reluctance. When Eno persuaded David Bowie to embrace the cards while recording his celebrated Berlin trilogy of albums, Low, “Heroes” and Lodger, the musicians working with him did not always appreciate the intervention."}],[{"start":76.94,"text":"Carlos Alomar, one of the world’s great guitarists, found himself playing the drums for the track “Boys Keep Swinging”. (“Change instrument roles”.) Alomar later reflected, “I mean, some of it worked, some of it didn’t . . . it did make me leave my frustration at what I was doing and totally look at it from another different point of view and although I didn’t like the point of view, when I came back, I was fresh.”"}],[{"start":100.8,"text":"The poet Simon Armitage described the cards “as if you’re asking the blood in your brain to flow in another direction”, which does not sound like a comfortable experience. But the world is full of uncomfortable obstacles that prompt a problem-solving response."}],[{"start":114.12,"text":"A favourite example of mine is the 2014 strike by workers on the London Underground, which disrupted journeys for 48 hours — and prompted tens of thousands of commuters to change their travel habits after discovering that they had been commuting wrong."}],[{"start":130,"text":"A 2009 laboratory experiment explored the impact of awkward team interactions: the researchers gave small teams 20 minutes to solve a multiple-choice murder mystery problem. In some cases, the groups consisted of four people from the same college sorority; in others, three sorority buddies were joined by a stranger, leading to annoying social friction. The researchers found that the teams with the stranger did a much better job at solving the problem, but enjoyed the task less and were more likely to believe they had failed. In short: the awkward group did better but believed they did worse."}],[{"start":166.1,"text":"From anxiety-provoking social situations to travel chaos to randomly drawn mystifications, we might call these problem-solving prompts “desirable disruptions”. The trouble is that while they may be desirable, they are rarely desired. Few people relish a Tube strike, or the awkwardness of small talk with a stranger — and perhaps that explains why the Oblique Strategies deck in my cupboard is rarely touched."}],[{"start":189.46,"text":"Which brings us to the topic of games, which, according to the philosopher Bernard Suits, are “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles”. The contrast between that definition and these desirable disruptions is striking."}],[{"start":204.56,"text":"Finding a better route to work when your usual one is blocked is no game — it’s a reluctant attempt to overcome inevitable obstacles. So is the awkward attempt to solve a problem in discussion with someone you’ve never met and with whom you have no obvious common ground. As for the Oblique Strategies, they might be something close to a game if it’s your creative project and your deck of cards, but if you’re a hard-working musician and Bowie and Eno keep forcing you to participate in their stupid experiment, the experience is unlikely to feel playful."}],[{"start":233.94,"text":"Are games the missing ingredient here? There is plenty of reason to believe that games can motivate us to push ourselves in ways we would otherwise resist. One survey of the experimental evidence concludes that physical activity can be boosted by gamifications such as “points, levels, rewards, leader boards, narratives and teams”, a finding that will be familiar to anyone who has been drawn in by step trackers and fitness watches. The irony is that gamification is a brittle imitation of an actual game."}],[{"start":265.88,"text":"A good game can push us to remarkable feats of concentration, the mastery of complex information or bursts of physical effort that leave us gasping (or, once we reach a certain age, regretting our lack of warm-up). My own gaming activities include learning not only the rules but also some of the best tactics for a bewildering series of board games, and pushing through my shyness and introversion to play in long role-playing game sessions that are nothing more than intense social interactions in disguise. I’ve even been trying to do handstands, although I can assure you that standing on two feet is easier. None of this needless striving would be happening without the pull of the game."}],[{"start":306.08,"text":"The same is true of many artistic pursuits. If you want to capture someone’s likeness, you could pull out a smartphone and snap a photograph, or you could ask them to sit while you draw or paint. There’s no doubt that the phone camera is the easier option, but as the writer and creative guru Austin Kleon declares, “a good hobby should look a little exhausting”."}],[{"start":327.08,"text":"It is tempting, then, to argue for embracing the spirit of play in more of what we do. If we played with different possible routes to work, we wouldn’t need to wait for a Tube strike to discover a swifter or more pleasant itinerary. Working with strangers is hard, which may be why so many icebreaker exercises are actually games. And if I could treat the Oblique Strategies deck as more of a game than a capricious engine of difficulty, I might enjoy its strange gifts more often."}],[{"start":353.88,"text":"But let’s be careful. “It’s part of mankind to play games,” the great board game designer Klaus Teuber told me nearly 20 years ago, adding, “It’s an escape from the everyday grind.” There is much to be said for playfulness at work, but there is also a risk of turning our pleasures into chores. After all, if a game takes on a broader purpose then it risks no longer being fun. And a game that is no fun isn’t much of a game."}],[{"start":380.3,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram"}],[{"start":390.36,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1786279338_1681.mp3"}