The Player of Games

For this Saturday morning, sharing with you some thoughts on Flow and Mindfulness, also suggestions for a board game, an audiobook and a novel, each of which I love and I hope some of you may too.

I love to play board games, and one of my favourite moments from my trip back to Cayman last September was when my boys and some of their best friends re-introduced me to the board game Catan and six of us played. Since then I’ve introduced it to family in the UK and we have played many times.

When we get immersed in a board game, we enter a mental space where the outside world disappears, but, more than that, it is a shared experience rather than a solitary one.

One of my favourite writers and podcasters is Tim Harford, who recently wrote a post: “The life-saving magic of playing games” which included this quote:

“Flow is a state in which people become absorbed in an enjoyable activity, such that they become blind to their external environment,” explained the researchers. In contrast, “mindfulness is a state of being aware of and attentive to one’s current internal and external experience.”

from a study (Kate Sweeny, Renlai Zhou and others) which…