Parenting & Family Quote by Thomas J. Watson

Watson’s line works because it smuggles a performance philosophy into the simplest possible image: a kid playing a game. On the surface, it’s a pep talk about enjoying yourself. Underneath, it’s a diagnosis of how modern work (and modern ambition) breaks people: once your identity fuses with outcomes, “fun” stops being a feeling and starts being a verdict.

The first sentence is bluntly transactional: play well, enjoy it; play badly, suffer. That’s not sentimental; it’s observant. It admits what motivational posters usually deny - that joy often follows competence, not the other way around. But Watson doesn’t stay there. He pivots to a private command: “I tell myself…” The intent is self-regulation. When anxiety and self-scrutiny spike, he reaches for a mental reset button: act like the kid who played before there were rankings, reputations, or consequences.

The subtext is about reclaiming process from pressure. “As I did when I was a kid” signals a return to intrinsic motivation: curiosity, experimentation, the freedom to make mistakes without narrating them as failure. It’s also a subtle refusal of perfectionism. Kid-play isn’t optimized; it’s alive.

Context matters: a late-19th/early-20th century professional invoking “the game” is talking to an era enthralled by efficiency, measurement, and competition - the same cultural machinery that produced scientific management and corporate modernity. Against that backdrop, Watson’s advice is almost countercultural: if the system is draining the joy, don’t muscle harder. Change the frame, and the quality often follows.