As a kid I noticed that many cats seemed to lose their playfulness as they matured. What were once playful kittens would mature into rather less playful adult animals with irritability issues. Many humans I know seem to have “matured” away from a general disposition to playfulness in a similar way. It is a shame. Playfulness is an important expression of brain vitality.
Play can be manifested in many ways. One form is where one teases out a response from a stimulus. It can be done for simple joy, as in the case of teasing your sister. Or it can be directed to somewhat more useful and enduring outcomes as in the case of research.
As I look back on my meager list of useful developments in the laboratory, I can see that most were the result of play. I was just curious as to a particular outcome. If I had simply paid more attention to my boss and focused on getting expected results (a production activity), it is unlikely that I would have fallen into some interesting and useful insights. No doubt almost every scientist can make the same claim.
On the other hand, if I had paid more attention to my boss, perhaps I’d be a tenured prof at a decent university or a mid-career manager at Pfizer. Hmmm.
What happens to many people when they age is the same thing that happens to cats. They settle into comfortable patterns and try to exclude surprises from their lives. Just like it takes discipline to get regular exercise, it also takes some discipline to keep imagination and playfulness a central part of your consciousness. Go out there and try something that has been on your mind all these many months! See if it works.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
Management tells us that progress is measured by how tightly the parts mesh. Every rifleman in Nam knew a field-dirty captured AK-47 was way better than an immaculate perfectly machined M16 plus Federal promises. Barrels and chambers are not chromed to look pretty as cutaways on manager’s desks.
Diddle off the books. Though you may be hunting diamonds, finding native platinum-iridium pebbles is worth the effort to stoop and recover. Management is happy in its native environment – making decisions, enforcing rules, avoiding the status-degrading production floor.
Playfulness=> permits random events
In most of science random acts which lead to ‘paradigm shifts’ are largely the result of chance. Such chance events are less likely in
predictable/applied research labs searching for hindsight oriented results. These organizations seek to shackle the hands of chaos and minimize his influence.
We’d like to think we have a plan, but if you analyze your own life (starting from the probability of you being born at all…to the prob of you being born in American… etc. ) you’ll see that hand of chaos stirring the pot. Gaussling is the sum of a series of chance events.
Follow the arrow of time to know the future!
is just curious!!