Find your side quest

In gaming, a side quest is a mission outside the main narrative or goal that players can take for fun. In life, it functions similarly. It's a hobby or activity that doesn't have any purpose other than bringing more whimsy, sparkle and exploration into your life. In this episode of Life Kit, host Marielle Segarra and Brittany Luse of NPR's It's Been a Minute talk to experts about how to find a side quest that builds your world's lore and brings you back to life. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit https://www.instagram.com/nprlifekit/?hl=en Sign up for our newsletter here. https://www.npr.org/newsletter/life-kit Have an episode idea or feedback you want to share? Email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening and convenient playlists of popular help topics like personal finance, getting healthy, and more. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:24Marielle Segarra?

  I tried skipping the other day. I was at the, was it a rest stop? And I did some squats, and I did some jumping jacks, and I did some lunges to the door because I just wanted to move. I didn't know if I would remember how to skip. Have you all skipped recently?

• 0:43Speaker 02

  I do.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  I have. I had skips in the past year, yeah.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  Because I wanted to make sure I still knew how to do it.

• 0:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. We skip on here.

• 0:50Marielle Segarra?

  That makes me really happy. How did you, why, why, why have you all been skipping? Like, what prompted this?

• 0:56Speaker 00

  Mine was a skipping age. And so I'll see her do something, and I'll be like, do I remember how that works? And I do.

• 1:02Speaker 02

  Skip because I am a big kid. It's why I study play. My partner and I, I have a little rubber ball in my backpack I take whenever I travel. And we were in the Poughkeepsie train station, throwing it around, like, and people were like, what are you guys doing? You know?

• 1:20Marielle Segarra?

  I love that for you.

• 1:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. I'm a play advocate across the board, so if it's asking folks, like, when's the last time you skipped? Like, why aren't we skipping more? And then usually we'll end up skipping. So I've definitely done it recently, too.

• 1:35Marielle Segarra?

  This is NPR's Life Kit. I'm Marielle Segarra. When's the last time you skipped? Or even skipped out on your day-to-day routine to do something just for the fun of it? In other words, when's the last time you took a side quest? The term "side quest" comes from video games. It's a mission that deviates from the main storyline. You don't absolutely need a side quest to finish the game, but they add flavor, they add depth, they build the world. It's things like, go to this other realm and collect a bunch of yellow flowers, or have your player compete in a knife-throwing game with a bunch of soldiers and wake up with a tattoo on his neck. This has been a trend on social media, to share a side quest.

• 2:17Marielle Segarra?

  Like, I'm learning to crochet 100 different types of granny squares, or I will be walking the length of Manhattan this month, or I'm going to be arranging flowers for myself every week. One of the people you heard earlier was Brittany Luce, host of NPR's It's Been a Minute and intermediate Spanish speaker. Brittany's current side quest is learning Spanish.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  I'm almost intermediate. I'm so close to B1. Like, we're literally, we're just starting B1 right now.

• 2:45Marielle Segarra?

  We teamed up because we wanted to know what makes for a good side quest. So we got a couple of experts on the horn. Sahara Monet, curator of Let's Play NYC, a community group that prioritizes play.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  My side quest is going to the park more, being outside. I definitely say two minimum times a week I have to be at the park.

• 3:06Marielle Segarra?

  And Kira Gaunt, associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University at Albany. One of her many side quests is writing poetry.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Writing a poem without editing it and then recording it immediately. It's teaching me that it doesn't have to be overwrought, reworked 20 times, rewritten. You know, like, we don't replay what we said to someone. No, I want to do that over. Take two.

• 3:36Marielle Segarra?

  On this episode of Life Kit, I sit down with Brittany, Sahara, and Kira to talk about all things side quests, how to find the right one for you, and how a good side quest can help bring you back to life.

• 3:53Speaker 04

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• 4:46Marielle Segarra?

  This episode's sponsor is HubSpot, which offers the following message. What if, instead of updating your CRM, your CRM updated you? No catching up on manual edits, no more guesswork. HubSpot's self-updating CRM keeps your customer context current and helps you understand what to do next. So, marketing builds more demand, sales wins more deals, and customers keep coming back. Learn more at hubspot.com.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Okay, so we live in such a goal-oriented society. Gym goals, health goals, career goals, that it's really interesting that side quests are taking off right now. Kira, why are side quests trending? What do they do for us as adults?

• 5:27Speaker 02

  I think of side quests like play as practice for adults. They're about not knowing.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  And you're going to ask me, what is not knowing?

• 5:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was going to say, not knowing what? Because I don't know either. What are we doing? What don't we know?

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Adults spend so much time in environments where they're trying to control the outcome that play as a practice becomes about not knowing, not having an attachment to what the outcome is. Side quests release us from worrying about the outcome. Learning begins with inquiry. In fact, the word "quest" comes from the root "question" or "inquiry." So it's not about answers. It's about the journey.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Hmm. That's very different than sort of like the goal-oriented framework that we're discussing that a lot of us live within.

• 6:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not, if you know, you know. It's, I don't know. It leaves me with...

• 6:29Marielle Segarra?

  And that's okay.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's okay. In fact, that's what we're striving for. If you asked me, I'd say it's about exploring your curiosity. Like, really, as a skill, exploring what curiosity is, not just an, I don't know, but hmm, I don't know. What's over there?

• 6:48Speaker 00

  I hear you laughing, Sahara. Like, how does that line up with your attendees' experiences when you have your Let's Play NYC events?

• 6:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's interesting, because I guess my interpretation of it is trying on different realities. And then the trending aspect of it is, social media almost makes it so much easier to discover those new practices of play or a hobby that maybe you didn't even thought of or knew that you could try. So for a lot of the folks that come out to the play dates that we host, some people are more interested in trapeze or ninja parks, and others are interested in salsa dancing. So kind of picking your own adventure is a part of the side questing experience, too.

• 7:33Marielle Segarra?

  I really want to go to the ninja park one.

• 7:35Speaker 03

  It's a good one.

• 7:37Marielle Segarra?

  Full disclosure, I've been to a couple of the events through Let's Play NYC. I went to the salsa one. And I went to one at the, at a crafting spot. Yeah. Called Recess Grove. Sort of a community art space, is how I would describe it. All right, takeaway one. Side quests are a way of practicing play, their way of not knowing and being okay with that, embracing a beginner's mindset, and sometimes seeing yourself slowly, steadily getting better at a thing you never thought you would do. Sahara, we had an episode on Life Kit about play, and I actually interviewed Stuart Brown,

• 8:20Marielle Segarra?

  who was the guy who came up with those eight play personalities. He'd walked me through them. I thought it was fascinating. You've talked about this too, right? Like, you think about play personalities.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the whole, like, choose-your-own-adventure aspect of it, I know for me at least, and my own practice of play, it is all rooted in my upbringing. Like, I studied musical theater when I was in high school, and then I also was a competitive athlete. So in different chapters of my life, play has come up in different ways. And in the personalities, I know some of them are more movement modalities, or some are more spontaneous, and some of them, honestly, are more competitive. Like, you like games, you like sports. So it's interesting how play as a practice shows up differently in different seasons. And then for adults, I'm sure, who are experimenting with side quests, sometimes they may want something a bit more rigid or routine-based.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  And in other capacities, they're like, hey, I just want to, to your point earlier, Brittany, like, go on a walk in a different neighborhood that I haven't been yet.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Hmm. Yeah, I took the quiz, because I heard, you know, I knew we were going to have this conversation, and I was like, oh, my gosh, what play personality do I have? I found out that I was a split between an explorer, oh, Lord, and I can't remember the other one.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  They're fancy names.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  They're very fancy.

• 9:36Marielle Segarra?

  There's like the kinestheat, which is the, the sort of athletic, movement-oriented one, the competitor. Are you a storyteller?

• 9:45Speaker 00

  I think storyteller was the second one. I had equal storyteller and explorer. And then artist was after that one. And like, anything having to do with being in charge of other people or organizing things was at the very bottom.

• 9:57Marielle Segarra?

  Interesting. On the practical side, that's something you can do if you're trying to figure out what kind of side quests might appeal to you, is you can think about the play personalities. And one piece of advice we gave in the play episode for Life Kit was to think back to how you played as a kid. If you're stuck and you're not sure what play personality really appeals to you, think like, what did I love doing as a kid? I loved playing with Barbies and creating, like, dressing them up in different fashions and making them fight and making them kiss and, you know, just like telling stories with them. So storyteller, for sure, you know? And plenty of other ones. The director, probably, for me, as well.

• 10:39Marielle Segarra?

  But I think it's this whole tapping into your inner child thing.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  You know, I think a lot of people often think of what you loved when you were a kid because we were naturally curious. And I like to encourage people to do things that you don't know to do. So this is mine. I can't draw. That's what I thought. And two summers ago, I went to a drawing class because here in Smallbunny, New York, I call it, sometimes is not allowed to do. And I went to a drawing class and the instructor, there was a figure, a human person standing there, we're supposed to draw. And I'm like, I can't draw. And he said, look at the figure, look at the woman standing there, and let your hand follow your vision.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  And one of the best things about not knowing is that you don't know what the impact of what you're doing may be on your life and on your character. So the next day, my writing was easier. My writing was better. So I think side quests, just like in the gaming world, really makes the main quest stronger. It gives it more nuance. It gives it some new dimension, or it actually brings out a facet of you that you convinced yourself you couldn't do. It might turn into a hobby and it might not. That's the whole point of the side quest is it's about the moment.

• 12:04Marielle Segarra?

  I love that. Takeaway two. When brainstorming side quests, think about how you liked to play as a kid. You could look to the eight play personalities, a framework developed by psychiatrist Stuart Brown, based on decades of talking to his patients about their early experiences with play. A few examples. There's the joker, who loves to laugh and make other people laugh. There's the artist creator. The point for them is to make something. Look at this list. See what resonates. Also, tap into that sense of curiosity that you had as a kid but may have tamped down since then. What sounds exciting or makes you want to learn more?

• 12:44Speaker 00

  I wonder, like, how do you know when it's time to take a side quest? Like, what does it feel like in your body when it's time to go on that ride?

• 12:53Speaker 03

  I know for a lot of folks, it can come out of conflict. It can come out of a really hard breakup or some stress and maybe some positive transitions in your life. But that catalyst can also be like the birthplace for really exciting character development and side questing. I know a lot of folks are running marathons and trying pottery classes and different things like that. So the timing of it can be from a life experience or, again, maybe social media, you see someone doing an activity that you didn't think about yourself.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think if you feel like work has become your life, it's a perfect time for a side quest. If you are venting a lot about your boss or your family, you need to get

• 13:38Speaker 03

  Get a hobby.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Meet new people. Like, side quests, in my mind, are not new, but we always need a new frame for it. These are like excursions.

• 13:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  If you were on a cruise, you'd go on an excursion on the island and you'd do things you've never done before. If you think you know everything, you need a side quest. You need to do something you've not done before because it will open up the brain's different neural networks and you'll get this sense of wonder and awe.

• 14:13Marielle Segarra?

  For me and my body, when I really need a side quest, it feels like tension, tightness, stiffness, that kind of feeling like when I know that I've been sitting down for too long and I just need to get up, my legs feel restless. That's when I need the excursion.

• 14:31Marielle Segarra?

  Takeaway three. Some anecdotal signs that it might be time for a side quest. If you feel like work has become your life, if you're venting a lot about your boss or your family, if you think you know everything, if you're feeling stuck, tense, restless, and you may feel those as sensations in your body.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  I feel like a lot of us get urges or like that nudge, but we just ignore it, like, time and time again. And so, like, for me, like, I haven't done theater since high school. I want to take an acting class so bad, and I've been saying that since I graduated college. And this year is the year that I'm saying I'm going to do it, and it's July. So that's a nudge, I feel. It's very loud. I'm starting to verbalize it to make it more of a reality. But I think a lot of us experience those nudges and we ignore them. So the more we can kind of close that gap of like that nudge, and then I'm going to actually be brave and courageous and like do the thing and try the side quest, I think we'd all be having more fun, honestly.

• 15:30Marielle Segarra?

  I'm curious about what gets in our way. You know, like, when we have something that comes to mind and keeps coming up, I want to do this. For me, it's been trying to learn how to swim better. The pools, they gross me out. And I get water up my nose and it's just, I don't like being around other people's naked feet. Like, just there are things that I can't get on board with, but I do like being in the ocean in Puerto Rico. And I'm trying not to get wiped out by a wave. But every summer, it comes and goes, and I'm like, this year, I'm going to do this.

• 16:03Speaker 02

  I have an offer to consider that you say

• 16:06Marielle Segarra?

  Yes, please.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  That you say, this year. That's too big. I think you should turn your SMART goal into a micro goal. This week, I'm going to go to the pool. I'm not going to go in. I'm just going to go to the pool. I'm going to go see other people learning how to swim. I'm going to go to the YWCA and see what's going, or wherever there's a pool. And so sometimes a side quest is about, like, you don't begin because you'll know what you'll find. You begin because you're willing to find out.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Like, you don't have to build Rome this year.

• 16:45Marielle Segarra?

  Yeah.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  It can happen over time.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:49Marielle Segarra?

  Kira's suggestion to me to make my side quest tiny is part of an acronym she came up with.

• 16:55Speaker 02

  Artisan, A-R-T-S-N.

• 16:58Marielle Segarra?

  It's a spin on the acronym SMART, as in make a SMART goal. Kira wanted to focus more on the art part. So A

• 17:06Speaker 02

  Achievable. It's got to be small enough to begin.

• 17:09Marielle Segarra?

  R is for revealing.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Maybe the revelation is delayed. Maybe it's two weeks later, you're like, oh, my god, this really helped me at work, right?

• 17:21Marielle Segarra?

  T is for tiny or time bound.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  One small adventure, like drawing a self-portrait of yourself with one pencil, with your eyes closed.

• 17:32Marielle Segarra?

  S is for specific. And N is for notice.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Notice how you feel after you participate and not focus on it as a performance. Like, what surprised me? What delighted me? Did I stop surveilling myself like I'm a parent or a teacher? And that that's an artisan.

• 17:53Marielle Segarra?

  After the break.

• 17:54Speaker 02

  People say to me, why would you jump out of a perfectly good plane? And I'm like, a lot of people are living in perfectly bad planes and won't jump out.

• 18:01Marielle Segarra?

  That's coming up on Life Kit.

• 18:08Marielle Segarra?

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 18:12Speaker 00

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• 18:36Marielle Segarra?

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• 18:52Marielle Segarra?

  I'd love to talk about the relationship between our jobs and our side quests. I feel like I can speak for myself here that that work used to occupy a different space in my life before the pandemic. My identity was more tied to my job and my career. So was my ambition and so was my social life. And then in the pandemic, there's no workplace anymore. And all the people I would see every day, well, that's no longer really happening. It's only happening over Zoom. And work had less of a hold on me suddenly. I was no longer like, my entire identity is baked up in this.

• 19:34Marielle Segarra?

  And I feel like that opened me to more side quests. I think I'm not the only one who's experienced that shift, who's like, I don't want to give it all to my company anymore.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  I mean, when do you sit and tell a joke at work? I'm in academia. We only take our head to different meetings. There's no play involved generally. And there's a list of things and it's all about seriousness and earnestness. And you go home and then you vent about it and you're like, and then you get up and do it again. So side quests are really important, given that we're living in a time where a lot of stress comes from social media. People aren't trained to have good social skills, social hygiene at work. I feel like that's why I listen to NPR, because it makes me laugh.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  But at work, it's not like my experience of listening to my favorite shows on the radio. It's a burden.

• 20:40Marielle Segarra?

  What I'm hearing is that side quests are a way to remind yourself you're not a machine.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Yes to that. We host walks on a monthly basis through the summer. And so the last one we had, we asked that question of like, what do you miss from your childhood? And so some of the answers were so fun of like, like playing all day and having to like, change your clothes midday because you just had like sweat through your clothes. Or I had noted, like, when it gets really hot, the fire hoses are open. And when's the last time you ran through one of those, like realistically? And so it was just funny because after we reflected on like what people's like answers were, we were walking back to our home base and our coffee shop that we end up at. And there was a fire hose open and a rainbow.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  And we, a few of us skipped through it. And it was just like, we had manifested it, but it was just so fun. It couldn't have been more perfect. That whimsy of it all, like, it's good.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, you're talking kind of like about rediscovery, right? And I think that feels very much like part of a side quest. Actually, my career in podcasting started as a side quest. I just started a podcast outside of work with a friend 12 years ago. And yeah, thank you. But then, once that became like more than a hobby, I had to pick a new side quest, which it took some years of trying some things. But for me now, that's learning a second language, just learning Spanish. I want to be able to communicate more with some of my family. And also too, I mean, like, oh, my gosh, like, a lot of my personality naturally is like, I know the answer. And so like, when I'm learning a new language, I don't, as you said, Kara, like, I can't be a no at all.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  I don't know what I'm saying. You know, I was not really a great student from like basically sixth grade through, through college. I got terrible grades for a lot of my education. But now I'm like a pretty great student with my tutor that I have been with for a few years now. And I am finally enjoying having class. And that reframe, there's a lot from childhood, from school, from those formative years that maybe doesn't feel so good to continue to hold on to. And a side quest for me has been a way to like, kind of get out of that and be like, oh, actually, no, there is this, this side of me that like is a great student and like loves learning and is like asking for more homework. That's not something that I knew about myself. It's like a literally a new self that I have discovered through this.

• 23:11Speaker 03

  You mentioned something, though, about like, I guess, almost like reclaiming it for yourself. I've had to reclaim my own side quest journey and hobby experience by doing some of those alone or doing some of those out of a larger group, just to also preserve that practice and have that solitude to have some self-discovery as well. It's a little different if you're maybe with a friend doing it or doing it in a really large group, too.

• 23:39Marielle Segarra?

  Takeaway four, this is a good reminder. You don't need someone to join you on a side quest. Side questing solo can be a beautiful experience and bring you back to yourself. Also, if you're interested in a side quest that does require a group, like if you want to play soccer or volleyball, some sort of team sport, you don't have to limit yourself to the people you already know. There are spaces where other people go to do just that thing and they're obsessed with it.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  We're talking about all of these wonderful, beautiful things that exist on the other side of taking that leap or even just dipping that first toe into beginning a side quest. But also, I imagine that there are probably a lot of people listening who are like, oh, my gosh, I'm so tired or I'm so busy or I have so many people I'm taking care of or so many things that people need from me. Do you have any advice for those who might not know where to start or who might feel too tired to try to take a side quest?

• 24:37Speaker 03

  I mean, the side quest in general, it sounds daunting. It does. Like a quest of sorts feels like a commitment to something. So I think we've been kind of talking about keeping it simple, like looking around your environment, looking around your commute and taking moments to pause. And I think to Kara's point, to notice is the best way to start. But I think listening to what those urges have been, like what those nudges have been is a really good place to start.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, it doesn't have to be an activity or an event. A side quest can be a mindfulness practice of.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  I had a student once, I taught a political sociology class, and I said, you have to change one habit, one habit. And she had a four-year-old daughter and she worked overnight. And I consider this a side quest, so other people might not, but I think it has the same impact that a side quest is. She said, I just want to be present in the morning when my daughter wakes me up at 8:00 a.m. And she said it changed her life that semester. That's it.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  I think whether you start small or you do something really grand, like jumping out of a plane or something, it's like, what's the best that can happen? That's a bad example because I also do not recommend the jumping out of a plane piece. But yeah, what's the best?

• 26:07Speaker 02

  I think we should not underestimate the story that comes from whatever happened. People say to me, why would you jump out of a perfectly good plane? And I'm like, a lot of people are living in perfectly bad planes and won't jump out. It's doing things you're not familiar with that gives you a bigger brain. It gives you more empathy for who you are. You're not an object. You are a changing being from the cradle to the grave. So it's really important to do things you're not familiar with about yourself. And I think side quests give people that permission.

• 26:41Marielle Segarra?

  It's reminding me about the definition of a side quest and where that came from. It came from the video game world. Part of the, the reason to go on a side quest in the video game world is just to build the lore.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  And yes.

• 26:56Marielle Segarra?

  And it's like, so it's this idea of building your own lore.

• 27:00Speaker 03

  Your lore.

• 27:00Marielle Segarra?

  You know?

• 27:02Speaker 03

  Which like, why wouldn't anyone want to, you know? Like more lore, like.

• 27:07Speaker 00

  Enrich your story.

• 27:10Marielle Segarra?

  All right. Well, thank y'all so much. This was really fun.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 27:15Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Yes, thank you.

• 27:19Marielle Segarra?

  Okay, time for a recap. Takeaway one, side quests are a way of practicing play. They're a way of not knowing and being okay with that. And sometimes they're a way of seeing yourself getting better at a thing you never thought you would do. Takeaway two, when brainstorming side quests, think about how you liked to play as a kid. You could look at the eight play personalities and see what resonates. Takeaway three, some signs that it might be time for a side quest. If you feel like work has become your life, if you're venting a lot about your boss or your family, if you think you know everything, or if you're feeling stuck, tense, restless. Takeaway four, try a solo side quest.

• 28:02Marielle Segarra?

  And if your side quest requires a group, don't limit yourself to your current circle of friends, especially if they are not as interested in softball as you are. All right, that's our show. Before we go, would you rate and review Life Kit in your podcast app? Tell us a favorite tip you've learned or what kind of episodes you like the most. We love hearing from you. This episode of Life Kit was produced by Corey Antonio Rose and Claire Marie Schneider. Our digital editor is Malika Gharib and our visuals editor is CJ Riegelon. Megan Kane is our senior supervising editor and Lauren Gonzalez is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagel, Margaret Serino, and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from Sina Lefredo. Special thanks to Sher Vincent.

• 28:46Marielle Segarra?

  I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.

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