Are you having fun?

On the power of fun, finding room for it in your life, and what "fun" even means.

This week I recorded my first podcast episode for which I had the privilege to interview Phil Bennett about Punk Leadership. Whilst chatting he recommended me a recent podcast episode of Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat about the importance of having fun. (Hopefully this wasn’t a hint that I was boring his ear off.)

I was skeptical, but the episode is truly great, and it’s been making me think a lot about fun and about how I may have unintentionally deprioritised it far too often in my life. So in this article I’m going to break down my learnings from what health & science writer Catherine Price shares in the podcast (full episode here).

What actually is fun?

Before we go further we need to define what “fun” is.

Fun consists of three core elements: Playfulness, Connection, and Flow. When we experience these three things, we experience what Catherine calls True Fun:

We can take this a step further and break down what those three elements mean:

• Playfulness: Having a light-hearted attitude towards life, finding ways to laugh, not taking yourself or life too seriously. “Play” involves letting go of perfectionism and your inner critics and feeling safe to experiment and explore.

• Connection: Shared experiences with other people — the human connection. Yes, even for introverts (they may need less, but they still need it).

• Flow: The flow state you experience when you are totally engrossed and actively engaged in something. When you’re in this state, nothing else matters. Time doesn’t exist in the same way. You may forget to eat. Interesting side-note: whilst “watching a really good TV show” can fall into this category, Catherine labels too much of this “junk flow”. You may enjoy it for an hour, but you’ll feel awful after five.

We probably don’t have to experience all three to feel like we’re having fun, but that’s the ideal. We’re probably experiencing at least two out of three of these elements when we’re having fun.

Wait, “True Fun”? So there’s also “Fake Fun”?

Yes. “Fake Fun” is to be found by things which lure you in as fun but lack some (if not all) of the three elements. Social media is the best example. Fake fun leaves you the opposite of energised. Social media apps are optimised to give you an isolated dopamine drip and keep you on them for maximum engagement.

Our brain doesn’t really distinguish between “good” and “bad” dopamine triggers. Dopamine is dopamine. That’s why we keep coming back to things like social media and staying on our phones for too long, even if we know they make us feel bad. The dopamine hits just the same, but we’re left feeling empty.

Fake and junky-fun activities tend to be the default that we reach for in our leisure time because they’re always in reach, and they take very little effort to take part in. They’re passive. It’s easy to land on the couch and binge watch an entire series of a show, but there’s a pretty quick cutoff point in terms of when it stops making you actually feel good.

“True fun” generally requires more active effort to engage in, but you’ll rarely be sorry when you do. If you think of the times lately where you can confidently say you had a lot of fun, you’ll find they almost always involve an element of active engagement. Things like meeting up with friends and going to a new restaurant, going to a meetup, going to a concert, whatever it may be.

Does it really matter, though?

Stress and loneliness kill us, and fun is literally the opposite of those things. It’s how you connect with others, it’s how you let your hair down, it’s how you relax and hit your body with feel-good chemicals.

I’ll let you decide if that matters or not.

It’s too easy to think that “play” and “fun” are things for kids, and that we’re serious adults with serious jobs and responsibilities who need to be productive and self-sacrifice and hustle-hustle-hustle.

For me, this is why I really love the three elements that Catherine uses to define fun. Starting to notice those three elements has been a game changer.

For example, there is a false dichotomy between productivity and fun, as if you cannot have both. But being in a flow state is a property of having fun, and you tend to get into a flow state when you’re doing something you actually enjoy. So when you’re in that flow state — you guessed it — you’re being productive, and you’re also having fun.

In a work context, people seem to hate ice-breaker activities. In my experience though, when I’ve done them and encouraged people to take part, the group dynamic does actually change for the better. The energy is different. In the context of the elements of fun, it’s because this is a form of play. It’s a vital component in how people bond and learn to relax and open up around each other.

Fun is a recognisable thing

If I ask you if you’re happy, I may get a different answer depending on the hour of the day, and I’d wager we could spiral into a pretty deep hole around what happiness even is and what it means to you. Happiness is truly nebulous.

Instead, if I ask you if you had fun recently and what you were doing, mostly likely it’s much easier for you to answer. The same goes if someone asks you if you had fun at a specific event. We have a better internal, tangible feeling for if something felt like fun. This is awesome, because we can use this to have more of it!

Fun is a feeling and not an activity 

Whilst reading this article you may have started reflecting on what fun activities you have in your life, or what brings you the most fun. This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s important to realise that fun is a feeling and not an activity.

The example Catherine gives is that nobody would ever list “delayed flight” on a list of top fun activities. But now imagine you have a delayed flight and whilst waiting at your gate, you strike up an amazing, engaging conversation with another passenger who’s also waiting for the same flight. You grab coffee, you talk for hours, and even end up swapping contact details. Did you have fun?

This is why it’s important to remember that fun is a feeling, and not an activity. That way, you can start being more aware of moments in your life that have led to a feeling of fun, rather than attaching it to specific activities and stopping there.

OK, so what should I do about it?

The short answer is: stay more open to fun in your life! Catherine also gives a few more specific techniques:

🧲 Fun Magnets

If you want to experiment with having more fun in your life, think about what your “fun magnets” are. What feels nourishing to you? Who do you love spending time with?

Whilst fun isn’t a specific activity, we all have people, activities, and environments which help us to have fun. Becoming more aware of those magnets can help you figure out what true fun means to you. If you find it hard to name things which act as fun magnets for you, then journalling is a good way to spot things in your day to day life which feel fun.

🕯“Light the candles for fun”

You can schedule certain things in your calendar that you know you enjoy and that can bring you fun, but you need to stay open for spontaneity and make room for it in your calendar. Like vampires in a cheesy horror flick, fun needs to be invited in.

This is the part I struggle with: I’m not very spontaneous. I like to organise and plan and optimise. I now realise that I’m very guilty of making absolutely no time for spontaneous activities popping up which I could find fun, meaning I often end up saying “no” to those opportunities because I’ve pre-planned something else.

🕹 Inputs, not Outputs

This tip is especially relevant for work contexts. If you’re someone in charge of setting up social events for your colleagues, think about inputs that can lead to fun, rather than forced outputs (“we will meet in order to have fun”).

Again, think of the elements. Inviting your colleagues to meet up at a forced after-work event where the only activity is “get really drunk” is truly awful (and very non-inclusive). Instead, plan an actual activity! Preferably an activity with a dash of “play”.

Go take a class together, go bowling, whatever. Make it a shared experience that can get people playing and in the moment. Think about what inputs can lead to everyone being able to have true fun with all three elements involved. Don’t just invite everyone to a bar and expect fun to show up.

✨Have a “Fun-tervention”

This is genuinely something I am considering to do: Pick a month and commit to optimising your life for fun for the entire month. The worst that can happen is that you have slightly more fun than usual. I really like Catherine’s idea of picking February because it is an especially miserable, cold, and dark month.

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Are you having fun?

Reflecting on my own life in the past six months, I think fun has been a bit of an afterthought. Starting my creative projects like this very newsletter (and soon a podcast) definitely came from a place of excitement and fun, and they still feel that way to me. Buuuut I can be very quick to turn them into “serious” projects (which then feel like work) rather than optimising for — or simply recognising — the elements of fun.

I default to perfectionism and a drive to get more things done, but if I’m honest with myself, those aren’t the things which actually feel like fun, and that’s usually exactly what leads me to abandon my projects.

Being creative and playing with my ideas is fun. Finding that flow state and working on these projects is fun. Having deeper connections with friends and getting feedback and comments on these articles is fun.

On that note, I’d love to know what brings fun into your life and how you resonate with this topic. Please hit reply or leave a comment and let me know. I also fully recommend listening to the full podcast episode here. One thing I can guarantee is that I’ll be staying more open to fun, and I hope you will too!

See you next week.

-Mike.

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✍️ Quote of the week

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.

— H. L. Mencken, quoted in Fortitude by Bruce Daisley, who is also the host of “Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat” which is the podcast mentioned in this article.

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🏆 Highlights around the web this week

• Dogs, daily delights, and ditching Twitter by Elle Hunt. A lovely Guardian article on fun.

• Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat is in general a very good podcast about work culture and making the most of our jobs.