The Power of Fun - Vignesh Prasad

## Highlights There was just one problem: I no longer knew what I enjoyed. It turned out that, for all of its benefits, “breaking up” with my phone was only the first step. If I really wanted to reclaim my life, I needed to remember how to live. — location: 142 ^ref-786 --- The exercise asks you to decide how full your “tanks” are in four areas—love, work, health, and play—so that you can identify the parts of your life that need attention. — location: 154 ^ref-48472 --- I would argue that in many cases, we are mixing up the cause and the effect: we are suffering from these afflictions because we are not having enough fun.* True Fun isn’t just a result of happiness, in other words; it’s a cause. — location: 266 ^ref-48998 --- True Fun is the confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow. Whenever these three states occur at the same time, we experience True Fun. — location: 495 ^ref-11390 --- True Fun is an experience. This means that we can’t have True Fun continuously, alas, because each instance of it has a beginning and an end. But on the flip side, this makes fun more accessible; it’s easier to imagine specific circumstances in which you might have fun than it is to imagine how you could become someone who is happy or satisfied. — location: 534 ^ref-37922 --- This is why philosopher Simone Weil called attention “the rarest and purest form of generosity.” If you reflect on your most cherished memories from when you were a child, often they will involve an adult who chose, out of all the things in the world, out of all the other demands on their time, to pay attention to you. — location: 697 ^ref-55700 --- time-value paradox: we’ve been conditioned to believe that our time is too valuable to waste, and yet we often end up spending our leisure hours on things that make us feel like we’ve wasted our time. — location: 779 ^ref-7308 --- the Industrial Revolution and advent of factory jobs caused a huge shift in the way paid laborers were compensated—which is to say, earnings began to be determined not by their accomplishments but by the time they spent “at work.” — location: 789 ^ref-47124 --- we’ve been indoctrinated to believe that there should be a purpose to everything we do, or else it’s a waste of time; as a result, experiences that bring us pure pleasure don’t seem worthy of being treated as priorities, and sometimes even come with a side of guilt. — location: 825 ^ref-33311 --- This is especially true if I’m able to incorporate a sense of playfulness into my work, an idea that is backed up by research done by Adele Diamond, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of British Columbia. She has demonstrated that if you ask four-year-olds to stand still for as long as possible, they typically can last about a minute. But if you tell the children to pretend that they are guards at a factory—in other words, if you invite them to treat the task as play—they can stay still for an average of four. Just imagine how much more we could accomplish with a four-fold increase in our ability to stay on task. — location: 2011 ^ref-12315 --- It doesn’t matter how small or fleeting your moments of playfulness, connection, and flow are: write them down, label them with a P, a C, and/or an F, and for each instance, note what you were doing, who you were with, where you were, and what, if any, objects or devices were involved. — location: 2365 ^ref-47765 --- Once you have ticked off or circled the fun factors that resonate with you, and that describe your fun magnets and past instances of playfulness, connection, and flow, finding themes should be easy: just notice which fun factors you circled or that have lots of checkmarks next to them. These are your most powerful fun factors and can be used to brainstorm other activities or situations that might generate fun. — location: 2664 ^ref-14241 --- I also recommend doing a scan of your current life to see whether you have adequate opportunities for the three foundational elements of fun—playfulness, connection, and flow—and determine whether they’re in balance. — location: 2672 ^ref-27614 --- With that said, each of us has certain activities—and, for that matter, people, and settings—that are much more likely than others to trigger or enhance our feelings of playfulness, connection, and flow, and thus more likely to attract True Fun. I call these “fun magnets,” and each of us has a collection that’s unique to us. — location: 2503 ^ref-19121 --- figure out the general characteristics that create their magnetic pull. These are your personal “fun factors,” and once you’ve identified yours, you will have given yourself a powerful tool that you can use to find and create new experiences that are likely to generate True Fun. — location: 2547 ^ref-57982 --- Rodsky points out that much of the mental load comes from the conception and planning, whereas most of the credit goes to the person who completed the execution. This imbalance is one of the main sources of resentment among couples. — location: 2838 ^ref-3023 --- It’s a well established fact (though one that’s often not acknowledged or acted on), that our physical environments have powerful effects on our mental states. As an article in the Harvard Business Review puts it, “Our physical environments significantly influence our cognition, emotions, and behavior, affecting our decision-making and relationships with others. Cluttered spaces can have negative effects on our stress and anxiety levels, as well as our ability to focus, our eating choices, and even our sleep… — location: 2920 ^ref-41623 --- According to Dunbar’s research, the number of social connections the average person can maintain at one time is roughly 150: whenever a group gets bigger than about 150, it tends to break up. — location: 3053 ^ref-44600 --- He also concluded that the maximum number of people we can maintain close-ish relationships with (with “close-ish” defined as people you might invite to a group dinner) is about fifty. Your intimates—the people you confide in—are likely no more than fifteen; your truest, closest friends are likely limited to about five. — location: 3056 ^ref-28760 --- “The popular assumption is that no skills are involved in enjoying free time, and that anybody can do it. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite: free time is more difficult to enjoy than work. Having leisure at one’s disposal does not improve the quality of life unless one knows how to use it effectively, and it is by no means something one learns automatically.” —Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow — location: 3301 ^ref-55423 --- The more solitary interests, passions, and hobbies you have (and the more accessible you make them) the easier it will be to avoid reacting to your free pockets of alone time by automatically turning to a screen—because you’ll have other things you want to do instead. These pastimes may not be likely to attract True Fun, due to the inherent difficulty of experiencing a sense of connection with another person when you’re alone. But they still are likely to be more enjoyable and rewarding—and make you more interested and interesting—than whatever else you would have done. — location: 3492 ^ref-9557 --- You could also call a friend who knows you well and ask them to help you brainstorm things to try (perhaps together!) or do internet searches for activities, meet-ups, and classes going on near you to see if anything strikes your fancy. And make sure that your list also includes ideas for things to do alone, at home, when you’re tired. — location: 3576 ^ref-23899 --- Once you’ve got a list of ideas, try one! It doesn’t matter what you choose, and it doesn’t have to be exciting; just do something. — location: 3597 ^ref-9468 --- Eve Rodsky, the author of the aforementioned book Fair Play (i.e., the one I hurled into the couch in the last chapter), refers to this as “Unicorn Space,” which basically means time set aside for each person in the relationship to pursue their own individual passions. As she puts it, “Whoever you are and whatever you do, you still need time and space to engage in something outside of the work you do for money to make you come alive.” Importantly, Unicorn Space does not refer to the time you spend on passive pursuits, such as following sports or watching television. It’s time for active leisure, the things that make you interested and interesting—a term that she uses as well—and that nourish your internal flame. — location: 3634 ^ref-19685 --- In 2017, Thomas Curran and Andrew P. Hill published a study that investigated the rates of perfectionism—defined as “a combination of excessively high personal standards and overly critical self-evaluations”—among American, British, and Canadian college students from 1989 to 2016. The study found that perfectionism is on the rise; as the authors wrote in a description of their findings, “increasingly, young people hold irrational ideals for themselves, ideals that manifest in unrealistic expectations for academics and professional achievement, how they should look, and what they should own.” Young people, they continued, are “seemingly internalizing a pre-eminent contemporary myth that things, including themselves, should be perfect.” After all, who posts a video to YouTube of their first try? — location: 3703 ^ref-31608 --- As you do, keep in mind that far from implying flightiness or irresponsibility, the word dilettante actually comes from the Italian verb “to delight.” And “amateur” doesn’t refer to a lack of skill. Instead, its root is the Latin word for love. — location: 3739 ^ref-60282 --- In the words of former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, “The easiest way to have more humor…is not to try to be funny—instead, just look for moments to laugh.” — location: 3813 ^ref-893 --- In her book, Bossypants, Tina Fey—master improviser and Saturday Night Live alum—explains this much better than I can: “You are supposed to agree and then add something of your own. If I start a scene with ‘I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,’ and you just say, ‘Yeah…’ we’re kind of at a standstill. But if I say, ‘I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,’ and you say, ‘What did you expect? We’re in hell.’ Or if I say, ‘I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,’ and you say, ‘Yes, this can’t be good for the wax figures.’ Or if I say, ‘I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,’ and you say, ‘I told you we shouldn’t have crawled into this dog’s mouth,’ now we’re getting somewhere.” Thankfully, you don’t have to be an actor to benefit from the philosophy of “Yes, and.” (Believe me.) Instead, you can use it as a way to strengthen your Fun Mindset by opening yourself to spontaneity and becoming more adaptive. As Mike Myers has written, “Improv isn’t just a game—it’s a way of looking at life.”*4 — location: 3841 ^ref-25421 --- “Smiling is a really powerful social lubricant,” the study’s lead researcher, Kostadin Kushlev, said to Greater Good Magazine. “When somebody smiles at you, that indicates approachability. Our research suggests that phones might actually be impeding this very important approach-related behavior that serves to create new social ties.” — location: 3965 ^ref-47041 --- If we train ourselves to notice delights—the everyday beauties and kindnesses and amusing absurdities, the things that make us laugh or that we feel grateful for—we will feel more positive. If we pay more attention to sources of playfulness, connection, and flow, we’ll have more fun. — location: 4009 ^ref-65293 --- Pie Madness also illustrates one of the paradoxical things about playgrounds that professional bringer-together-of-people Priya Parker points out in her excellent book, The Art of Gathering—namely, that “rules can create an imaginary, transient world that is actually more playful than your everyday gathering.” — location: 4156 ^ref-54575 --- of positive psychology, writes in his book Flourish, “Strong — location: 4289 ^ref-55156 --- As Martin Seligman, the psychologist who helped found the field of positive psychology, writes in his book Flourish, “Strong biological underpinnings predispose some of us to sadness, anxiety, and anger. Therapists can modify those emotions but only within limits.” — location: 4288 ^ref-48828 --- As journalist Jennifer Senior puts it in her book about modern parenting, All Joy and No Fun, “All of us crave liberation from our adult selves, at least from time to time.” She continues: “I’m not just talking about the selves with public roles to play and daily obligations to meet. (We can find relief from those people simply by going on vacation or, for that matter, by pouring ourselves a stiff drink.) I’m talking about the selves who live too much in their heads rather than their bodies; who are burdened with too much knowledge about how the world works rather than excited by how it could work or should; who are afraid of being judged and not being loved.” — location: 4395 ^ref-3397 --- when you fill your schedule with routines, habits, and passive consumption, your memories will arrange themselves in a smooth chain of indistinguishable links, with very little to help you tell where one day ended and another began. The best way to fight back and to slow down time is to focus on creating more opportunities for what scientists call “pattern separation”—in other words, finding ways to break up monotony. — location: 4427 ^ref-17826 --- my husband and I often borrow a tradition from many of the world’s religions and spend Friday to Saturday nights disconnected from screens—the practice I mentioned to you earlier that’s sometimes called a “technology shabbat,” or “digital sabbath.” This disconnection helps create space and time that we can then use on activities and traditions that leave us nourished and refreshed. — location: 4817 ^ref-7784 --- Curious but scared? I have a free digital sabbath survival guide available on my website, ScreenLifeBalance.com — location: 4907 ^ref-27442 ---