The Case for: More Fun

I bet by now you’ve been subjected to dozens of social media posts assaulting you on the subject of New Year’s resolutions: what they are, what yours should be, how to make them, and how not to break them by January 31st. 

Even though I appreciate the boost that new beginnings can give, I am less preoccupied with New Year’s resolutions and more with New Perspectives. This is because I am a life coach and so I make it my business to help people lead happier lives all year long and far into the future. 

Instead, I am going to take a different approach and over the next three weeks I will make a case for THREE different concepts that I say will make your life significantly better in a myriad of ways.

 Today I am making a case for more FUN. 

Exhibit 1: Behold the photographic evidence of two lawyers having fun, perhaps the only one in existence. Look at the wild abandon, the silliness, the unrestrained idiocy of the moment. 

While happiness is a state of mind, fun is something we do. As Mike Rucker, PhD, writes in his excellent book “The Fun Habit”, “if happiness is a mirage, fun is your backyard oasis”. Fun is “demonstrable, observable, real, and immediately in our grasp”. 

Have you ever considered why fun is so, well, fun?

What Makes Something Fun?

1. Fun relies on action. It is something you do that is a positive, pleasurable experience. In English we say we “have” fun, but in many languages like French, Spanish, and Russian, fun is something you do yourself – you create it. 

2. Fun is outward looking. Recalling the saying “joy shared is multiplied, while suffering shared is halved”, we know that fun benefits all those who partake in it. True fun is inclusive and lacks any sort of malice. John Cleese was an absolute expert on fun and said this: “It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.” 

This is not to say that you can’t have fun on your own (get your mind out of the gutter!). Solitary fun is real and may be particularly important to introverts, which brings me onto the next point…

3. Fun is individual. Only you get you choose what is fun for you. The only commonality is that it elicits positive feelings.

4. Fun takes you beyond the ordinary. It transcends routine and leaps out at you with unselfconscious abandon of a puppy. I’ll give you an example: from time to time, I will text a friend with a simple “moo”. Why moo, you ask? Well, when one passes by a heard of cows and one moos, two things happen: 1) you notice the mooing; 2) the other cows notice it too and more often than not also respond by mooing. Which is why I find it particularly hilarious and quite logical to do a “moo”. I will usually get one of two responses: a question mark or a simple “what does that mean?” or a moo in return. The first person is clearly mentally not in a fun zone and the second one is. Either way, the moo eventually delights both of my interlocutors and all it took is a simple three letter word and a spirit of fun. 

Fun In Life

When it comes to professional endeavours, fun has been at best ignored and at worst villanised, belittled, and downright ridiculed (more on this in a separate post). And because our work lives bleed ever-so-easily into our private lives, fun has been disappearing from our free time too. 

But let’s go back in time a little. In the early 19^th century, a large proportion of the workforce was engaged in hard manual labour. There was no time or space for fun at work (moreover, it was most likely dangerous), but once work was done, usually punctually, people had evenings to engage in other activities and spend time with their families and friends. That precious time was undisturbed by work, something that is almost unimaginable in our modern world. Once you stepped out of your workplace, you didn’t have to think about it until the next business day. 

Things changed with the Information Age in the 1970s, when people’s cognitive output started competing with their physical output. As Rucker points out, “With intellectual property and innovation now the work product, we are no longer workers operating machines with sprockets and cogs. We are the sprockets and cogs, and our ability to perform is exploited and over-optimised just like the equipment on an assembly line. We have become the machines that now output the goods that create profit for others”. 

Now add mobile devices in the late 1990s and the post-Covid work at home culture to the mix and that precious delineation between work and free time is close to non-existent. The phrase “Work Life Balance” continues to capture the zeitgeist of this millennium but as far as I can see people are struggling and fatigued. Fun has been entirely squeezed out by the demands of modern lifestyles. 

What Good is Fun?

Yet fun is vitality itself. It lifts our spirits, builds stronger social bonds, gives us a motivational boost, and creates contentment. My dog demands play time every day for about 10-15 minutes in the morning and the evening. He runs around wiggling his little furry butt and I know I must engage with him in an earnest round of play fighting. And just like magic, we both benefit. 

This is because on a neurochemical level, fun involves release of both dopamine and oxytocin. Interestingly and perhaps surprisingly, the former spikes before we do anything fun (as my dog’s wiggling butt attests). The anticipation of fun creates that hit of dopamine, which is responsible for goal pursuit and motivation. I’m sure we can all relate to this when we book our holiday the moment we come back from the last one. Without fail, the simple act of doing so puts a spring back in our step. As for oxytocin, this is the bonding neurotransmitter, which is released through social interactions and engaging in experiences involving others. Rucker poetically remarks that “oxytocin gives us that real sweetness of something larger than ourselves”. 

How did the concept of fun come about? Rucker explains: “One theory is that early in our evolution we figured out having fun supports our brain’s development… As our ancestors engaged in fun and play, they developed rewarding relationships and beneficial, prosocial agreements that are the underpinning of modern group dynamics. Because of this aspect of fun’s power, fun likely facilitated the growth of our societies.” 

Fun is not just a useless frivolity that wastes our time and takes us away from something more meaningful and gainful. It is a crucial part of being alive and thriving. Remember what John Cleese said: having fun and laughing together could downright eliminate any awkwardness, hierarchy, or other type of distance between people. Fun literally builds bonds and makes everyone happier in the process. 

What Can You Do?

Getting back to the photo of my husband and me sharing a silly moment, how does it make you feel? Are you in the “Yes, please, more of that for me” camp? Or does it make you uncomfortable? If so, ask yourself why.

1. Recognise the awesome value of fun in daily life. 

2. Reflect on whether you have enough fun in your life. Bringing attention to an issue is an integral part of solving that issue. 

3. Find ways to insert fun into your daily life. It can be as small as a moo and as large as a weekly football game with your mates. 

4. Make fun a habit. 

Parting Advice

There is a growing tendency lately to cancel plans one has made with friends in favour of staying in. I will be writing on this topic in a separate post, but for now all I will say is that provided these are good friends, make the effort and don’t cancel. Remember: fun shared is fun multiplied and even if you don’t feel like it in the moment because it’s cold outside and the couch and a hot cup of tea are so much more inviting, more often than not you’ll end up having fun… better fun, because you will have benefitted yourself, benefitted your friends, and benefitted the relationship as a whole. In the infamous words of Mastercard: Priceless.