On the Idea of Prioritizing Fun Stuff
Over the past couple years I’ve been making a conscious effort to do more fun stuff. But I’ve run into a bit of a conundrum:
“In trying to do more fun stuff, I’ve actually started to stress myself out. How can I possibly accomplish all the fun things I want to do? There simply aren’t enough hours in the day.”
This article is about that conundrum, and how I’m hoping to solve it.
The Backstory
For a few years, I had been suffering from an acute case of lack of fun-itis. My life looked something like this: Wake up, go to work, come home, watch Netflix, go to sleep, wake up, and repeat.
Deciding to break out of the rut by doing something I thought would be fun, I signed up for a fiddle class. I grew up playing classical violin, but it had been over a decade since I’d taken my instrument out of its case. I thought it would be fun to get back into it and I was right.
When the fiddle class ended I signed up for another. And then another after that. I started going to old time jams around Brooklyn and even met a swell guy that shared my old time music obsession!
My first foray into doing fun stuff had been a success, and I was excited at the prospect of adding even more fun into my life. So excited, in fact, that I literally wanted to do all the fun things.
This was me.
So I started an effort do squeeze in as much fun stuff as possible. Dante, the swell guy I met from fiddling, and I started having weekend adventures together. We picked apples and fed sheep in the fall and started spending summers at fiddle festivals. After taking a beer brewing class, we brewed our own mighty-fine IPA. We made hot sauce, harissa, and a pie with a lattice crust that was only a little bit burnt. We needle felted a hedgehog that was adorable until my dog decided to eat it.
Then, I took things to the next level. I started thinking about things that I used to like to do for fun that I hadn’t done in awhile. Animation was one. So I started getting into it again. And I was having so much fun with it that I decided to commit to a 100-day project. I made an animation a day for 100 days. And after that, I signed up for a 6-week online After Effects bootcamp.
The bootcamp was awesome. Plus, it reminded me of another online course that I’d started a couple years ago—an online certification course in the Foundations of Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. That had been a ton of fun but I’d simply gotten too bogged down with my other responsibilities to keep working on it. I decided it would be fun to get back into that too.
The Epiphany
Like I said: I literally wanted to do all the fun things. But fun stuff is supposed to be fun, not stressful. And I was feeling stressed out. I had too much on my plate.
My quest for fun was turning into an overwhelming chore, and I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. But last week, completely coincidentally, I stumbled across three very smart ideas related to this very topic within the span of a few days.
Gretchen Rubin
The first idea came from Gretchen Rubin. I’m in the process of rereading (actually listening) to Rubin’s book, The Happiness Project, which I initially read almost a decade ago.
In the book, Rubin explores the subject of happiness and her own experience spending a year experimenting with increasing her own happiness. I was struck by a section in which she talked about a realization that she had that she can do anything she wants, but she can’t do everything she wants.
Productivity consultant David Allen has said something similar, with more of an emphasis on work:
“You can do anything—but not everything.”
But until Gretchen Rubin mentioned it specifically in reference to things in her personal life, the idea of prioritizing fun stuff had never really dawned on me.
Mark Manson
Later on the same week, I was listening to an interview with Mark Manson, author of the NYTimes bestselling book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck and, more recently, Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope. Manson was being interviewed on a pretty sweet podcast I learned about from my Positive Psychology studies—The Psychology Podcast with Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman.
In the interview, Manson spent some time on a topic that resonated with me in a similar way to Gretchen Rubin’s learning. Manson talked about the overload of information in today’s world and how it can make it hard to focus on what’s important. “The new definition of freedom is self-limitation. It’s deciding where you’re gonna draw the boundaries in your experience, and sticking to them.”
He drew the following parallels: “I make a commitment to my wife. I make a commitment to my career.” And, because of this commitment, he doesn’t see other people and he doesn’t go off and put all his energy into acting in a broadway play (something that’s got nothing to do with his career path). Manson says, “We just need to apply that same dynamic in a lot of other areas of our lives.”
Manson wasn’t talking specifically about the conundrum I’m dealing with. But it still resulted in a bit of an ah-ha moment for me. In order to focus on the things that are really important, you have to tune out the noise. And you have to learn to say “no” to some of the things that are less important.
Tim Harford
Then, just as I was starting to be a little bummed out at the prospect of having to choose certain fun things and leave others in the dust for eternity, along came economist Tim Harford.
I heard a clip from Harford’s TED Talk on slow motion multitasking in an episode of the TED Radio Hour I was listening to.
In the TED Talk, Harford talks about how great minds like Einstein and Darwin didn’t just focus on one thing. They multitasked. But they did it over decades. Einstein and Darwin didn’t chose one thing, or two, or even three to focus on. They moved from one idea to another to another and then back again. And they learned and grew and worked and came up with their greatest ideas over years and years.
Now, I’m no Darwin. But this did get me thinking about my own approach to deciding where to focus my energy. I’ve often approached projects, fun or otherwise, with a “now or never” mentality. I need to do 100 animations in 100 days right now. I need to improve my After Effects skills immediately. I’ll sign up for a bootcamp that’ll take over every free minute of my time for the next 6 weeks.
While listening to Harford’s talk I thought to myself, “What’s the rush?” I have literal decades to spend time working on the things I enjoy, learning new skills, and trying new things. I just have to slow down to take the time to enjoy them and see where the path takes me.
What’s Next?
So what’s next? Well, first I’ll say that I’m not going to rush into a concrete plan. I don’t want to stress myself out! But I am going to spend some time reflecting on all the fun things I want to do. What do I want to work on most urgently? Which things can wait? Are there any one-off activities? Lifetime projects? And what day-to-day noise can I shut out to make room for the fun stuff I really want to be spending my time on?
What things do you like to do for fun? How do you make the time for them? Which would you like to do more of? And do you have any advice for me? I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Thanks for reading!