Life is chaotic. Be kind!
Three years ago, exactly around this time, in March 2020, the Covid-19 lockdown literally took the ‘fun’ out of our lives.
Confined to our homes, we had ample opportunity to create new habits. Now Mike Rucker, the author of ‘The Fun Habit’, recommends that we actively ‘develop the habit’ of having fun. On the one hand, this requires crazy self-discipline. You may use apps like BlockSite to block access to sites that the author identifies as ‘soul-sucking’ and make room for fun.
Don’t look away, you probably need it too.
On the other hand, you could create fun, with something as simple as chatting up with the delivery boy and juicing up a few moments.
Here are our five Bookstrapping insights
1. The author divides our activities into four quadrants: pleasing, living, yielding and agonising. He encourages to maximise the former, and recognise and minimise the latter.
2. In the context of optimising time for less agonising activities, there is a fun conversation between the author and Nir Eyal in the book – “If you don’t want to receive so many emails, stop sending them.” Hahaha to that one!
3. Readers will love the title ‘doom surfing’ given to our obsession with consuming and being anxious about world news in real time. This can clearly make way for a fun time.
4. A good way to understand fun times is gaming. When you alternate between enjoying your mastery and seeking a challenge alternatively, you have fun. Balancing challenge with skill is an important way to create a peak experience that researchers call “flow state.”
5. By all means, avoid forced social interactions, follow your affinity and use work breaks to connect with friends. If the office happy hour doesn’t excite you, connect with a friend and make it worthwhile.
Last but not the least, do you have a fun file? Do you curate a journal? Spice it up with how a past moment made you feel, how a memory lights you up and how you can live in gratitude.
Here’s to fun!
Reeta Ramamurthy Gupta is a columnist and bestselling biographer. She is credited with the internationally acclaimed Red Dot Experiment, a decadal six-nation study on how ‘culture impacts communication.’ On Twitter @OfficialReetaRG.