Actively seek ways to increase playfulness, connection, and flow in your life, as these three elements are the universal components that define true fun.
Get a notebook and journal about past moments when you experienced true fun, detailing who was there, the setting, and what you were doing. This process helps you identify your unique personal ‘fun factors’ and understand what genuinely brings you joy.
After auditing your fun history, identify the specific characteristics of people, settings, or activities that consistently contribute to your fun. Understanding these ‘fun factors’ allows you to proactively seek out and integrate them into your daily life.
Analyze and identify ‘anti-fun factors’ – characteristics that, when present in an experience, prevent you from having fun. Recognizing these helps you avoid activities that won’t bring you joy, even if others enjoy them.
Use your understanding of both fun and anti-fun factors to make wiser choices about how you spend your limited leisure time. This strategy helps maximize genuine enjoyment and avoid wasting time on activities that don’t truly resonate with you.
Actively integrate your identified fun factors into your daily life by seeking out activities that align with them. For example, if music, friends, physical activity, and spontaneity are your factors, look for ways to combine these elements regularly.
Be mindful of activities you currently label as ‘fun’ but that don’t genuinely feel good or provide true fun. Re-evaluate these activities and consider replacing them with ones that align better with your identified fun factors.
Challenge the ’end-of-history illusion’ by recognizing that you can still change and grow significantly, even as an adult. Actively decide to become a ‘professional beginner’ by picking up new skills to expand your identity and capabilities.
Try out a new hobby, ideally one you anticipate being reasonably bad at, to experience moments of absurd unpleasantness and reduce self-consciousness. This approach opens the door to genuine fun and personal growth.
Adopt the philosophy that ‘anything worth doing is worth doing badly,’ especially when learning new skills. Focus on activities that challenge you by being on the edge of impossible, as this is where optimal learning and fun can occur.
Embrace failure as a key and natural part of the learning process, similar to how infants learn to walk. Recognize that frequent failure is necessary for acquiring new skills and should not deter you.
Practice self-compassion and positive self-talk, especially when facing failure, by recognizing your humanity and speaking to yourself kindly rather than critically. This helps overcome mental obstacles and fosters resilience.
Actively combat self-consciousness and negative self-talk, as these impede playfulness, connection, and flow, which are essential for fun. By reducing self-judgment, you can be more present and experience flow.
Avoid prejudging your ability at a new activity; instead, try it first, as you might discover unexpected aptitude or enjoyment. This counters negative self-talk before you even begin.
Engage in activities even if you anticipate being bad at them, as the process itself can still be very fun and bring joy. The primary goal isn’t always mastery, but the experience and enjoyment.
Shift your mindset to prioritize having fun over achieving perfection or being the ‘best’ at an activity. This allows you to focus on the enjoyment of the process rather than solely on the outcome.
Shift your focus from the ‘product’ (achieving a specific outcome) to the ‘process’ (the experience itself) in activities. This allows for greater enjoyment and presence, even if you’re not achieving mastery.
Embrace the absurdity of objectively unpleasant situations in life, as this can transform them into pretty fun experiences. This mindset shift allows for finding joy and giddiness even in difficult or embarrassing moments.
Train your brain to focus better by actively looking for ‘delights’ – funny, beautiful, or delightful things in your everyday environment that you might otherwise overlook. This practice helps improve focus and presence.
Seek out novelty by learning new skills and topics, as the freshness makes it easier to focus and brings a sense of excitement and delight. This ‘falling in love’ feeling enhances engagement and makes your brain feel ‘on fire’.
Learn new skills, especially collectively in a class setting, to potentially prevent cognitive decline and improve memory and processing speed as you age. This is significantly more beneficial than merely socializing.
Engage in new skills until you feel comfortable shifting from thinking of them as actions (‘I’m trying to X’) to aspects of your identity (‘I am an X’). This process expands your sense of self and who you are.
Participate in novel, challenging activities together with your partner to experience boosts in relationship satisfaction. The shared experience of being a beginner can be contagious and enhance connection.
Instead of passively consuming media about a skill, actively spend time learning that skill yourself. Dedicate a few hours to instruction rather than watching a show about it to gain actual proficiency.
Take short, fun breaks during your day, even for seemingly silly activities like a spontaneous sing-along. These moments of true fun can make you feel more productive and alive for days.
Prioritize incorporating more fun into your life, not just for enjoyment, but also because scientific evidence suggests it can lead to increased productivity.
Make more time for fun activities, as this can foster greater self-compassion, which is a valuable mental health benefit that everyone needs.