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This post is a review of The Fun Habit: How the Disciplined Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life. By Mike Rucker. Atria Books. 254 pp. $27.99.
Among developed nations, the United States provides the smallest amount of annual paid vacation time to employees. Nonetheless, many of them do not make full use of it. And the Internet has substantially increased the number of hours Americans spend each week “at work.”
According to organization psychologist Mike Rucker, Americans have devalued and marginalized fun. Although its evolutionary origins remain obscure, he points out, it is clear that fun (defined as pleasurable pro-social experiences biased toward action) is primal, universal, often reduces anxiety, stress, boredom and loneliness, and enhances self-esteem and self-motivation.
In The Fun Habit, Rucker provides a practical primer on enhancing day-to-day joy and wonder, grounded in recent research in social psychology and his own experiences.
Rucker does not necessarily make a compelling case that Americans devalue leisure. He does not address thinking and learning as sources of fun. The blueprint isn't an “easy fix.”
That said, Rucker’s book is full of sound, sensible, and sometimes surprising suggestions for creating space for renewal, connection, and joy. Here are a few takeaways:
Rucker documents the transitory impact of events, ranging from vacations to winning the lottery, on our subjective happiness. Compiling themed photo albums, scrapbooks, a treasure chest of special objects, journals with enjoyable holiday vignettes (with details about the food and the sights, smells and sounds on a hike), and using software that sends email memory triggers to subscribers, he suggests, can prolong the fun. Scheduling play times on calendars, including date nights for couples, makes it more likely they will happen.
Escapism, Rucker claims, need not be “a Band-Aid on unsolved problems.” At its best, it provides psychological distance for reflection, distance, and perhaps even consideration of alternatives to the status quo.
Fun time is important even in the closest of relationships. And “fun friends,” like those in Rucker’s Fantasy Football League, are important for everyone, including introverts.
Play, Rucker demonstrates, is a great way to connect with tweens and teenagers, as well as toddlers. He cites a less well-known rule of parenting: “play isn’t play” if it isn’t child-centric, if parents retain control, and don’t lose themselves in the moment. Rucker has had considerable success, he reports, in injecting silliness into chores, turning dinner into game night, enlisting his kids to join him to clean up a local beach or grow a “pizza garden,” wrestling with them, and watching them play with their peers.
And, as it enhances autonomy, competence, relatedness, and fulfillment, fun can play a pivotal role in promoting social causes. The paradigmatic example, Rucker reminds us, is The Ice Bucket Challenge. It began when two young men, afflicted with the neurodegenerative disease known as ALS, issued a challenge to donors to get a bucket of ice dumped on their heads. The craze spread like wildfire, with Bill Gates, George W. Bush, and Oprah Winfrey among the participants. One video showed a wedding party getting dunked in their formal attire. In 2014, the ALS Association website was visited by 4.5 million people a day. Overall, $11.8 million was raised, funding research that led to the discovery of genes connected to ALS.
Rucker supports seemingly small changes that result in individuals making better choices, an approach brought to public attention in Nudge, a book by economists Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The Swedish government, he points out, redesigned a subway staircase in Stockholm into “piano keys” that riders could “play,” as they bypassed escalators. At the individual level, Rucker proposes using a favorite song to wake up each morning, cutting children’s vegetables into funny shapes, and calling them “twisted carrots” and “dynamite beets.”
Making fun a habit, even in superficial ways, Rucker demonstrates, can, over time, result in new patterns of behavior that light the way, toward a healthier, more satisfying life.
