The Serious Business Of Fun

Yes. Yes, We Are.

Recently, I was asked for a single word that related to my idea of fun. Which, as any routine reader of my content will attest, is an absolutely impossible request to fill. I'm barely able to answer, in one words, yes or no questions. An occupational hazard. But anyhoo...

After thinking way too long and way too hard for anyone who actually knows what fun is, I finally have an answer. (Don't worry, there's a practical marketing and advertising application for all of this later.)

Fun is Focus.

You've probably rolled your eyes at this point and are about to go find anything else to spend your time on than more time with a workaholic, but hear me out.

Name anything that you find to be truly fun -- for me, that's water slides, poker, golf, playing Frisbee with my dog, playing my guitar, making my kids laugh, watching a good game, and other less public activities (there's a particular Michael Palin skit from Monty Python that works here)... and there's a common theme running through all of it.

It's the only thing that I am doing at the time.

You are almost never having fun when you are doing two things at once. Fun is utterly ruined by distraction. It's destroyed as soon as you look past it to the next thing, even if the next thing is also Fun. Fun is relaxed, monomaniacal, and childish... because children are the only people who rarely have two or more things going on in their heads at once, and who are totally present to the moment.

Fun does not involve clocks, unless having to fit into a set span of time is part of the Fun. The fact that Fun can end at any moment is, perversely, part of the Fun, because that's what makes you so present to it. It's not usually found on mobile devices, because every mobile device is absolutely ready to distract you with something else (perhaps something very Not Fun) at any moment.

Want more? Anticipating an event is often more Fun than the actual event, because the actual event has to be enough Fun to prevent distraction, whereas the anticipation has no such bar to clear. People who are having fun are almost always attractive on some level, because others want to be more like them.

Finally, this. Fun is a choice. I've had great times cleaning my house, just because. There have been aha moments in analytics that can make me giddy. Catching the scene of an optimal tactic, then tracking it down to its workable essence? Downright joyous.

And if you're in a situation where you are not having fun at work, and you used to? Ask yourself whether your manager isn't keeping enough distractions away from you, so you can go back to having the fun. (Oh, and this is also a reason why consultants... seem to be having all the fun.)

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