When we were kids, play came naturally. That’s all we did, all day. No agenda. No plans. No purpose. Just play. We didn’t need to be told to have fun. Play was all of our waking hours. It was the vehicle in which we engaged with all of life; the lens through which we saw the world we were just born into. Play was a keystone habit we didn’t need to inculcate. Play was everything. 

Then we started going to school. We traded play with class, and the little bits of play we did get from break time and school vacation, we were told we ‘earned’ it from being able to sit still in front of an adult telling you stuff you should know about the world, instead of you discovering it by yourself out there, through play. We soon learned that fun is what you get in exchange, after you did “serious (home)work”. And so it begins, the slow but sure watering down of the value of play in our lives, and the overtaking of work as the primary source of all joy and satisfaction.

Fast forward decades, we learn that as responsible adults, we don’t play. Work is serious stuff, the most important stuff you’ll ever do in life. It’s wrapped up as your only meaningful purpose in life. Fun is something after 6pm, if ever. Fun is mostly a weekend thing. We forget why and how play ever mattered so much when we were kids. Play got hammered out of us, and if we ever did it, it was intentional and with purpose. If you ever baked well, notice how everyone said you should sell your baked goods for a living? Hobbies done for fun gets construed to something productive, something economic. 

How did we all get here?

Perhaps you had a different—better—childhood from the one that I just described. That’s great! Count yourself as amongst the lucky few. For many of us—for me, for sure—that was my journey. That was how I got here, to a point where play is all but beaten out of me, and having fun is no longer intuitive.

What do you do for fun these days? Just plainly play, for the pure enjoyment of it?

I wrote about it creating habits for stress management previously. I’m not trying to be infantilized again, or trying to get back to childhood that’s without a care in the world. What I do wish to bring back is a state of being where play is as fundamental as eating and sleeping are to our survival. When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep. When stressed, play. 

Since when did play become a a good-to-have? 

Even as adults, I believe we need play as much as children do, just in a different way. We often call it blowing off steam. Of course, you can do it in less-than-wholesome ways like gambling, mindless shopping, and drugs. What I’m interested in are wholesome ways to blow off steam. Ways that add to my sense of wellbeing and quality of life. I’d learned how to feed my body in a wholesome way in the past months through keto and intermittent fasting. Now is the time to feed my mind the same way.

It’s psychosomatic just as it is somato-psychic.

And since I had forgotten entirely how to play and have fun, it feels like I need to get back to this in as adult a manner as I can—by trying to inculcate it as a habit, so that it becomes second-nature, as instinctive a need as eating and sleeping. Yes, this sounds lame, but desperate times call for desperate measures. Whatever it takes to make it work. It’s similar to how I planned for Play October last year to inject more joy and play in my work, and it ended up ironically being a month where I was super productive and made new products and tried new tech, just for the fun of it. I’m not trying to recreate the productivity and the end results here, as that would again be making play with a purpose and defeat the whole purpose of play for its own sake. My point is–fun is the ultimate creator. 

So what does Fun February look like:

North Star questions

What would a playful, mischievous Trickster of life do?

What if I followed my energy and just did just what it directed towards?

What can I do to have fun? Daily, weekly, as and when I need? Beyond just activities, what are the mindsets and attitudes I need?

Daily, weekly check-ins - the first step is awareness

• Self-rated stress level from 1 to 10
• How much fun did you have today/this week? 

Scheduled fun - make it intentional, initially, within my comfort zone, and let’s not make it feel like work!

• Wed evenings - 2h of fun activity.
• Sat mornings - 2h of fun activity.
• Side-note: the more stress you observed during daily/weekly check-ins, the more steam you need to blow off

Kinds of fun activity - do what’s naturally fun to you, get psychological sunshine

• Being outside - cycling, swimming in the sea, forest bathing
• Having a delicious, wholesome meal with my loved ones
• Impact sports - back to rock-climbing? Or try martial arts?
• Gaming - great opportunity to use my gamer laptop?
• Watch a movie, have a special night out, go some place new
• Just doing random, novel, energising stuff.