The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life - Dr. Mike Rucker

On today’s episode I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Mike Rucker about his book, The Fun Habit - How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life.

The Fun Habit is a science-backed, actionable case for the importance of seeking fun, rather than happiness, in our daily lives. 

Mike argues that fun is a resource available to anyone, at almost anytime, yet most people are not having enough of it. His insightful new book reveals how intentionally increasing your joyful moments can improve your health, relationships, and productivity.

During our conversation we’ll unpack the 4 quadrants of the P.L.A.Y model and how it can help you assess your daily activities so you can incorporate for fun into your life.

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Transcript

Joe Cadwell: 0:00

Welcome to Grit Nation. I'm Joe Cadwell, the host of the show. Now on today's episode, I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Mike Rucker about his book The Fun Habit: How the pursuit of joy and wonder can change your life. The fun habit is a science backed actionable case for the importance of seeking fun rather than happiness in our daily lives. Mike argues that fun is a resource available to anyone at almost any time, yet most people are not having enough of it. His insightful new book reveals how intentionally increasing your joyful moments can improve your health, relationships and productivity. During our conversation, we'll unpack the four quadrants of the player model and how it can help you assess your daily activities so you can incorporate more fun into your life. After the episode be sure to check out the show notes for more information to help you dive deeper into the subject. And now on to the show. Mike Rucker, welcome to grit nation.

Mike Rucker: 1:32

Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Joe Cadwell: 1:34

Thank you, Mike, for taking your time to be on my show today, I'm really excited to introduce my audience to you and your new book, The fun habit, how discipline, pursuit of joy and wonder can change your life. It's just a fantastic title on a fantastic concept. How did you come up with the idea to write this book, Mike?

Mike Rucker: 1:53

Yeah, so it was, unfortunately, through a series of unfortunate events. For a long time, I had been studying positive psychology and really use those tools. And for folks that don't know what positive psychology is, it's essentially a facet of psychology that looks to help people through betterment. You know, our clinical psychology is really tools to help people mitigate deficits, the kind of school of thought around positive psychology was a set of tools to help people that are in sort of normal circumstances, you know, using that as an academic term, not as a pejorative, but you know, a set of tools that can help people through betterment. And those tools had really been successful for me from about 2009 to 2016. And in the rearview mirror, I now know that I was over optimizing for happiness, you know, as really probably pushing the limits of what should have happened. Because in 2016, my younger brother unexpectedly passed away from a pulmonary embolism. And then around the same time, these two things aren't correlated, but I found out that I had advanced osteoarthritis. And up until that point, one of the main ways that I had mitigated stress and anxiety was running, and I was told that I could never run again. And so yeah, I really got knocked on my butt. But I had always had this, you know, driven drive to be happy. And the more I tried to say, hey, you know, these tools have always suited me, I'm going to try to, you know, get myself out of this mess. I became more and more unhappy. And so I knew something was wrong. And I serendipitously around that same time, there was some emerging research that suggested that people that are overly concerned about optimizing for happiness, so not necessarily valuing happiness, wanting people to be happy and wanting people to flourish. There's, you know, we're not trying to villainize this year, but people that kind of always think about, you know, how can I be more happy? What happens is they tend to see that gap between where they want to be so happiness is out there on the horizon, and where they are, and subconsciously start to identify as being unhappy because, you know, happiness is something to be found, and you essentially never find it right. The concept in psychology is called the hedonic treadmill. And so the kind of aha moment or awakening happened slowly, it wasn't something that sort of dawned on me, but what I came to realize digging both into the research and then my own self experimentation, is that instead of kind of trying to think about this all the time, regaining your agency and autonomy, especially as an adult, allows you to essentially have joy and delight in the moment because you kind of start to be deliberate about how you spend your time. And so What I found was I just kind of tried to reclaim an hour or two out of my week to do something that was going to light me up without really worrying about the outcome at all, or any sort of evaluation of the activity, just finding things that I could enjoy in the moment. And over time, that starts to build equity, right. And so, you know, as long as you don't have a biological predisposition to depression, so that your malaise or melancholy, or whatever, you know, term works for you with regards to sort of the despair you're in in the moment, you can start to index these joyful experiences where, you know, your emotions might not necessarily be in the positive, but you're really reconnecting with the things that bring you joy and delight. And so there's a whole host of positive outcomes that come from that. But unfortunately, as adults, we sort of start to habituate our lives, and we forget that we have that type of control until someone sort of reminds us

Joe Cadwell: 5:57

until you have that that rude awakening, like that's right, passing up your brother or something that was significant to that, that made you happy. And so the book, the fun habit sounds like, you know, from my understanding, Happiness isn't a destination, it's a journey. And along that journey, we should incorporate practices that are fun that that take time out of our day to day the things that we are can ascribe to do and and then literally make time to have fun. So what what is the definition of fun? And, you know, in layman's terms, how do we define fun?

Mike Rucker: 6:32

Yeah, in layman's terms, I just anything that you find pleasurable, right. And so, you know, the clinical definition, we call it valence, which is essentially just a spectrum of, are you enjoying yourself? Or are you not, and so not necessarily hedonic pleasure, right, like, but are you enjoying the things that you are doing in your life. And that's not to suggest that everything in your life should be joyful? Right, I mean, that, again, kind of goes back to the trap that I talked about earlier. Right. And, you know, in the literature, we call that toxic positivity, we know that, if you're trying to optimize all the time, towards pleasurable experiences, it can backfire. But so many of us don't have much of that at all in our lives. And so to be able to start organizing your time in a way, that you're deliberately incorporating that, and that doesn't necessarily mean that has to be an experience of the Self, you know, you could co create those experiences with your partner, or children or whoever it is. Because, you know, sometimes when it's first position, people are like, Yeah, but I don't want to be selfish. Well, it's not necessarily a selfish endeavor. Quite the contrary, when you are finding fun in the things that you do, and oftentimes is quite contagious, so you're actually lifting everyone up with you, right, rather than pulling them down. And so, you know, the real magic here is just how do you rediscover the things that light you up. And fortunately, the ways to do that are super, super simple, you know, once you're just kind of shoved away.

Joe Cadwell: 8:05

Sure. And it seems like as a society, Americans seem to take things in excess. And one of the things that we tend to take an excess as our, our sort of attitude towards work and that Puritan work ethic and, you know, everything else is going to suffer because of this goal that I want to achieve. And I think as children, we sort of start off being pretty happy and having lots of fun, and then it seemed, at a certain point, you're just conditioned and you get on that treadmill, and I apologize the hedonic treadmill is that is that based in the in the Latin for hedonistic,

Mike Rucker: 8:38

so, hedonic tone, again, sorry for using sort of words for psychology. But it essentially means that the concept there is that we know, through various studies that we tend to have a setpoint of where we feel happy if we're not living a deliberate life. So you know, this was first kind of discovered through studying lottery winners. And some of the science here is a little bit sticky. But it has been replicated over and over again, where you can have these big windfalls in your life, you know, whether that's money or something sort of exciting. And generally over time, if you're not deliberate about your goalposts, you know, to use kind of a football metaphor, then you will sort of revert back to where you were originally happy, or sometimes even worse, because your social norms have changed, you end up being less happy. The good news there as just a quick aside is that's also true if something really bad happens, right? Like, you know, this, this was studied and folks that had lost a limb which is awful, right? When you first experienced that, you know, you have to absorb the fact that you know, there's going to be quite significant change in your life. And generally you follow those people and as long as they're in loving, supportive relationships, they become just as happy as they were before they lost their limb. Right. So there's evidence on both sides of the of the coin, that we tend to fall back to this sort of level of happiness if we're not living life deliberately. And so what's important about that, right? What's important is that if you set the goalposts and you're like, you know, I know that this is what is going to lead to a joyful life, you can kind of move your life towards that direction, and then really enjoy and embrace the fact that you have arrived and everything derived from that place becomes more joyful, because you understand that you're you kind of have control over your domain, you recapture that agency and autonomy instead of, to your point kind of being led along by social norms, or, you know, the considerations of meritocracy. You know, that where you're like, Okay, so you know, when, when do I cross the finish line, the sort of illusion has there is no finish line. So once you understand that, then you can start to really be mindful about how you're spending your time in the moment. And that's where true joy and delight lives.

Joe Cadwell: 11:07

Sure, it sounds like it's a more holistic approach, because again, you always seem to move the goalposts, I'm going to be happy when I, you know, graduate high school, and I move away from home, and I'm going to be happy when I, I get that career that I've been after, and I'm going to be happy when I get the promotion within that career that I'm, I'm after, and I'm going to be happy when I marry that person that I've, you know, very fond of. And next thing is where I'm going to be happy when I have, you know, children, and then we're going to be happy when we have guilt grandchildren, and along the way that goalpost continues to move down the line, but you never take the time to be present in the moment and enjoy the experiences that are happening right then and there. It's kind of how I'm reading that, ya

Mike Rucker: 11:46

know, you're spot on. And the addition to that, why incorporating, you know, various aspects of things that are important to you and light you up and, you know, bring you joy is that if we don't create kind of this mosaic of life, the way the brain works is our habituated experiences. So if our life becomes really routine, we think about all of those routines is kind of a single memory. So this work is from Bronnie Ware, and it's been replicated, we know that people that kind of look back at their life, if their life has been really routine kind of just experiences is that one event and generally, you know, sort of ends their days with a lot of regret, versus people who have experienced, it doesn't necessarily need to be a variety of things, if they really love their craft, you know, a musician that spent 30 years becoming an amazing musician, because they had a love for that, you know, interest. That's not necessarily bad. So that's not what I'm saying here. But for the most part, most of us like a variety of activities. And when we do that we store all of those activities, this individual events. So when we are older and sort of are able to really benefit from the act of reminiscing, we have a whole host of, you know, a whole catalogue of really fun memories to look back at. But those need to be created, right? Unfortunately, for all of us time is a finite resource. So, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean you can't start tomorrow. But you know, being mindful of how you spend your time is important to do as soon as possible.

Joe Cadwell: 13:21

Absolutely. And again, just going back to some of the cultural differences I haven't lived in spent some time in Scandinavia, in the country of Sweden, I know that the Danish are often ranked as one of the happiest countries on the on the face of the earth that they even have a special word for it. And I'm gonna mispronounce it, but I believe it's Higgy. Are you familiar with that? Yeah, the concept of Higgin. And that, you know, it's the small things in life that, that you take pleasure in, in the moment that will truly add the flavor and the depth and the richness of a meaningful relationship with who you are and where you are at that present time and who you're with. So,

Mike Rucker: 13:56

yeah, and you open the door for something that's really important, I think, what becomes problematic when we sort of do live a life that's, you know, rooted in duty. And so, that's not necessarily a bad thing, if it's done episodically, but why you see these Nordic countries, you know, always riding on the top is one, they really value leisure rights, generally, at least six weeks out of the year. They have big maternity and paternity benefits. So you know, unfortunately, that's not something that we can replicate here in the US, but it is something to at least pay attention to. And their social bonds, you know, they live in a lot more. In a culture where engaging with other people becomes a lot more important, right? And so, what can we do to sort of replicate that a bit here in the US and especially for men, right, I met there was a really interesting article in The New York Times this past week about how hard it is for men to maintain friendships and how you have to be more deliberate and So that's where I really do advocate fun as a, as an important mechanism to connect with those friendships and mitigate loneliness. Because we do know that people that are lonely, I mean, it's not a dotted line, it's a direct line to all sorts of, you know, terrible health outcomes, cardiovascular disease, faster cognitive decline, depression and anxiety. So, you know, fun often is the glue that helps us feel connected to others. And for introverts at least connected to something other than themselves. So they're not lonely, you know, oftentimes, that's either spirituality, or it could be a connection to nature, or again, for a hobbyist, someone who really is in love with their craft. But if you don't have those things in your life, then you kind of look at the world as being empty and unfortunately, that leads to some pretty negative outcomes both psychologically and physiologically.

Joe Cadwell: 15:53

And so before we get into the some of those psychological and physiological, you know, manifestations of, of working too hard, not taking enough time to form a fun habit and introduce joy and, and leisure into your life. Yeah, it again, it seems like it's very much the social constructs are leading that way. There was a famous book of some years ago called Bowling Alone, I believe Robert Putnam wrote the book and, and how a lot of the social connectors that we used to have, whether it was church or, you know, bowling leagues, or softball leagues, or, or after school activities have all been stripped away. And now it seems as as a society, and possibly as a world, we are more siloed by the fact that we have these miniature computer screens in front of us that deliver just content to us right to our eyes, and right to our ears and, and your eye, you see it all the time, I'm guilty of it as as much as anyone else, or being in a group, but being completely alone, looking down at a screen scrolling through playing worddle Checking the news, checking my emails, and it does seem like a lot of the structures that we rely on for happiness have have sort of, you know, turned out dated. And that's unfortunate. Yeah,

Mike Rucker: 17:05

no, you're spot on, I think one of a really telling sort of visual representation of that is looking at any town square, you know, prior to the technology age where, you know, everyone was out there. And that was sort of the social network, right? You were actually engaging with folks face to face. And we know, there's a host of benefit that comes from that, you know, the main thing is, with regards to social media use, what we're really trying to do is make ourselves feel a little bit better through distraction, right. And then we're kind of either bored or, you know, again, not to geek out on scientific terms, but we're in the state of negative valence, where we just want to sort of get out of that. And these tools, to some degree have led to low level addiction, because we know that we'll get this little hit of dopamine, right? But that's not necessarily what makes us feel great. Well, you what we now know, just a quick science lesson here is that dopamine does make us feel kind of excited. So it's sort of an interesting feeling. And it does feel good. But the primary mechanism for dopamine, with regards to at least an evolutionary standpoint, was to make us be ready for some sort of excitement, right? So when dopamine really fills, you know, becomes alive is when we anticipate something, not necessarily experience something. And so it's more of this neuro chemical cocktail with an important component of oxytocin when we have pro social behavior. And so it's almost like I use the metaphor of saccharin versus sugar. Right, I met, you know, we think we're kind of enjoying ourselves going through the arts, social feed. But that's, it's really just sacrament sweet, it doesn't lead to anything fulfilling. And the best way to sort of understand that if you don't believe me, it's trying to remember what you were looking at in social media, like a week prior, right? I mean, they're, the brain is not remembering it as important. Rather now go have coffee with a good friend and try and remember the conversation like hands down, you're going to remember that and so in the book, I use this metaphor of the nothing, you know, whenever we're kind of doing that and like now this is enjoyable Is it because you know, again, try and think back because if it was important, your brain would remember it and you know, 99 times out of 100 it's not going to because it wasn't important.

Joe Cadwell: 19:31

I'll I'll draw a poor analogy. I just came back from Las Vegas where I was doing some, some training I'm not a gambler at all, but I can I just drew this this. This correlation that it's the difference between going to a casino and maybe pulling a slot machine handle on winning $1 a day for a year, or the one time you went into you want 365 bucks on one pull the handle, it's a different feeling all together. So we've identified a problem people are having struggling for whatever reason with with finding happiness and it like we said, it can manifest itself in both physical and, and psychological ways. And some of the physical manifestations, I understand this is twofold. You know, without enough happiness, you've you physically suffer. But with enough physical activity, it also helps promote better moods. So let's start there, just the psychological benefits of saying being being active.

Mike Rucker: 20:35

Yeah, so it's really interesting, you kind of need to look at it as building blocks. And I think that's one of the reasons that kind of becomes problematic, because any change in behavior is going to cause cognitive load, right? But what we know is that when we feel better over time, we end up increasing our vitality. So this work is called broaden and build theory. Like once we expand our emotions, and we sort of, you know, let's say we're kind of just constantly moving from a four to a six on a zero through 10, scale, through life, just kind of trying to get through once we're able to sort of understand that, we have the ability to actually go out and have fun, enjoy ourselves, whatever that looks like, even if it's just a reframe, right, you know, all the way up to really being mindful and deliberate about how you architect your entire week, you know, the entire 106, eight hours that you spend, whatever you do in that context, it starts to have this upward spiral effect. And one of the reasons that is is that we've learned over the last 10 years, the way our brain works isn't necessarily cause and effect, like we originally thought, it's really a predictive machine, right. And so once we start to understand that we have more control over our domain than we originally thought, then that allows us to predict that like, hey, you know, the world is actually okay. And if it's not, I have control to change it, or at least more control than I thought, obviously, there going to be bad things that happen, you know, my brother's death is a perfect example that we have no control over. But we have a lot more control than we think. And so, you know, sometimes this is, you know, talked about in the terms of a fixed mindset or a growth mindset, we can kind of just think things happen to us. Or we can think that, yes, things do happen to us. But we can kind of control the way we respond to those, which will have an uplifting effect on both our physiological well being, which we've already discussed, and obviously our psychological well being as well.

Joe Cadwell: 22:41

Right? Good, good stuff there. So let's talk about what we can do making fun a habit you have an acronym called Play. So what does play stands for?

Mike Rucker: 22:51

So play is an acronym that stands for pleasing, living, agonizing, and yielding. And to just kind of give a quick summary of that, it's just four different ways to look at how you're spending your time. And so in the context of the play, model, pleasing, are things that we can do any day, you know, playing with our animals, reading a good book, you know, fun is as unique as the individual. So you'd kind of decide what's a pleasing activity for you. But the main construct there is that you can generally do it whenever you want. You know, it's easy enough to execute that you can do it whenever.

Joe Cadwell: 23:26

But there is some intention to it. It's not a passive just sitting down on the couch watching TV flipping channels and type of interaction. exactly it.

Mike Rucker: 23:34

Yeah. And I'm not necessarily here to villainize media, I think it still could be, you know, if you loved watching, Breaking Bad with your partner, and you guys were actively engaging in it and talking about the topic or, you know, maybe you're in a partnership where you don't talk during the show, but you unpack it afterwards. For me, I would say that show was lost, you know, I don't really watch TV much more. But I watched that with a group of friends. And I wouldn't say that was a passive activity, because we love you know, the philosophical components of it. But if you're plopping down on the couch after a hard day, and just channel surfing, and then I was to ask you seven days later, like, hey, what were you watching on television? Again, I feel like that's a good test of, to your point, a fairly passive activity that's not contributing to your well being. So yeah, you're exactly right. It's something to easy, easily execute and not something we do passively, or kind of mindlessly Pat, you know, habitually. The Living quadrant are things that really light us up. So they take some energy to do but they are sort of important to make sure you're indexing somewhat throughout the year so that can be mastering a new skill for some folks that can be you know, vigorous exercise that leads to, you know, some sort of outcome that's important to them. For some it could be a spiritual practice, you know, a true spiritual practice. But whatever it is, it really lights you up potentially lead you to moments of awe and wonder. But isn't something that you can necessarily do all the time. agonizing are things that we have to do, you know, that don't take a lot of work and don't bring much pleasure. And so why they're important to identify as certainly, again, we're not suggesting that you can completely architect those out of your life. But oftentimes, once people identify those activities, there are easy ways to either improve them, or to potentially outsource them in creative ways. And so in the book, you know, it's not necessarily, you know, something that requires money, there are a lot of creative ways to sort of, you know, figure out a different way to approach those activities that we just hate to do and drain us.

Joe Cadwell: 25:46

And I think in the I can't remember Mike was it in the book or a podcast where I might have heard you on where you talked about the the act of bathing your children was one of those agonizing experiences, not just for you and your your wife, but for the kids as well. And you found a creative solution to outsource that, and kind of run an end game around it so that you could enjoy more. So how did you work? How did you do that?

Mike Rucker: 26:09

Yeah, I do bring that example up quite a bit, because I think it's one of those ones where people get sort of the, you know, one of the crux stuff of what can hold us up, right. And so the story goes, my wife and I, over time, just hated bathing our kids, for whatever reason, they didn't enjoy the experience, we kept trying to, you know, recreate it, and it never worked for us. And it got so bad to the point that we kind of waited to the end of the night and sort of eyeball each other to see who would be the martyr, you know, and I think they playfully sort of realized that become destructive, and, you know, poked at us even more. Yeah, so it had just become a disaster. And we weren't in a financial position where we could afford a nanny, but some of our friends did. And so we would lament like, oh, you know, like, they don't even have to deal with this. And so long story short, we're like, you know, why don't we just get a babysitter to do it. And at first, that sounded really unusual, right? Because what an intimate act to just bring in someone for a couple hours. But at the end of the day, that's not really any different than the nanny doing it. Right? And so we kind of got over that hump, like, Yeah, it sounds kind of weird saying it out loud. But how is it any different, and this is what we can afford, we can afford a caregiver for two to three hours a week, and we hired this amazing person, her name's Caitlin. And she turned it into a complete game, these kids had so much fun with her, you know, we generally had her for an extra hour. And what we did is we replaced this agonizing activity for my wife and I, and we ended up going out and having dinner those three nights a week that Caitlin would come in to bathe them. And so here's this huge win, right for people that really weren't enjoying their time together. and turned it into two kids that just had so much fun with Caitlin and me and my wife being able to connect in a way we hadn't for quite some time. And then the after effect wasn't just that, you know, we all had more fun in that instance, my wife and I came back, and we were better versions of ourselves. And then we also learned from Caitlin right, so now that the experience had kind of been defamed, we were able to have more fun with our kids, because we picked up on some of, you know, her skill set to make it more enjoyable, and the whole thing just became an upward spiral. So the reason I liked that story is, it's a great anecdote of how you know, something that was just bringing us all out, has now become this really additive experience, and really didn't cost us all that much money. But I do want to circle back to, you know, what you brought up prior. And that is yielding, which is are the things that if you're not mindful of really are just soul sucking, right. And oftentimes, when people do these time audits, they are so surprised about how much time they are actually spending on their phone. So much. So now that it's much easier for us to do that, right? Because Android devices and iPhones have a wellness check, where you can go in there and see how much time you've been on Instagram and Facebook. And if it's over two or three hours, I would suggest to you you figure out where those hours lie and figure out something a little bit more fun for you to do. And anybody that kind of engages in this self experimentation. Almost always, it's like, How did I not do this sooner? Because I'm at what a great piece of low hanging fruit to sort of change something that's not really that fun and you know, time that you can spend on something that does really light you up.

Joe Cadwell: 29:47

So yield and when you say two to three hours, I assume you mean two to three hours of social media scrolling.

Mike Rucker: 29:54

Clear. Yep, that's right.

Joe Cadwell: 29:55

I'm sure for some people listening it may even be two to three hours a day, which seems like a whole time suck so

Mike Rucker: 30:02

well, and it's quite spectacular when you look at those few studies about, you know, if I'm if they're true kids are now spending five hours a day on screen, which is, you know, something we need to course correct. There's a lot of dialogue around that. But it only seems to be getting worse. You know, especially with the advent of TiC tock, which is even more addictive than Instagram and Facebook. So these are, you know, these are things that not only adults should think about, but also understand how they're impacting their children, for sure.

Joe Cadwell: 30:34

So yielding and then, you know, some some tangibles that we can kind of utilize, you're talking about a metric, I think that says, How many hours a day or how many minutes a day, should you out of the 164 that are allotted to us 164 hours a week that are allotted to us, how much should we devote towards our fun habit.

Mike Rucker: 30:53

So this research comes out of UCLA, the professor's name is Cassie Holmes, she calls it the Goldilocks spot. But when you look at and this is a generalization, so I always hate giving like blanket prescriptions, but I think it's a good framework, that for most people, they should be able to commandeer at least two to five hours out of their day. And so to me, that sounds like a lot. Again, this is sort of, you know, based on a lot of data, but I would suggest, okay, so we'll accept that as a Goldilocks spot, but why not just try to commandeer one or two hours out of your week, knowing that two to five is possible, and just sort of play with that and see how it feels. And the bumper rails that I'll put on that, though, is that change at the beginning is sort of difficult, right? And so I would suggest whatever you do in that regard, when you're switching out activities, is at least give it two to three weeks, because by that time, once you sort of feel comfortable with the new activity, you will start to, you know, understand that it really is contributing to vitality. But so one of the things that I you know, I find fascinating, but it's a true phenomenon is a lot of adults don't think they can do things on quote unquote, school nights, right, like so, you know, a couple might have really enjoyed dancing together, but for whatever reason that sort of been engineered out of their life. And I'll suggest, well, you know, why don't you pick that up on like, a random Tuesday? Oh, well, you know, can't do things on Tuesdays, because we're too busy. You know, it's just as common kind of social norm. And what they don't realize is, obviously, you can do that. And once you know, someone does engage in whatever it is, you know, dancing is just the hypothetical, but whatever that that thing is for you. One, you benefit from connecting with others right around the like minded activity, but to just getting active again, ends up being invigorating, rather than what you thought it would be, which is, you know, sort of just the hassle to do. But the first one or two weeks for a lot of people, it still feels like a hassle until they habituate, you know that routine, because again, for whatever reason, we feel really comfortable with you. But you know, when we habituate our behavior, because it does make things a little bit easier, right? So you know, the amount of energy to kind of you try something new for a lot of folks, you know, that's the hump they need to get over.

Joe Cadwell: 33:20

And that making it a habit is does take time, and like you say, habituation, and I think just going back to what we talked about earlier that Puritan work ethic. Well, if I'm having fun, you know, I'm not doing my part, I'm not working hard enough. I'm not, you know, putting my part in and, and there must be something wrong. I feel, you know, I think we often times sort of demonize fun as being lazy, oh, you're just you're having fun, you know, and it's become the social currency that we use now that we trade, hey, how you doing? I'm busy as hell, you know, I'm always so busy. And it's in and it's unfortunate. And I work with some people like this, that, you know, they, they hopefully are enjoying that ride. It's great to be busy. It's great, in my case, to be improving people's lives through education and through mentorship, but not at the expense of your own health and well being you're not going to be very effective at your job, if you yourself are are not happy and at ease with your position.

Mike Rucker: 34:14

Yeah, the way that I often frame it is I met remember, it was only 10 years ago where that same phenomenon happened with sleep, like, oh, man, I only got four hours sleep last night, you know, like up work and late, you know, and we did you know, there was a lot of sort of internal pride, you know, to the grind, and now, sleep hygiene. It's been so explored that I think, you know, even the most machismo person is identified that if they don't get sleep, they're going to fall down quickly and not be them. Their best selves. We're quickly finding that out. You know, I label it as fun but just leisure in general, making sure that there is a transition ritual between your work and your ability to recapture Time has almost as meaningful impact as you know, sleep deprivation. So I think, you know, my hope is that in the next few years, we'd look at Fun deprivation, the same way we look at sleep deprivation, because again, remember, it wasn't long ago where the sleep deprived were celebrated. And so, to your point, you know, there are still people that, that aren't living a joyful life that were that is a badge of honor, and don't understand that that's, you know, it's really wearing away at their vitality. And, and the paradox here is, we now know from a host of different studies, that that people that live a joyful life, or willing or have the ability to produce more and most facets of life. So if you're looking at your life with regards to contribution, whether you're working for a nonprofit, or you know, you're working in trade, you're likely to get more work done, if you are, you know, making sure that you guard your time for renewal in a way that allows you to be your best self. And we're discovering that quickly. So.

Joe Cadwell: 36:03

So people who find your book, what do you hope they're going to take away from reading? The the fun habit?

Mike Rucker: 36:09

Yeah, I really just want to have people live a more fun and joyful life for all the reasons that we discussed over the last hour. So none of these tools are earth shattering, right, they're really just reminders that in our adult life, we do need to take a little bit off the table for ourselves. And that that's not a selfish act, that when we do that, we're able to give ourselves more to others, and also to have better impact on the world at large. And so the fact that, you know, we have these huge rates of burnout, loneliness, and to some degree, you know, especially with children, boredom, can really, you know, if we reorganize our time, we can solve all of that. For me, since my audience is adults, it really is burnout, and the fact that so many of us are burnt out, but we don't understand why if I could reverse that through just, you know, a book of simple tools and have an impact in that way. I would be really happy to answer your question, quite frankly.

Joe Cadwell: 37:09

All right. Well, thank you so much, Mike. Hey, this has been a fantastic conversation. Where can people go to find out more about you and your work?

Mike Rucker: 37:16

Yeah. So the books available for preorder now, I'd be grateful for anyone that pre ordered it. And my work is available at my website, Michael record.com. And I play a little bit on social media on Instagram, under the wonder of fun.

Joe Cadwell: 37:30

All right. Well, I'll make sure to add that to the show notes. And if I'm not mistaken, your book comes out in the beginning of January of 2023. Isn't that correct? January 3. Yep. All right. Absolutely. Well, hey, thank you again, Mike, for taking your time to be on the show today. It's been a real pleasure.

Mike Rucker: 37:43

Oh, my goodness, it's been a lot of fun. Thanks so much for having me.

Joe Cadwell: 37:45

I guess day has been Dr. Mike Rucker, author of the fun habit. To learn more about Mike and his work. Check out the show notes for this episode, or visit the grit nation website at www grit nation podcast.com. Till next time, this is Joe Cadwell. Thank you for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday. So speaking of finding the light, fixing unhappy before we began recording, we had a conversation you said you had visited my fair city of Portland, Oregon, back during the summer, and you found joy, I found out it wasn't in your book by being part of the largest dinosaur gathering in the summer of 2022. For those listening to us in the future. So what can you tell us about that bike? And how did that bring you joy and what brought you to into that? That large group of inflatable dinosaurs?

Mike Rucker: 38:34

So I think one of the things that I did back in 2007, that kind of was a prelude to the fun habit was committed to doing something extraordinary every three months. And so it's just something that I do I try to find something that's, you know, really interesting and fascinating. You know, whether that's developing a new skill or going to a new place or being invited to break a world record, and making sure that I, you know, again, in the spirit of the living quadrant, do something spectacular like that, just that I have, you know, a host of really interesting memories to fall back on. That just happened to be the anniversary of Brian's death too. So it was even more meaningful because I know if he would have been there with me if if he could so you know, I kind of held his spirit with me while I was dressed up in a plastic T Rex costume.