 Well, Johnny and I are quite jealous of you, Mike. It sounds like you have such a fun job. And we wonder, how did you get started in the science of fun? What drew you to study fun? Yeah, so unfortunately, it's not the best story. I had been studying positive psychology since that discipline emerged right after the millennium. For folks that don't know what positive psychology is, it's essentially a facet of psychology looking at psychological tools for betterment rather than using the tools of psychology to create clinical deficits, things like depression and anxiety. And so I had been swimming in all of that for quite some time from about 2005 to 2016. And in the rearview mirror now, I can say I sort of over-optimized my life for happiness. But in that year, I had some unfortunate things happen, my younger brother unexpectedly passed away. And then also, after being a long time endurance athlete, I lost the use of my hip and needed to get a hip replacement at a fairly young age. And so long story short, all these tools have been so successful that I was like, I can will myself out of this despair. I'll just use positivity and make myself happy again. And paradoxically, the more I was trying to do that sort of bulldog happiness, I was getting close to some of those clinical outcomes. Like paradoxically, I was making myself a lot less happy. And I guess, serendipitously, around that time, some emerging research was coming out. The professor I like a lot, her name's Dr. Aris Mouse, but her work's been replicated. It's this Western ideal of happiness. So not necessarily valuing happiness or wanting to be happy, but overly concerned with your own happiness actually makes you ruminate on the fact that you're not happy. And just like cognitive behavioral therapy, it works in reverse and it can lead to some really interesting consequences. And that's certainly where I was heading. OK, so that's great. Like, essentially, someone told me all the tools that you've used successfully last decade are now harmful. So if that's the case, what could I do? And that put me on that quest. And so I fell back on my research as an academic on this idea of autonomy. The underpinning comes from the science of self-determination theory. But what we know in work is the folks that are the most happy at work are the ones that have a lot of autonomy on how they can do their work. And I was like, OK, why aren't we talking about these principles in our lives too, especially since so many of us through productivity, culture, and things have been so overprescribed? Like, what happens if I reclaim some independence, autonomy, and agency over my time? And that's what I did. I was like, I might be sad because that's an appropriate response to losing a loved one. But I can still go out and enjoy myself. And then this magical thing happened. Once I started doing that, I was like, wait, I have a lot more control over how I feel in the moment than I thought. So it was almost like a way of backing into mindfulness. Yeah. I think for us, and especially the clients we work with, a ton of analytical men in our coaching programs who really struggle to find fun in their lives. And I think Western culture sort of pushes us away from fun as we become adults. So can you just unpack a little bit of your personal journey into fun? Because coming out of loss and certainly that hip situation and not being able to run and do the things you love seems pretty hard to find fun in those moments. Yeah, I think because you don't need to necessarily identify with an emotional response. I think most of us want to displace discomfort. But what we've found is that a lot of times we just do that in the most pedestrian way. Certainly social media use has gotten so villainized it doesn't need a lot of disposition. We know that if we're just sitting there on the couch, it's easy to pick up our smartphone. But that's not necessarily the best use of time. It could be relationships that convenience. You're just kind of doing something because you habituated that behavior. And a work site, and it could be that stupid media that you hate on Tuesday that has absolutely no impact whatsoever. You still go because you're like, well, it's on my calendar. And so understanding that those things aren't going to necessarily feel comfortable or, again, to answer your question specifically, folks going through divorce or career change or a move where they're having to create new friends, it's OK to have an emotional state that doesn't necessarily fit within that category of happy. But you can still go out and do stuff that's enjoyable. And oftentimes that just takes the extra step of going, you know what, I remember I love being out in nature. Like, let me just figure out in this moment where that's accessible to me rather than sitting and sort of ruminating on the fact that my life is shitty. I think what's interesting is Johnny and I are also in the business of fun. And many of our clients don't realize it. So they come to us for social anxiety. I realize that I'm on you guys for all that stuff. Thank you. And the first place to start, whenever we're talking about building relationships or just shaking the box or breaking out of the monotony that you just talked about, the Tuesday meetings, the social media scrolling, the Netflix binges, the staying inside on the weekends and playing video games, is it starts with putting yourself in a place of fun and enjoyment and then building opportunities for relationships around that. And that's one of the core tenets of what we teach all of our clients. And it's so interesting to see just the change and disposition after a few sessions with us when they're really now almost childlike again, able to tap into their desires when they were kids, realizing they shouldn't have put that off in adulthood. It shouldn't have been set aside to chase their career, check boxes, get the house, get the car. And the longer we push it to the side, as you said, the more likely we're going to end up in these clinical situations of depression, anxiety, and feeling like we're completely lost, rudderless and don't have meaning in our lives. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And the thing that is the most challenging is it's insidious, right? It happens over time, so you don't realize it. And so this could be something that's been brewing for years and years, and then it catches up with you. One of the biggest insights where I was like, oh my goodness, I'm onto something. And it was a few years later after kind of really playing with this construct of autonomy, is something in science, and not to geek out on the science, but called the hedonic flexibility principle, and what these researchers found, and these are hardcore researchers, right, MIT, Harvard, and Stanford, is that the folks that are really burnt out, right? So they're grinding it out, and so they're living that periods in work ethic. They think they're giving it all away, and so they kind of feel good because we've overvalued productivity. They're not showing up as the best versions of themselves, right? So we call this in science passive leisure, and it's already what we've described. That's not fulfilling. That doesn't lead to betterment. That doesn't recharge our batteries. And so you go to the next day and essentially just get on this hamster wheel. But the people that are having fun, how you're coaching people and what you just described, and are taking a little bit of time off the table for themselves, all of a sudden you're starting to enjoy life. So you show up the next day, and you don't seek out more pleasure. You're actually ready and willing to do the hard stuff because life is worth living. It's a blessing and a curse. It's such a subtle nudge, right? I'm sure you guys see it in your work all the time. It's like, eh, I don't, okay, I'll try this. And then all of a sudden, you go from a downward spiral to an upward spiral, and it becomes, it takes four to six weeks. It becomes a pretty easy sell after that because they're like, oh, shit, I'm doing more and I'm having fun, like why did it take so long? That's certainly a realization that our clients here in their improv implementation session. So it's one of the most popular attended implementation sessions in our X Factor Accelerator. And it's scary if you've never done improv and you're not really sure of what to say in the moment, but you have to turn off that analytical logical side that leads to the burnout that we're discussing, that leads to you feeling always on anxious, thinking about the next deadline, thinking about what's on your calendar, and you really have to put yourself in the moment and go with the conversational flow of the other participants and add yes and it is a core principle of improv. And what's interesting is after the first 15 minutes of someone's first session, they start to pick up the cadence of what's going on and they start to feel, okay, now I understand the flow. And then they're coming back every single month to that implementation session just because they need that outlet in their life for fun because so much of the structure in our life around our career and around the goals that we set for ourselves, we don't leave any room for fun. Absolutely. And I think too, it's just hard to change behavior, right? That was another thing, potentially I wasn't as considerate of because I have a slant towards novelty, but for so many of us, if we've done the same thing for so long, that's why people stay in horrible relationships, right? It's like, well, the discomfort of actually changing my routine becomes quite the hump to get over. And so it's like, how do you get that taste and then get that taste a couple of times so you're like, okay, this isn't new and I don't have the cognitive load of having to kind of make meaning from it. It's just, wow, I liked this a lot better than what I was doing three weeks ago. Well, certainly some people are not gonna have the ability to create those options in their lives. However, due to COVID and all of the changing around that we had to do in order to be productive to make things work, we saw that for a lot of people that we actually do have a lot of options. And I think at this point, it would be a good place to go into SAVER and understand those things that are in your control that you can tweak to find where you're gonna be the most productive, the most happy, and having the most fun with your work where it doesn't have to be the same old thing every day of jumping into the hamster wheel and grinding it out. You're exactly right. I think one of the benefits of the pandemic, if there were any, right? Cause there's certainly a lot of horrible things to come out of it. But is that we did realize the rhythms of our life were a little bit more malleable than we thought, right? Like, I mean, even if, you know, just thinking about something as simple as, oh, you know, work from home will never succeed, right? And then all of a sudden the entire globe made it succeed. So I think we realized that we can challenge social norms. So that's more of a macro thing to think about. But it's, I think most people took away that wisdom, like, wow, I can challenge a lot more about life's rhythms than I initially thought. People also became intimately familiar with what worked for them and what didn't, right? And so the ability to start to play with the things that you wanna do and what you don't wanna do and the fact that you can architect your schedules a little bit more, you know, that opens up this arena for making big changes, right? You asked about Saver specifically, it's an acronym for five different tools, the first is story editing. Well, Mike, before we get there, I just also wanna point out that depending on our view of how we were going to go through COVID also dictated what we got out of it. So AJ and I were big proponents when everything was going on that no matter what, we were going to come out of it better than we were going in. And we were gonna use this time for reflection and to learn about ourselves and our company and to now that everything was going to be just frozen for a time being of what is it that we actually wanna do? At that point, our company had been going on for quite some time and we were so busy with them that we didn't have an opportunity to change any ideas or to look at the models that we had been running and to ask ourselves if that's what we wanted to do, moving forward. So for us, it was, we're gonna use this time to reflect and to grow and to be better coming out of it. But I've also, I watched a lot of people whose idea of dealing with it was, well, I'm gonna get a case of beer, I'm gonna see what's on Netflix and I'm just gonna ride this out on the couch. And I'm like, I don't know if you understand that this is going to be a longer haul than the marathon sprint that you're just gonna hang out and watch Netflix for a few weeks and this is gonna be over. And of course, that mindset dictated everyone's experience through that. And yes, it was incredibly horrible. I hope that we never have to have to go through that again. But the enlightenment that AJ and I had gotten out of it and a lot of people that we've interviewed whose books we had interviewed these authors who had that time to write. And you mentioned in this book that yes, you are writing about fun and not such a very fun time. Yeah, I think, I try to show a little grace there. I certainly saw the same phenomenon and I think it's your predisposition to fight or flight. So the person that you described that went inward and was like, I just need to feel psychological safety and even if that's maladaptive in the form of unhealthy escapism, drinking beer and watching Netflix, that was such a crisis. I'm not going to criticize someone at least episodically taking that route. Now you do that for two years. You know my whole point of call, rehab. Because you certainly saw it on the other way, right? Like you saw people that had such a predisposition to fight that they were working till three in the morning for companies that were essentially closed because that was their predisposition. And I show them grace too, right? Like obviously that's not a long-term solution but that was the response because when they're in crisis they fight, right? So I think you're spot on. I think, you know, the folks that are able to coach others and it sounds like you guys did a good job is like this is fertile ground because there's a lot of space to recreate what is important to you. And also be mindful in the rear view mirror like, wow, I'm so glad I'm not doing that right now. And when the lights get turned back on I don't wanna be doing that again either. And so people that did become mindful of their time and luckily I think it was a significant proportion of people are now able to make better choices, right? It's certainly not everyone because you're seeing a lot of folks just glad that it's over and going back into the old grooves of their life which, you know, to some degree is unfortunate but it's comfortable, right? And so, no, you're spot on. And I think, you know, I applaud people that did take that opportunity. And I think there are a lot of folks like yourselves that were like, let me come out of this better because as much as it is horrible it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to do so. Yeah, just quickly to go through Saver. So the S stands for story editing and it's essentially, you know, what we just described like looking at the science, you know things like the hedonic flexibility principle and realizing that the fact that you're not having fun at all it likely means that you're less productive. And so changing that kind of Puritan social norm, you know that you have to grind it out till the end of the day is maladaptive and likely why you're, you know if you're feeling burnt out it's a good, you know, place to start. Well, at one point there, Mike with hedonic flexibility that's we have a lot of words going on there and I wanna make sure that our audience understands that because they have been taught that hedonism is bad, right? And to stay away from the hedonic treadmill. So I wanna explain what that hedonic flexibility was at meter, what that was. Yeah, so thanks for that because a hedonic tone simply means in psychology something that we enjoy doing, right? In fact, it's got such a bad connotation that we now call it valence. I was just on my mentors podcast, Michael Gervais and he kind of took me to task on this because yeah, I get that that for some people it's not triggering per se, right? If they're like, wait, I was told not to chase pleasure all the time. Floyd here. Yeah, that's right. That's not what I'm prescribing. I certainly think that there are some ill effects of that but so hedonic tone and the reason we use, you know hedonic is simply, you know a way to say that we're enjoying things. And so again to, you know circle back to the science of this what we know and this comes from a large study of 28,000 people. So this isn't like, you know a lot of times big idea authors will, you know cite a study that has 30 participants like, okay you might be over applying this, right? But I mean, this is a rich data set and it suggests that when we are burnt out yes, we look for untethered escapism that could potentially be harmful exactly what we've been talking about on the podcast but people that are enjoying life so the clients that you talked about the folks that are finding ways to take a little bit of time off the table to recharge their batteries to understand that life is worth living. They show up and have the capacity that the vigor and vitality to do the harder stuff and want to do that stuff, you know start because their quote unquote fun cup is full they start to look for betterment they want to accept new challenges because they have the energy to do so. And so how we've gotten so far off track in the US I don't know but it's clear that slowly but surely we're coming to that understanding you're seeing countries in the EU get wise to this I mean, we're already second to last with regards to just something as simple as getting leisure for employees, right? I meant 10 days per year's worth of work puts us at the very bottom with the exception of Micronesia that has nine days off, right? But what's even more fascinating is even though we're second to last only 50% of folks are using their PTO so we're not even engaging in leisure let alone fun, right? And so you're seeing countries in the EU literally shutting down email servers on Friday so you're creating that social norm not to send work emails on the weekend because that should be preserved for family, friends and actually enjoying yourself because then you can really do legitimate productivity starting Monday, right? Why we're not there, I don't get it but again, the science is clear and the reason story editing becomes important is so that exactly what you guys are teaching like when you do this you're actually gonna be a much better entrepreneur a much better father and friend to the folks that you care about, et cetera, et cetera and so it's just weird we're so in need of a corrective I often like to look at it as remember in the 90s when all of us would wear sleep deprivation as a badge of honor like literally we would celebrate like bro, I only got 20 hours of sleep this week like I'm crushing it and then after two decades of rich literature to suggest that it's the most asinine statement ever and all of those folks fell in their face you're even seeing the Gary Vaynerchuk's of the world who I respect but he's completely walked out back, right? He even has a cheap happiness officer in Gary Media because he knows that he was steering people wrong I think still on my blog because I didn't wanna live a curated life I still have a post where I was celebrating where he's like, you wanna crush it stop watching lost and make sure that you work after you put your kids to bed like, that's how silly we were and now we're seeing the same things with leisure, right? Like, oh man, I'm answering emails till my head hits the pillow like, okay, well, is that busy or is that productive? Well, another point to this that I think is really important is understanding that there are these work cultures that are forcing us into these boxes too so even though work will say, hey, you have two weeks of vacation time if everyone at work is not taking the two weeks and you're the only one taking the two weeks it's very hard for you to put up these boundaries to create the opportunity for fun that we're talking about here and Johnny and I are very fortunate running our own company fortunate in the viewpoint that we took in to COVID I know a lot of people feel like their backs are up against the wall and especially with all the layoffs going on the downsizing in tech that, hey, the more time I carve out for leisure the more likely I'm to be let go and then I won't be able to make ends meet so it is a challenge and it's culturally something that is slowly shifting but a lot of companies are starting to go the Twitter out and saying, get back in the office we need you working harder than ever and there's no way we're giving you Fridays remote there's no way we're giving you Saturdays off and turning off the email servers. Yeah, but I would look at tech as an outlier so let me back up before I continue down that path and I do understand just like anything that's kind of life hacky that there's a certain degree of privilege if you're way down on Maslow's triangle and you need to work to feed your family then fun shouldn't be on the top of your priority list and I try to make a pretty good stance on that in the book what I am suggesting is people that do want to be the best versions of themselves even if they are guided by a sense of duty so whether that's taking care of their kids and their aging parents or they're an entrepreneur or they really like the company that they work for and they wanna serve them well by not taking any time off the table they ultimately aren't able to do the work that they do want and that's been proven again and again sometimes I'll use this simple math equation of someone that's working 60 hours a week and we're looking at units of productivity as like one unit, right? So they work 60 hours to get 60 units of productivity where again, and this isn't just conjecture this is backed by science someone that's able to kind of shut off and have that transition ritual from work could produce two units of productivity in a 40 hour week. So here's this person grinding themselves to a nub not enjoying life probably on route to a some sort of clinical condition and only producing paradoxically 60 units of work to the person that's working 40 hours a week that's producing two units of work because they're recharging their batteries and also enjoying life, right? Like is doing way better? And so it's just that subtle shift and it's really weird you bring that up of the social norm. One, I wouldn't use Elon as the best example because it's clear people are just they're not necessarily even getting laid off a lot of people are leaving that environment so toxic that we'll see if it has any sort of longevity. I would use 37 signals as a better example of a company that really protects their employee's wellbeing but like in life, you can have all the confirmation by a session, I'm sure we could go example for example, right? But what I would suggest is that it's really weird you see any other country even countries in the Americas where employees have empathy for each other like I'm gonna protect you when you go off on your family vacation don't worry I got your back and then when you come back I know you got mine but here in the US we're like I can't shut off my smartphone while I'm in Tulum because I might let down my employee because they need me to punch one row of numbers in a spreadsheet like it just doesn't make any sense. Well, my wife took a sabbatical and I joined her worked a little bit over it while she was on sabbatical in Europe and it was so funny everywhere we went the people that were on their computers working or on their smartphones at dinner or at the beach clubs were American we're checking their Slack, we're on vacation we're trying to unplug and couldn't do it and it was funny watching the Europeans sort of shake their head and disbelief as why is this person taking the work call in this nice restaurant? Why are they doing a Zoom call at the beach? But it is a very American view that we can't unplug and if we do unplug someone is going to take that spot from us someone is going to move ahead of us and the work here is much more competitive than it is collaborative and community focused when you look at culturally speaking France. The flip side is, well, the opportunities here for us to get ahead financially are a lot easier than a European system. So there is this dichotomy that I think many of us struggle with and I was really appreciative in the book that you talked about taking a sabbatical and understanding that it is okay to take time for yourself, maybe it's between jobs maybe your work gives you that opportunity and using it as a place to tap into that fun and build that fun habit for yourself so you do come back recharge and I've seen my wife now come back to work supercharged like she's excited, she's very productive and leaning in and work and feeling great about the work that she's doing because she created that space whereas before we went on sabbatical she was burned out, there was some health issues there was frustrations, stress and anxiety were at an all time high and even leading up to us leaving lots of worries about what's gonna happen when I get back, are I gonna be able to find a job are people gonna wanna work with me and what am I gonna say in this gap on my resume which are very real concerns and they should be but I think I make a case using other people's data that I wouldn't necessarily say they're unfounded because there are risks that you do need to take in consideration but most people that have done it mindfully come back not regretting it with very few consequences, right? And I certainly think now in modern work where for the most part we're self-reliant with regards to our own retirement some of those financial risks that would have gated our parents from doing this just aren't there anymore as long as you're confident that you can find another job you just pick up your 401k again and so again, let me preface that comes from a place of privilege but I'm talking about this middle class where we're essentially now giving a lot away, right? And so I generally don't get this political because I'm not as wise to make these arguments. I've read Dr. Fiffer's book, we're dying for a paycheck out of Stanford he makes a much better case than I could but it's clear that we've overprescribed on the Simon Sinek TED talks of know your why, right? And we're not asking what are we giving away? We're working, working, working most of us have enough in the middle class to have a lifestyle that would be meaningful if we didn't move the goalpost and I talk about that in the book as well. And yet, this carrot is dangled in front of our face to just work harder and harder and we don't understand what we're giving up. Social media creates the one-two punch because comparison has never been higher. In the past, you grew up in a neighborhood you had a job and everyone made about the same the CEO, the company didn't make 5,000 times more than the person punching in nine to five and what happened was you really only saw your neighbors and what they had and you're really only comparing yourself around the neighborhood. But now you pick up a device and you can compare yourself with any socioeconomic class anywhere in the world at any given moment and there's this persistent feeling that we hear from all of our clients that they're falling behind that leisure time puts them further behind that they're not gonna reach their goals and it's feeling harder and harder to get up the ladder in the corporate world to get up the ladder financially to live in their mind what is the American dream? What is the middle class that their parents were able to achieve? Buying the house, having multiple kids, driving the cars that they wanna drive and going on the trips and all of that has started to feel less and less attainable and certainly if we're choosing leisure over work and we hear it time and time again and then all of a sudden our clients see a little bit of a shift of well, wait a second as we're talking about here can I bring fun into my work? Can I bring fun into the weekend? Do I have to carve out all of my life for work or are there opportunities for me to story at it to look at the story that I'm telling myself around work and look at the story that I'm, narrative that I'm building for myself of what success is that success is X number of dollars in the bank account success is this set of car keys hanging on the wall success is living in that loft department downtown maybe success for me is having more time to enjoy playing guitar having more time to ski during winter and we've had clients coming through the program go you know what I'm gonna just ski for three months I'm unplugging from work I'm telling work I'm taking a sabbatical and if they don't want me back well I'll find a job when I get back from Utah I'll see you guys in three months and they come back wide-eyed grinning so full of life ready to start their own company started a new business go back to their original company so the story editing piece this is a story that's pervasive culturally that we have to break free from and we have to realize we have the control to rewrite our own story for ourselves what that meaningful happiness is in our own lives I agree with you all hardly and then you couple with that you know with regards to kind of looking at the history of this for the first time at least in our lifetime we have these devices that essentially create this curiosity of things that aren't necessarily important to us we know if our kids are kind of buying for our time we know what's next but if that slack ping happens or that email like what's behind door two door number two is never important like one out of a hundred times it's gonna be important and if it is important and you don't get to it you're gonna get a text anyway but yet once we hear that I mean my buddy near I al has a good sort of way of testing this like just put your phone there and then feel the visceral response when you see that little LED light ping up that there might be something they're waiting for you can feel it right and so one of the like first things that I suggest is creating a transition ritual it's okay to be off of work for certain hours of your day and then you decide what you want to do with that you know I talk about it in the book about fun at work some people even find it fun to be at their desk and work through work as long as that's their decision you know because again it's flexing your autonomy right so it doesn't if productivity is a value of yours then great like Noah Kagan from Aksumo challenged me on this a bit he's like in my 20s grinding it out with my friends because we were drinking beers and we were doing fun stuff along with these you know cotathons was fun and so I backed up a little bit you know I'm not gonna argue that that in that time period when he had that vitality and that's really what he enjoyed it wasn't a poor use of time you know these were all over LinkedIn over the last four weeks like since last time this survey was done the social wellness survey I think it was just a few years ago 39% of Americans classified themselves as very happy we're now down to 19% the APA so the American Psychological Association just did a survey about personal well-being and found that one in four workers are so burnt out they don't even know what to do when they get home they have like nothing left in the tank and so I mean we have the data right in front of our face that were you know at this immense crisis and again I hope we're kind of opening our eyes to fun and leisure in the same way we did with sleep you know two decades ago and with that point and what Noah was making relationships are also being sacrificed we talked about we touched on this a little bit earlier but our relationship with our co-workers is as fraught as it's ever been we don't feel connected to our co-workers we're not spending time at the water cooler getting to know each other we're not investing at all in their lives we're so self-focused and self-motivated to reach our own goals that heck yeah Johnny and I have done hackathons at AOC we worked all hours of the night but we were doing it with a bunch of friends like when we started AOC there was a bunch of friends coming together saying hey let's build this thing that relationship created the space for fun even though we were doing work but if you view your co-workers as adversarial or competitors that are vying for getting ahead of you or taking advantage of you or one-upping you which a lot of our clients come to us with how do I deal with these relationships with our co-workers then it becomes something that is not fun all fun is stripped away from work and it becomes a monotonous task that you just got to grind to get ahead and that's why I think it's so interesting as we start to move into A as we go through SAVER that there are things under our control it may feel right now if you're listening to this that everything we're talking about up until this point hasn't related to you or maybe you're in a different position but there are still things that you can find that are within your control that you can start to change turn the dial on to create the space for the fun that all the science you shared earlier backs up creates the productivity, creates reaching your goals creates those moments of happiness and joy in our life that power us forward towards the meaningful life that we're all searching for on this planet Yeah, so I'll get into the other four so activity bundling is a really accessible tool you know some of it's been made popular by James Clear's book, Atomic Habits but it's essentially looking at the things that we do in our life and trying to figure out ways to add you know pleasurable components and generally that's all it takes right that nudge to be like wait I can do that you know and so it could be something that's kind of a routine task where you add elements you know either bringing friends in like the three constructs that you can really play with are the environment that you're doing it the friends you're doing it with or the way that you're doing it right changing up the activity itself and it would just a little bit of creativity you know you can often get there right an example that I bring up in the book is that I hated physical rehab you know with regards to that hip replacement that I got and so I was I don't know you know for the listeners that have gone through that it's such a routine thing you know especially if you're used to exercise they put two pound ankle weights you know I mean just two you know one hour of the same movement and so it was like washing paint dry and I had a young daughter and essentially to make a long story short realized I didn't need to be in there you know I'm from the fitness space I have access to folks that are personal trainers that you know are able to create medically appropriate moves so I found a dance instructor that could help me rehab but then also you know brought in my daughter and we had these amazing dance classes for one hour a week instead of sitting in you know four white walls and you know staring at metal equipment and so it's just those little things like what are the things that I hate doing and are there ways to do them differently and that are gonna be as unique as the individuals listening but they're always you know the stories are the best the more creative you can get you know to just change these things that are not that fun at all and you know these ways of creating I mean those memories I created with my daughter we still look back at them and we relive them when we reminisce on them right variable hedonics is just the science that suggests we should add elements of variability to our lives right the more that we can index opportunities for fun by being a bit deliberate about it you know we invite in more spontaneity it's just the numbers game really right and so the reason that becomes important to geek out on the neuroscience a little bit is when we know when our lives become too routine we stop encoding information and so you can essentially look at our brains like a hard drive right and so if you had 300 of the same files would your computer keep all 300 or would it essentially you know do that shortcuts all over the place and keep the one file our brain does the same and why that becomes problematic if we're not adding variety to our lives is that when we look back in the rearview mirror after 10 years of doing the same thing that's all we kind of remember like oh yeah I did that thing you know the example I use is do you remember the way you drove to work or do you remember the 300 times you drove to work right and that that's true for almost anything we habituate and this is why we get that feeling of living life an autopilot it's just it becomes groundhog day and we have then to be able to extract more enjoyment out of life and fulfillment we're gonna have to shake the box and this is for a lot of our clients when they come in they are burned out they are tired of it and they are looking to shake the box and so for us it's here's all these great tools that you are gonna shake the box with and creating and building all this enjoyment and fulfillment in your life and we're gonna start by exactly what we had been discussing earlier about what Todd Cashin is what are the curiosities what are the things that you've always wanted to do right why aren't we doing those things I remember there was a young lady named Melissa and our X Factor Accelerator Program she always wanted to go surfing but she never felt that she could leave her office in Colorado to go do that and I think it was about a month into the program where she was able to de-shackle herself from all of these things and it's all mind tricks that she had to go through and unchain, unchain, unchain and when all of those things in her mind were completely unchanged she's like oh my God, I have time now and she couldn't wait to go surfing and it was in that moment that she realized that she could that she came on to each of our sessions with just wide eyed big smile because she did not think she was able to do what she thought was impossible and all of that was working upstairs to decouple all of these things and sometimes our friends and our relationships are reinforcing that and that's another difficult realization many of our clients will say well my friends don't wanna try something new or do something fun like they're happy with going to the same bar drinking the same drink talking to the same bartender that's what they enjoy that's what they wanna do and I feel constrained by that but I don't know how to make new friends so they'll join X Factor Accelerator or we'll ask exactly that well what have you been putting off what have you been too afraid to do and are there ways to take that thing you're curious about add the variability of going and doing it and bring in a social component with it whether it's a meetup group whether it's a ski lesson whether it's a surf camp are there ways in your life that create an opportunity for variability create an opportunity for building new relationships that can encourage more variability in your life and that's the beauty of it because sometimes we're reinforced by friends and family that well no we're just gonna do the same Friday thing we always do go to Bdubs the game's gonna be on why do you wanna go bowling this weekend why are you trying to get up on the mountain this weekend you know we have the same stools at our local pub every single weekend and that can be very frustrating if you feel confined at work if you feel there are no fun outlets in your life well and to your point that behavior that's been habituated I was really surprised because I don't have it in my life I think not to pat myself on my back but I just really like my friends right I've been fortunate enough to have some really cool friends but I was blown away by the amount of people that keep friendships of convenience you know it's like yeah describing just what you said like so you're telling me you hang out every Friday with people that you don't like you know and then so I'll mention something as simple as why don't you just you know especially this you know when I was in San Francisco why don't you check out meetup.com they literally have something for every affinity group known to man and even if you're an introvert you don't have these people aren't there to make friends they're taught they're there to talk about a shared interest so you know it's a plug and play situation if you don't feel like talking just you know immerse yourself in the content and like just that light bulb the way you know the same way that it sounds like you guys coach clients and then wait I can do that yeah that you know you're invited to do that just ghost that and to your point it might be difficult they might even call you like hey why aren't you showing up anymore you're an adult now you don't need to answer you know you're not gonna show up in high school and have a tough you know unless it's family then it gets a little bit more complex for a lot of us it's not saying cut this person out of your life they're toxic they're not seeking variability but it's raising your own level of self-awareness that we're now talking about that if you remove fun from your life you become less productive your goals become more difficult the monotony the autopilot continues to play out in your life until you're like some of our clients in their 50s and 60s who are like man I wish I would have found you guys in my 20s like I let this go on way too long this tape played this song played way too many times and now I'm really stuck and I feel like I've let time escape me and we'll talk a little bit as we finish up with Saver just how we view time versus money and how we need to flip that to bring back fun but in those moments where you say take one Friday off a month and just allow yourself to go to the bowling league check out the axe throwing competition go check out the concert that you've always wanted to go to and just bounce your head to the music even if you don't know anyone there or check out the meetup group or go to the mountains that one Friday of you breaking out of the monotony could be enough to find that fun to flip the script for you to come in Monday more enthused to join the next Friday with some stories that your friends aren't gonna have because they were sitting at the same stool that they've been sitting at for the last 17 months in a row and realize that you again are taking control of your situation versus letting the victim hood set in saying well I don't know anyone and it's really scary to go out and make new friends as adults we're not downplaying that we understand that but with some simple strategies and some tips working with us an X factor you'll realize that there are more opportunities for socialization than ever you're just kind of blinded to them right now because you haven't taken those glasses off So that's a good segue into O which again is a fairly accessible tool and you guys probably know it well I essentially appropriated it from the grow model but O stands for options and what we know is that when we have better options we make better choices especially when they're premeditated so all of what we've just discussed is put it out on the table and see what are the things that you feel are missing in they can be choice from when you were younger some of those you're gonna grow out of but some of them you're not I find both dancing and playing music being a common one like I do want this back in my life I just forgotten how to do it essentially and so you need to be nudged back into that so really exploring what are the things that you want integrated into your life once you create the space to do so becomes an important step and then the last letter in saver is R and I think we've gotten so into introspection and rumination and trying to unpack things instead of being action oriented and forward thinking reminiscing as this idea of really sitting and savoring with the things that we really do enjoy so that we sort of attract them more so not necessarily the law of attraction or anything metaphysical but it's clear that when we spend time thinking about the things that really do light us up one, we expand the fun that we do have because we go right back into that moment so it's a great way when we do have these like small moments in line instead of picking our phone out and looking at someone else's curated life we can remember like, wow, I really enjoyed that and oftentimes when we do engage in the act of reminiscing it's a good segue into going you know what, I haven't talked to Johnny I haven't talked to AJ for a long time let me reach out because we need to do something again this was a great time instead of letting Facebook do it for you where you get the random yearly reminder of the fact that your cousin died and you're like what, this is like the memory I wanna remember so doing it for yourself becomes an interesting feedback one that we often don't do because we've kind of been trained to unpack all of these horrible things and unpacking trauma episodically I'm not suggesting you stop doing that because it is effective but sitting with malaise and discomfort and trauma is clearly not a path to betterment and so flipping the script and using those opportunities to be like you know what, life can be fun and I have a lot more control over it than I thought becomes an effective strategy for making sure your fun habit is a continued upward spiral as it were Well, I'm not always good at reading Johnny's chicken scratch but he has one quote that's always on his whiteboard that you can't think your way into acting but you can act your way into thinking and so much of what we're talking about here is just taking that bit of action just taking that opportunity in your life to actually seek the fun allows you the opportunity to think about the fun to reminisce on other memories to reach out to other people and opens up all of these pathways that we shut ourselves off from by staying in our logical analytical mind ruminating over what could have been what we'd like to what we wish we were doing what we hope we can do in the future when I just get this promotion when I just buy this house when I just get this car then I'll go on the trip then I'll learn the guitar then I'll join the club then I'll join the bowling league You're exactly right and the thing is time passes us by you kind of gave a head nod and what's clear again that sort of backs this up because there's a whole host of research that we could dig into but the one that you alluded to that's also important is more and more research is backing up the fact that we've overprescribed on financial affluence and that folks that deprioritize needing to make that next dollar and understand that the only thing that most of us can't well that none of us can make more of right again I suggest that most of us and probably most of your listeners could make more money if they wanted to and so it's an important thing to understand right if you really want to go drive Uber you could line your bank account with more money the one thing that none of us are going to get more of is time and so when you have a rich understanding of that you tend to use your time better especially if you aren't an entrepreneur if you are someone essentially making somebody else rich you realize okay well I'm an honest person I want an honest value exchange I'm going to work hard for a good paycheck but at the end of the day I also want to use some of this time that's something that I only have a finite amount of to actually enjoy life because life is a gift right whether you're spiritual or not I think you know even secular people like we're here you know and we're here for a limited time and so we shouldn't give it all away we've been fortunate enough to work with some clients and the 0.1% and 0.00% billionaires and the one thing that they orient their entire life around is not checking their bank account is time whether it's flying private whether it's figuring out the shortcut whether it's getting coaching so they don't have to waste time making mistakes the most wealth and affluent people are actually the most conscious of time and it's us in the lower class in the middle class who fall into that fallacy that if we just get more money we will someday unlock more time and it actually doesn't work that way you're spending every single minute instead of spending dollars to gain back the time you're not going to get those minutes back that you spent slaving away for someone else and I think I would add to what you said because I obviously you know co-ordered with the same people to get the information for the book is not only that because I wholeheartedly agree that's it's clear in their mind that that's the case but they're also deliberate about how they schedule their time they realize that time will always expand and you'll always have the things to do with in regards to that 168 hours a week and so knowing that they need to prioritize leisure as much as work they'll put it on their calendar because they know if they don't and it's like oh my calendar's open you know I can just grind this out because there's always something to do right in in the modern age of knowledge work the art to do lists will always fill up all our time if we let it and so we need to keep those bumper rails right we need to figure out what those transition rituals are and leverage your time accordingly like you can leverage your time in your social life by hosting a party instead of going one on one for a drink here a dinner there a lunch here you can host a whole bunch of people at one time leverage that time that free time that you have create the fun an opportunity for other people in your network to meet each other and come out knowing hey this is a good person for me to date hey this guy actually I didn't realize how much we had in common I should definitely spend more time with him and oh man I hadn't seen these guys in a while I'm going to invite them to my party give them a reason to come join my life and reconnect with old connections that had gone astray so time leveraging you can use to be more productive you can use to be more social and create relationship opportunities in your life wanted to bring up last week we talked to Robert Waldinger and you referenced the study in the book one of the things that he brings up is as we get older the illusion of time starts to speed up so maybe you might be at 31 32 years old and you're thinking okay I really got to do something here I mean I'm running the same day every day I'm in this autopilot I really got to shake things up but I got all the time in the world here to put a few things together to make that next dollar to make it that promotion so I can do these things that I've been thinking about well that illusion is where you get transfixed on that goal and then next thing you know you're you're at 40 and you're like oh crud or 45 or 50 and when those folks get in touch with us they're in a panic because they already realize that this came up 10 years ago 15 years ago and they had the opportunity at that moment to change that trajectory and they didn't so now once it they're cognizant of it they're now conscious and that they see that illusion for what it is they're now in panic mode and it doesn't have to be that way no absolutely I think you know it just doesn't become important one of the last things I'll talk about in the book you know and it can happen at any I'm at 50 and I still plan to make the best use the 30 years I have left right and so you know creating some sort of momentum there's a ton of amazing ones online I have one in the book but anything that's just a reminder right I think you know one you see really effectively used by parents and they have 18 summers with your kids right and so if your kids 12 like holy shit I only have you know six summers left that tends to be just that awareness tends to be a way to go I'm going to make the best use of these six years I have you know six summers I have left with my kid doing that with your own life you know it's assuming we're all going to live the 80 or plus you know figure out a backwards counter and just make a note to check in with it once a month and you're like holy cow this is what you know it's sort of like watching you know again we're talking about wealth affluence versus time affluence watching that bank account just tweeter down makes you realize like I better make the best use of this time and certainly I use it all the time to check in with my best friends to make sure I'm checking in with my parents you know and also to just make sure that if I've worked too hard like wondering what I'm giving up for that like was this everything that I gave up with regards to friendships and things of that nature was it worth it and does this you know do I need to sort of re-steer the ship you guys use the metaphor as a as a rudder and I think that's important absolutely and for many of us listening right now we tie a lot of our fun to the relationships in our life to our friends to our family members that's where the fun is so I'd love to just touch on the role of relationships and creating and emboldening this fun habit for us and if right now you might not be feeling like you have those relationships we can talk about some things you can do to start creating those fun relationships in your life because they're so powerful and impactful and as Robert Waldinger talked about in the Harvard Happiness Study those relationships are the essence of our well-being and our meaningful life those relationships as much as the travel alone the do the grinding it out at work the bank account checking the achieving all of the external things might feel good in the moment the long term when you look back over the length of your life it is the time spent with people you care about that makes all the difference in that meaningful life for us Yeah as you guys mentioned I give a nod to Robert's work in the book and it's clear that even if you're an introvert that feeling of connection and it doesn't even necessarily need to be friends although it's clear friendship is extremely important that just understanding that to your guys' point it's not just about us that we're a part of something much bigger than us makes our problems seem smaller because we realize it's not just us in this room you know we're not holding up the weight of the world and so Robert did a great job pretty much painting a direct line between loneliness and these psychological and physiological outcomes so what I've done is taken his work and others and created this entire corpus of the fact that because we're so isolated grinding it out for things that we don't you know intimately necessarily believe leads to our own well-being is leading us to this crisis of all of these negative outcomes so to answer your question specifically I think fun is a great tool to mitigate loneliness in this way and improve health outcomes because fun is is the lubricant that makes us want to hang out with the people that we enjoy right and so one of the things as you described like if you have kind of habituated you know your time with friends that you don't necessarily feel bring you joy oftentimes you can look broader like who are the friends that when you spend time with them make you giggle make you smile make you walk away going I want to do that again and if you haven't you know quote unquote created play date with them for a while just call them up you know most people especially if you do the organizing you know I was about to jump in when you said you know creating a dinner date like that that is an amazing that's Lechoni's advice right like never eat a lot of if that's too much for you like one of the things I suggest reserve a table at a comedy club especially if you don't like to talk a lot right like you are going to be with a bunch of cool friends you're already in an environment where you're not forced into chit chat and you guys will all walk out of there still really enjoying that time and there's all sorts of those opportunities you know you gave a hat tipped a bowling to I meant you know just it just takes that that five seconds of premeditation like wait it's that simple I just need to call and reserve a table and they will come I promise you if you're not a total asshole they will come I was celebrating my 41st birthday during my wife's sabbatical and it was so interesting because we were in Europe and I was like well what can I do for my birthday I'm not drinking anymore and I got way into F1 over the last couple years so I reached out to some friends and I said hey I'm going to be in Paris you want to go go carding I found this carding course and my European friends flew out joined me for the weekend and the highlight of the entire weekend we went out to dinner we saw some comedy we saw some shows the highlight of everyone's weekend was the go carding we were comparing each other scores we were laughing about the turns and the speeds and we were by far the oldest ones there celebrating my 41st birthday against a bunch of 15 and 16 year old French kids who are whipping around the track but there are so many ways that if you are the instigator of fun you bring fun back to those relationships of friends you hadn't connected with or seen in months or years even you'd be surprised how many of them join in and are excited to have this opportunity for fun in their own lives because they're over indexing on work and all of that stress that's going on and we always say in our X Factor Accelerator the first ingredient in any relationship building is fun whether it's business networking whether you're out socializing or whether you're just sitting there at work if you can bring fun to the table people will want to be around you people are chasing fun in their lives as we talked about there's just a dearth of fun right now around us here stateside and I was making friends in Colorado on the chairlift and seeing them at the chalet afterwards like in those shared experiences of moments together and bringing fun to the equation it opens up those opportunities to build new relationships in your life if you aren't happy with existing relationships of convenience as you call them the same boring thing weekend and week out well and I think to back you up you know again as a macro sort of hypothesis that comes out through the book is that it's clear in a general sense fun is invigorating right and when fun is absent you tend to be depleted so even if you're doing something that's meaningful you know I talk about this in chapter 11 with regards to change makers like if everything is through martyrdom right or you're just creating an environment that doesn't attract people again going back to the psychological concept called valence like ultimately people aren't want gonna want to do it anymore that's just the simple truth but you create a fun environment even if you guys are doing hard stuff it's invigorating you want to go back what I'd love to to give as an exercise to our listeners as we wrap here is just the play model so that they can look at their live currently and bring some more fun into it yeah so the play model is a model in the book it's presented early in the book it stands for pleasing living agonizing and yielding pleasing our activities that don't take a ton of energy to do but we find fun and so I make a case based on some work from Matthew Killingsworth out of Harvard why that's important the living quadrant are things that are hard to do so that we can't do them all the time but lead to things like transcendence and so you know I give some examples of how to integrate those into your life the important is the last two quadrants which are yielding and agonizing yielding are all the things that we've talked about this habituated behavior that we kind of displaces discomfort but doesn't lead to our betterment that we kind of you know it's just essentially wasting our time and then agonizing are the hard things and actually this has been one of the most fun podcasts I think to talk about because it sounds like you coach your folks how to really you know minimize those and I think a lot of folks take for granted that you know yes we're not saying that life is meant to be you know all whimsy we all need to do hard things but there are generally ways to make the hard things you know to survive the slings and arrows more pleasurable and so looking at your agonizing activities and finding opportunities to change them up becomes important and really creating that space you know using that model first because you don't want fun to just be another thing on your to-do list right that then essentially you are going to get a lot of resistance because we're all busy so we don't want to add another thing on especially something that at the onset doesn't sound that interesting so that the play model is a great way to create that space so that you can then integrate fun things back into your life yeah so take a moment take a blank sheet of paper pause this create the quadrants as Mike just laid out is are going through some activities that you do every day that you'd like to do more of that maybe are yielding that you could pass off to someone else you know I hate numbers so we have a bookkeeper for that I find doing our bookkeeping especially as we're approaching tax season here to be very yielding for me so there are ways that you can outsource those things that create the time as we talked about the time affluence that we need to then double down on the fun that leads to reinvigorating our existing relationships and creating new relationships in our life thanks for joining us Mike this was so much fun where can our audience find out more about you and the work that you do yeah thanks so much so the book the fun habit is out now anywhere you enjoy buying books and I talk about the science of fun on my website michaelrucker.com and we love asking every guess what their X factor is what do you think makes you unique and extraordinary Mike I think my so I created this project in 2000 set and when again I was kind of like hey you know life kind of seems to be passing me by and so I made a commitment every three months to reach out to two people wiser than me to make some sort of social impact and to do something amazing so my last amazing thing is I just got back from Sao Paulo F1 and I didn't really think it was that remarkable when I did it but now that I'm 16 years in and haven't you know missed a beat people are like what you committed to something that I've been doing at 16 years so I think you know the fact that I've had this follow-through I set the bar low so even though you know the first year is probably like oh that's not that remarkable you know now the fact that I can look back and I have you know over 50 amazing experiences I've connected with over a hundred you know just really smart people and learn from them and again really feel good about the impact I've made in the world I guess that's my X factor I love that that's so beautiful thank you again Mike this is a fun conversation definitely thanks so much for having me