🤩 Day 15: Make work fun

👋 Hey Friends,

Welcome back to the 30-Day Productivity Challenge by the famous YouTuber, former doctor and now writer Ali Abdaal. 

When Richard Feynman was in his career as a physicist, he was bored while working. He didn’t see what inspired him so much about the subject, and he couldn’t find a way to make the work he was doing fun.

What happened as a result?

He got bored at work, didn’t like it, and couldn’t perform at his best. The thing that changed him happened at a cafeteria. He saw somebody throwing a plastic plate into the air with a logo on it. As he was looking at this, he realised that the inside (the logo) of the plate rotated at a different velocity than the outside.

He wondered why that could be, and he started to think about the equations which describe the motion of the plate. He found a problem he was happily working on, which resulted in him being interested in the worlds and dynamics of physics again.

What does that story teach us?

✅ Having fun is important

Why does it matter to have fun when doing work?

I often get asked when I go to school why I seem so happy to be here and why I can enjoy this. The answer I mostly give is that I have to do it anyway, so why not enjoy it along the way? This idea of making boring things seem fun somehow completely stuck with me, and I learned that this is one reason why fun matters.

When we have fun doing something we generally care about but have concerns with starting, doing or keeping going, we get to do more of the things that matter to us. Hence, we are productive. In addition, I always feel like, why should you work if it doesn’t make fun? We only get this one life and work is a part of it, so why not try to make it fun?

😕Concern: I cannot see any reason why my work should be fun

✅Solution: Ask yourself what of this could be fun. When facing work that doesn’t seem to make fun, but you have to do it, ask yourself this simple question: "What would this task look like if it were fun?" This will completely transform your way of looking at it.

Let’s say you need to do the dishes and instead of thinking that this will be boring, try to make a game out of it by saying that you want to get the dishes as clean as possible as fast as possible.

This sounds a bit absurd at first, but when you learn to apply this to other parts of your life, you will see that you will enjoy some parts that you couldn’t enjoy before.

😕Concern: My stakes are too high to have fun.

✅Solution: Reframe failure. Our society says that failure is a bad thing, but when you see failure as the opportunity to learn from your mistakes, it will change you. When you don’t worry that something will fail, you will take some risks, but you will also unfold your whole creative potential. This additionally will embrace fun, and you get to learn from your mistakes.

Simply ask yourself next time, "What would this task look like if it were fun?" and it will change your life, as it did Feynman’s and mine.

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Thanks again and I'll see you soon.

Victor (@observethecosmos)

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