308 - Fun Matters
Fun is essential!
This past year, 2020, was not fun for anyone, but hopefully we can start looking forward and finding ways to have fun again. After all, even though fun is sometimes considered a guilty pleasure in our culture, research shows fun is an integral part of living a full life.
Research on fun
Many of the studies on fun show how it is linked to learning, productivity, or aging. A large amount of research on happiness is directly related to how it affects productivity.
Unstructured play time has been shown to be extremely beneficial and important for development during childhood. In fact, lack of unstructured play time has been linked to aggression, violence, and criminality.
Having more money increases happiness, but only up to a certain point. Richer countries are not happier than poorer ones, for example, and lottery winners often end up more unhappy than they were before, even though they think of the event as a happy one.
How to play
Unstructured, improvised fun where you are discovering and creating the rules as you go:
Kids play in an unstructured way instinctively, making up the rules either with each other or adults.
Role-playing or fantasy, either sexy or not, is also an option.
Improv games.
Physical activity involving intention:
Focused on an activity or certain skill.
Focusing on NOT focusing on something specific, like a bike ride through the countryside or walk through your neighborhood.
Learning can be fun:
This could be a skill or a hobby, or something completely unrelated. Be sure not to make it become work, though.
Daydreaming, zoning out, or meditating:
Allowing yourself unstructured and unoccupied time has been shown to have a lot of mental health benefits.
Resist fighting boredom. Being bored is okay sometimes, and in fact it can be your brain’s most interesting and revealing time.
Our capitalist culture teaches us that we have no worth if we’re not being constantly productive. If we work now, as much as possible, then we’ll have fun later, which isn’t true. It makes us less healthy, less happy, and less productive. So remember to have fun!
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we are talking about fun. That's right. It is 2020 fun now, and it's about time that we freaking had some of it.
Dedeker: So much fun this year. Considering how not fun last year was the only go out from here, baby.
Jase: Seriously, though, in this episode, we're looking at some research on the importance of having fun and enjoyment in life, particularly when you live in a culture like ours that teaches us that fun is a guilty pleasure and we should feel bad about having it and that the best measure of health and success is productivity and seriousness and how much money you make, which is not actually a good measure of quality of life or your in the world.
Dedeker: I guess it's the same thing with relationships is you measure the quality of relationship by how far along the escalator we are, what milestones are we heading in the kids in homebuying direction, which all those things can be fun. There's also a big not fun aspect to them for a lot of people, those milestones.
Emily: That's true.
Jase: Either way, it sucks that's the only way that we're given to measure things and to measure our success or our quality of life or our worth as people which sucks. I wanted to start off by talking about what of the messages that we've been given about fun?
Emily: The me messages.
Jase: Yes. What are they? Where did we get these messages about fun? I was thinking specifically of why we feel guilty for having fun. I thought about the saying idle hands are the devil's playground that like classic puritan saying.
Emily: That's sounds very puritanical.
Jase: It's like if you're not actively working, then the devil's going to get you. What else?
Dedeker: Well, going back to history lesson the one that stands out to me, is that famous quote that supposedly John Smith said about he who does not work shall not eat. I feel like a lot of the sentiment we have around fun is tied up in our sentiments also around just not working or relaxing or resting as well.
Jase: We're going to talk about that a little bit later in the episode too. We're going to broaden our definition of fun to also resting and relaxing. I think sometimes when people think of fun, they think of structured fun. While there's benefit in that too, there's other types of fun. What else? Where did the two of you get messaging in your lives about fun? Here we go.
Emily: Well, I got a lot of, if you procrastinate, then you're a bad person.
Jase: Totally.
Emily: Of course, I procrastinate all the time and it's not necessarily a bad thing for me. For me, specifically, we've talked about that. It's like sometimes having that pressure is a good thing. However, I do feel like I always have to be doing something or else I'm a bad person or a lazy person. Laziness, I think, is what perhaps you're going to be called if you have too much fun.
Dedeker: I definitely got that messaging that fun comes last in all situations. I don't care if it's your birthday, I don't care if it's the weekend, fun comes last in most circumstances. Gosh, what else did I get for my family of origin? I guess also the sense of if one person isn't having fun, nobody can have fun. If one person is having to work or be productive, then everyone else should feel bad for not working or being productive.
Jase: I'm glad you touched on that one because that's one that that to this day still really pervades things for me that if my partner or a family member or something is working or doing a chore, I'm almost incapable of having fun. I have to find work or productive thing to do because the guilt is so strong.
Emily: Well, on the flip side also, sometimes if I'm doing a chore and my partner isn't, then I'm pissy at them.
Dedeker: Yes. That's the thing. The flip side is then you inherit that feeling and it's perpetuating is 100%. If I'm not having fun, no one's allowed to have--
Emily: Stop playing video games. Help me.
Jase: The other one that comes up a lot for me is the whole time is money thing. This is one that I remember really hitting me at times when I was super broke. Specifically, the roughly I don't know, 10 years after graduating from college and I guess also in college a little bit, but of just being super broke, of getting more and more in debt and worrying about being able to pay bills and stuff like that.
There was this thing of like, I would be either working trying to get a job or trying to find a gig or working toward things like that or working on skills to get a job. Then just getting exhausted by that and wanting to relax and have fun, but then instantly feeling guilty because I don't deserve fun yet because I haven't made any money. It's partly that fun should come second but then also this kind of time is money thing of like if I have time for fun, I should have time for making money.
Dedeker: I got that very much when I was still in the entertainment industry. I think that the entertainment industry, especially for struggling actors or struggling entertainers really perpetuates that because it's like, on the one hand, yes, if you're someone who's not going to an office job and you're trying to build your own career, there's that certain amount of "hustle culture mentality" of you got to be out there hustling and pounding the pavement, taking classes, doing workshops, doing everything that you possibly can do.
Therefore if you're not successful, it's your own damn fault. That was very much against me as well, that it's hard to rest and hard to relax when it's like, well, literally any minute of your day could be spent working and so what's your excuse?
Emily: I want to say, let's flip the narrative of time is money on its head because you just said, Jase, 10 years after graduating from college, it took you to maybe get out of debt or to move in that direction of making money. I am now 10 years out of college and I'm just about to pay off my debt. I'm like, "Yes, time is money. It's taken time and now I have some money to throw around." There you go.
Dedeker: That's not always how the formula works.
Emily: I know that. Sometimes people just have money automatically. I think that the point is like, it does take time and that in the middle of that time that it is taking, you also should have some time for fun because there are moments like where hustling is great and where that's really important, but you have to have some enjoyable moments in your life because those are what you look back on.
Dedeker: Speaking of flipping things on their head.
Emily: Oh, please.
Dedeker: I've definitely experienced, sometimes you can feel guilty about not having fun in certain scenarios. What I'm thinking of specifically is we have this old adage about, if you find something that you love, you'll never work a day in your life. That's also a weird thing of again, work comes first. That's why you need to make your work fun because that's your only opportunity where you're allowed to have fun.
Jase: That's the only option.
Emily: That's the only thing that we're going to be doing. If it's not fun, then you're pretty screwed.
Dedeker: Which has always been weird to me because I've had a lot of jobs that I really enjoyed in my life, both because of the workplace and work culture was really cool or when I was dancing professionally, like amazing job. The job that I do now, I really love but I still feel like I'm working sometimes. It's this weird combination of like, I do enjoy it. I do love it a lot but I still feel like I have worked a day in my life and still, working days in my life.
Then I think that for a lot of people, that can really creep in of like, "Oh my God, I found my dream job but it's a grind. I found my dream job but I'm not really having fun anymore. Is this not actually my dream job? Is this not actually the right work situation for me?
Jase: Yes. This idea of if you find your passion or your calling or what you're meant to do or whatever that it's not ever going to feel like work, I think has been one of the single most harmful things toward my like financial wellbeing and professional wellbeing for many, many years. It's taken me a long time to unlearn it. I remember the first time I was presented with this idea of, Hey, actually, that's not really how it goes and that it's okay to get your fulfillment, not just from the job that makes you money, but from other parts of your life. I think I still struggle with it a little bit because this whole idea was so ingrained in me.
Dedeker: I'm curious if we got any messaging around how fun or not fun relationships are supposed to be.
Emily: I think a lot of people do say like marriages work. I talked about this a little bit with the two of you before we started this episode, but that like in polyamorous relationships, it is a lot of work to continually be looking at your Google calendar and figuring out what dates you're going to be going on with each of these people and-
Dedeker: Having more discussions around boundaries.
Emily: Yes. More discussions, more talking, radar, triforce, all of that stuff that we've cultivated through to make it fun for all y'all out there but then sometimes do feel like work. We have really structured, not only our lives, but our relationships sometimes to be able to like fit into a box that allows us to have enough time to do everything or to make it more regimented. That's interesting that we'd put those parameters around the relationships too.
Jase: I feel like the thing that I've experienced more in my life and I feel like I've definitely seen this in other people too though, is that idea of, but if you find the one, then it's not work. Which I think leads people to feel like, Oh, well guess this one wasn't the one, keep moving on. Because first of all, the whole idea of the one being a little bit of a problem, but also just this idea that it's easy. That's interesting also how those two concepts are at odds with each other,
Dedeker: Then there's also the third side of this multi-dimensional coin, this coin 20 sided die, this idea of we're also fed this intense thing of long-term relationships are work, a serious relationship is work, which then when you realize you're not having any fun with this person or any fun in this relationship can lead you to just think that's how it's supposed to be. Is once I get married, once I'm in a long-term relationship, it's work.
Jase: Now. I'm just unhappy. That's just how life goes, boy. Well, wow. We have a complicated relationship with fun. It turns out.
Emily: Definitely. I feel like that's really been perpetuated by the gig economy, gig culture of now.
Dedeker: The fetishization of hustle culture that we've been in for a couple of years now,
Emily: Personally, I see my partner who has a nine to five job, like really be able to just turn it off on the weekends and do his own thing. Whereas I have much more of like a gig-based life where I have like a day job, not right now, but when the pandemic isn't happening, I have a day job and that I've got this, but this requires me to work at weird hours sometimes. Then sometimes we're traveling and things like that, it doesn't allow for that really specific time of turning it off and just having fun.
Jase: For sure.
Emily: There's a lot of research out there on fun, but it's interesting, like the way in which the studies are conducted surrounding fun, it can tell us a lot about the types of things that people are interested in studying. It tends to be more focused on learning or on productivity or on aging things like being a better student or a better worker or your health after you are no longer a worker. I know my mom, even she does like a bunch of cognitive games on her iPad. She used to have a DS actually and she did--
Dedeker: what was it? Doctor Train Your Brain.
Jase: Doctor Brain Beane.
Dedeker: Doctor brain game man.
Emily: Yes, I think that it was modeled after the gentleman who passed away one of the really higher-ups in Nintendo.
Dedeker: Dr. Kawashima's brain training.
Emily: Yes. No, my mom used to do it all the time but a large amount of the research also on things like happiness, it's directly related to how it affects productivity, which again, it's just like going back around to Oh, but all that matters is about work and about how this can make you a better, more productive human being in society like working and learning.
Dedeker: And always in the service of how could it make you a better worker, more productive human beings.
Emily: Which is like cogs in the machine, jeez.
Jase: Also just along with that, that it tends to be very much skewed toward either let's look at fun and how it affects learning in children or let's look at how it affects things like preventing things like Alzheimer's and dementia and stuff when we're older and that this middle majority of people's lives tends to not be very focused on with this. Not only is it focused on just like, how do you be better, more productive at whatever stage of life you're in, but also this like, well, whatever, during that whole middle part you're working, so why do we need to research fun?
Emily: You're not going to be able to have fun. Come on now.
Dedeker: Once the fun is helping you be a better worker, then we don't care. Another important and interesting thing is that specifically play, unstructured play has shown to be really important in childhood development and not just in humans, in other mammals as well. By unstructured play, we're referring to play where essentially, you're making up the game or making up the rules as you are playing. This is like make-believe play or like playing house where like together we're negotiating what's actually happening in the world and what rules we're playing by as opposed to, we're going to play baseball and we already know the rules for that.
Emily: I see my animals, my cats. I'm sure that people see this in any animal, but like every animal wants to play so much in their lives. You see these cats just throwing their toys around or chasing each other and chasing their own tail, creating this unstructured play. They're so good at it. I think we, as a species, can learn a lot from just the imagination that they must have or I don't know if they think I'm on that level, but just like the fun that they have and clearly their lives are like so surrounded with, I'm going to have some fun right now and I'm freaking out because I just pooped in the litter box and I'm going to run.
Dedeker: It makes you want to play.
Emily: I've done some zoomies. Yes, exactly. I find that just really, really endearing, always when I see my animals running around because I love them and they're playing.
Dedeker: It's so interesting. I think that's why it's so compelling to watch baby animals of species because it's like play is how you figure out social structure and hunting skills and defense skills. Even with humans that like physical play involves this risk of injury, which you would think would not be something that's good, but actually, it teaches you a lot about coordination and keeping yourself safe and what your limits are and what is going to break your arm versus what's not going to break your arm.
Then specifically a lack of unstructured play in childhood has been linked to aggression and violence. It makes sense why, of course, we have this old aphorism about all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, which is, I guess, another conflicting message that we get about play, although that's only for boys, just for boys.
Jase: Only boys. Only for Jack specifically, yes. I do think that that was interesting reading about that in terms of if you think of that-- I guess like parenting where it's very much like if my children are playing that's bad. If the parents have been ingrained with that idea that play is irresponsible and bad so I'm going to stop that at any moment, that actually that has quite far reaching negative impacts on that child as they grow up. That can be very difficult to recover from and get over from, get, get over. That's the words we use in English.
Dedeker: That's it.
Jase: In looking into research about this, there's honestly not a ton of research about fun just on its own. There is more research about happiness but again tends to be linked to things like productivity or maybe health but it's interesting because I feel like both of these things have a lot of value on their own and we don't really look at that or we don't study that as much. I've even seen in some the anthropological work, it talks about the idea of play, the fact that we do play even though it is dangerous.
Why have we evolved to play is things that perhaps learning to use tools at all which is one of the fairly defining characteristics of very few creatures on earth, us being one of them, may have evolved from that tendency for play of like, Oh I'm playing around with this stick I realize it does this thing and now I can use it as a tool and that it's led us to develop a lot of these things.
Also thinking about looking at kids imitating what adults do when they play. Kids playing and pretending something's a computer or they're playing as if they're on their phone or they're trying to do the things that we do and figure that out. Anyway, I don't know. I think it's fascinating, I love childhood development but that's not what this episode's about.
Something that I found when I was looking into research about happiness, and this is an older study. I think we've even maybe talked about it years ago on this show, but there was a study looking at how income relates to happiness. Essentially like does money by happiness? What's interesting is that the --
Dedeker: Up to about $70,000, right?
Jase: Was, yes.
Emily: I thought it was $100,000.
Dedeker: No.
Jase: It's 70, 75, something like that, that essentially the reasoning behind it goes that up to a certain point with less than that, you're struggling to get by and so that's more of a presence in your life. Once you hit that point where you're able to provide for yourself, and I don't remember if this was individuals or families, I think this was family specifically that this 70,000 number was came about and this was in the US. Anyway, they found that then after that absolutely no correlation between money and happiness, and sometimes even the inverse.
Other studies have looked at things like lottery winners. This actually was interesting, there's a study that looked at people who had recently won the lottery and people who had recently become seriously injured. While the people who had become injured identified that event as being negative, the people who won the lottery identified that event as being a very happy event that in terms of their overall happiness, the lottery winners were not any more happy and in fact I think they ended up even a little bit less happy.
So it's just this thing of we tend to look at stuff not in this linear mathematical way which I think frustrates researchers and maybe frustrates policymakers because they can't just put a number on it, but the reality of it is that it's not just this one-to-one. If a country's higher GDP doesn't mean the people in it are happier. In fact often it's the opposite. Things like comparing ourselves to our neighbors-- We talk about comparison a lot with metamours and partners and things that it's the comparisons often that will make us unhappy, not the actual things we have or what we're doing.
Emily: Yes, that's something to think about with metamorphose and stuff is that all of that comparison regarding money or thinking like that what somebody else has makes them happier, and therefore more attractive to our partners, it's not necessarily the case because we don't fully always know what's going on there.
Dedeker: I looked it up. It's 75 000 individuals not a family because I feel that's a low number for a family in this economy anyway.
Emily: Right especially living in LA.
Dedeker: Living in any metropolitan area. Yes, so capitalism, am I right?
Emily: We're in late-stage capitalism here.
Dedeker: I feel like the dream of capitalism is the robot worker and until the day that we actually get the actual robot worker, capitalism is just really trying to push human beings to being as close to robots as humanly possible. Let's try to minimize the amount of time that you need as far as downtime and recuperation time. Let's minimize the amount of time that you actually need to be around the people that you love or that you actually need to-- That's definitely a force that I think pushes us towards the sensation of having guilt or feeling bad about having fun or resting.
Of course capitalism is tied to White supremacy, to puritanism, to all of these big old bad bag of isms that are keeping us down and keeping us not having fun and not really able to rest.
Jase: Yes, when I was thinking about all these old sayings like just time is money and idle hands are the devil's playground, stuff like that, it made me wonder if at some point in the past humans were just very predisposed to being lazy and so we had to come up with all these ways to stop us from it. I just don't see that.
Emily: Were we not just conserving energy and stuff sitting around a campfire conserving energy and running from wolves or cheetahs, saber-toothed tigers, I don't know. We needed to be lazy.
Dedeker: Every single anthropologist just like threw up.
Emily: Well, you know what? I'm not an anthropologist, I'm just a podcast house.
Jase: Yes, that's fun. I think more likely it was these things started coming about because certain structures that were in power really relied on us not having fun. Instead of just doing stuff so that they can have more money which they might not be having fun with either. Like we said, money doesn't buy happiness. It goes all the way up, it hurts everyone in here. Anyway, I think that we're taught these sayings and because we learn them, we think there must be a reason for it. Oh it must be that we're naturally lazy or I must naturally be lazy or people are lazy and so we need to fight against that and get people to work harder and motivate them and all that.
When I look around me, what I see is a lot more of people burning themselves out until they're just exhausted and then they resort to just pure escapism. Not even fun relaxation but pure escapism. Just vegging out in front of the TV or whatever. Then maybe feeling guilty about it, shaming themselves or maybe shaming others for having fun, and then recommitting to their work and going back into the cycle again. That's not doing any of us any favors in terms of our health and well-being and it's also not making the world a better place.
Dedeker: Yes, it really is. I'm telling you it's the dream of the robot worker because it's this whole thing of a system that's based on how much can we deny just the fact that we have bodies that need rest, need food, get sick, sometimes have more ability, sometimes are disabled, sometimes need recovery time. Regardless of where you are in that state of body, essentially you should be feeling bad that you're there. If you're disabled, you should be feeling bad for not being able to produce as much as somebody else. If you're sick, you should be feeling bad for not just pulling yourself together and going into work anyway.
Jase: Yes, and that's a big one. It does make me think of the studies that are out there about fun being helpful for productivity or happiness being good for productivity or encouraging your workers to stay home when they're sick and rest being good for your overall productivity. While I think it sucks that we have to have those reasons to study these things, I do think they're useful because that's what convinces businesses to actually make those changes.
Dedeker: Right, it's like we're never going to get the four-day workweek or the three-day work week until there's so much empirical evidence that it's actually going to be make more money for a company than not.
Jase: Exactly.
Emily: Something that I struggled with this year, I got laid off twice because of the pandemic and there is this narrative around taking money from the government or being on unemployment is a bad thing. I definitely used to work for a guy, Dedeker did for a moment as well.
Dedeker: Just a moment.
Emily: Yes, just a moment. I worked with him for years but he would always say like, "Oh all these people in Venice beach just smoking dope and cashing their welfare checks," and that was very much his narrative of what was going on. I'm like, "No this is so ridiculous. People deserve to have help if they need it." I felt that very prominently this year and I have struggled with, "Am I doing enough? Am I making my time productive enough when I'm not at my day job because of the pandemic?" I think I've fallen into these habits of not allowing myself to have some fun, like truly turning it off because I feel guilty as it is for being on unemployment and taking money from the government when I should be working.
Dedeker: Yes, that's just such a thing.
Jase: It's such a thing, yes.
Dedeker: I would love to go down that rabbit hole but I don't think we have to because that could be a whole other soapbox moment.
Emily: Yes, so I'm going to read this quote that Jase pulled out for us from KJ forman, a queer non-binary artist in Ottawa, Canada. They said, "I've been thinking a lot about how people's happiness, being a act of defiance. I've found my experience with activist work to be so exhausting, and disheartening while also making me feel hopeful and inspired at the same time that it can be difficult to find things to be happy about, and grateful for. It's true in a world that seems to strive to make us feel like shit. It is sort of an activism in itself to lean into what makes us happy." I love that. That's true. Fuck the man--
Jase: I do love that. I've definitely seen this year amongst my peers and people I care about who care about their country and care about the well-being of marginalized peoples not having any fun, because it's like, I can't have fun. It's like that guilt thing. It's like, there's work to be done. I can't have any fun in the meantime. If I am, then I'm not taking this seriously. KJ makes this great point of you also deserve fun. That you also deserve to have some happiness and find what that is. I did really like that quote.
Dedeker: It reminds me of this Instagram account I started following earlier this year, created by this woman, Trisha Jersey, and it's called the nap ministry. I highly recommend everyone go check out their work. They do performance, art as well as workshops and things like that. She started this organization. The specific aim was like, "Let's get Black women to take a nap." "Let's get specifically, Black women to take time away from grind culture." The fact that grind culture is a product of White supremacy and escaping from it is not being lazy as the way that it's been painted and label on people for so many hundreds of years.
Itself is both disruptive and it's just a human right. I really appreciate something that she says in a lot of her work is this idea of we can't keep calling rest, relaxation, fun, a luxury, something pleasant, a reward, something you get at the end of grinding away. It's like, "No, this is a human right." This is what your birthright is. It's not the little bit of a treat that you earn for yourself. I also really appreciate that Tricia Jersey seems to really practice what she preaches, quite specifically. She's very open like, "Yes, I'm going on sabbatical for three months. Bye."
Emily: That's great.
Dedeker: I think she even set up a call in line where you can hear pre-recorded messages that remind you to relax essentially, but she's like, "Don't contact me." This is literally what I deserve. That's what I'm going to do. She has all kinds of really wonderful, inspiring quotes on the Instagram and on the site, but here's just one that we pulled, where she says, "You can experiment with our work, and rest theories by taking a nap, resting for 10 extra minutes and by daydreaming. We send you rest vibes for the marathon journey we all have ahead of us to build a new world rooted in liberation. We will rest."
That's the general vibe of a lot of the stuff that she puts out there. It's really interesting to think about rest, and think about relaxation, and think about fun as something that is actually subversive, considering the culture that many of us are steeped in, and especially so if you're from a marginalized community where traditionally, a lot of the labor and grinding has been expected to fall on you.
Jase: We're going to go on and talk about how to actually do it. How do we have fun? How do we play? We've talked a little bit about the history and some of our baggage around it, but let's talk about how to do it, and what kinds of play there are. Before we get to that, we're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors, and ways that you can help support this show to keep this content coming and this information coming to all of you out there for free. Please take a moment to listen to it, and go check out our sponsors.
Emily: How do we do all of this in practice? How do we put our playful selves forward, into the world, into exciting times? I don't know. That's a good question. We're going to try to figure it out and talk about it.
Dedeker: I think all three of us really have a hard time with it, because like you pointed out, Emily, that all three of us currently, and in the past have jobs/careers that require a little bit more of this constant stoking of the flames, constantly looking for the next lead, constant caring for it. You're just all the time there. It's not to paint a whole grass is greener situation. People who are working a 9:00 to 5:00 corporate job it's not like, "Oh, everything's so great for you."
I do think that that has been a factor with the three of us, that makes it hard for us to switch off when it's not work time and when it's fun time. I can't even tell you the number of times at the end of the day, Jase and I will turn to each other and we're just like, "Are we going to have fun? No. I don't know how to have fun."
Jase: Yes, it's usually like "What is fun?" "How do we even do fun?"
Dedeker: No. I don't know. I don't want to have fun. I'm just going to keep working.
Emily: That's not a great place to be in.
Dedeker: Actually we're gross. I'm ashamed.
Emily: I touched on this before, but the fact the Triforce, communication and radar and movies-- We've tried to structure these things into your relationships to make them better. I hope that we have made them better, but I was thinking about the fact that we've traded make them fun in essence for you. Even if it's just in the name or what Jase likes to do whittle it down from something that was a little bit more austere, I guess and--
Dedeker: an acronym.
Emily: Yes. Making it an acronym.
Dedeker: That is the weird thing though. Is that sometimes I find if you pitch people on a tool like the Triforce or radar or any other tool, not even necessarily all our tools.
Jase: They're like, aargh.
Dedeker: Yes. Aargh. They cannot seem very fun. Systems don't seem very fun to human beings. I'll be honest, sometimes radars aren't that fun. I've had some not fun radars for sure. I guess when I think about all the stuff that we've tried to craft over the years, it's always come from a place of wanting to take a concept and make it more fun and accessible. It's never come from a place of like, people need to be more serious about this goddammit. They need to buckle down.
Jase: That's a good point. Yes.
Dedeker: I saved a quote actually from that fair playbook that I've referenced on the show a couple of times by Eve Rodsky, her book that she wrote about systemizing domestic labor to make it feel more fair essentially. She comes up against that too. A very similar thing of people being like, "No, this isn't fun. We'd like to do things organically, and just figure it out. This sounds terrible." She points out the fact that, yes, but also disappointment and resentment and chao, aren't very fun as well. Sometimes you need to put a system in place to actually enable you to have more fun together, essentially.
I think about that, like with the Triforce, for instance, is that maybe on the surface, it feels a little bit weird to use this system for describing what you're going for in a conversation. I can tell you doing that is way more fun than just guessing or being disappointed when my partner doesn't get it or us getting into a tizzy, and making each other angry because the conversation has gone off the rails. That's the way that I think about it.
Jase: It almost makes me think of the idea of it's like, you put a system in place, so you don't have to spend as much time trying to negotiate those things every single time. You can just have more time to be fun, and have a good relationship.
Dedeker: There probably is something there in relationship about having both structured time and unstructured time as well or like structured interaction and unstructured interaction. The same way with structured play and unstructured play.
Emily: Which we're going to talk about momentarily. However, I just wanted to say that perhaps-- I'm saying this maybe for myself more than all of you, but maybe you can get something out of it too. Is that once you do your next radar or implement the Triforce of communication or something, maybe enjoy it and have a little bit of fun with it, give yourself permission to infuse it with fun.
Even if that just means like, okay, we have had a little bit of a tough month, why don't we make sure to make this radar playful and focusing on the positive perhaps and talking about the fun that we've had this month or something along those lines. Obviously, if you need to speak about something that's really intense and really challenging, then do that. I would love to maybe just have a radar focusing solely on the good things in the relationship for once as opposed to the challenges.
Dedeker: I'm all about it. I love that.
Emily: I got to remember that for myself for next time.
Jase: Yes. Make a note of that. Make a post-it note.
Emily: Indeed. All right. So fun. How do you do it? I don't know.
Dedeker: We've dodged the question.
Emily: We're going to try this.
Dedeker: We don't know.
Emily: Yes, we don't. It can look a lot of different ways. Because something is fun, maybe for someone else doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be fun for you, but just give it a try. Just see it for yourself. There are research based things, studies and various things out there that discuss fun. One of them talks about that unstructured play. I don't even really know how I would implement unstructured play into my life. I have no idea because it's like unstructured, improvised fun where you're discovering and creating the rules for yourself as you go. This reminds me of when I was on the playground as a youth. I don't think I could do that now and I was like playing a Felicity in American girls.
Dedeker: Oh gosh, so was I.
Emily: Oh, my god, it was so amazing.
Jase: Were you both Felicity?
Emily: Yes, I had a group of four friends or I would play Little Women and everyone was fighting over who got to be Jo.
Dedeker: Who got to be Jo, of course, every time. Well here to bring it out of childhood and into adulthood to have that playfulness or that flirtiness.
Emily: Is that like adrenaline or something that makes us put our best foot forward or be super witty and super impressive in those moments? is that all the time.
Dedeker: Like with good improv rules I think that when we're wanting to make a good impression on someone or flirt with someone, we're more likely to do it yes and to whatever they say. We're not quite at that point where we know them well enough that we're like, no, you do this.
We're less likely to do the shutdown. That's my theory, but I'm just coming up with that from the top of my brain.
Emily: I like that.
Jase: I thought about this a lot because this type of play was specifically the one that came up in a lot of the studies again, having to do mostly with children have this unstructured play, because I think when you tell an adult, you should play more, they're like, "So I have to join a sports team or have a board game night or something." I think there is something really special about this unstructured, make it up as you go play that we do really. It's like how do you even do this as an adult?
Emily: Or you need substances to get you started. Are you serious? I'm like, geez, the times when I've laughed the most of it had been on substances in the recent months. It would be great if I could get myself to a point where that's not the case where I can be just, sober Emily, having fun and enjoying myself.
Jase: Yes, I was trying to think about this and I think that, honestly, improv games is a way to do that, there's this little bit of structure, usually in those but ultimately, the game and the rules of each part of the game, you're making up as you go. The fact that it's changing is what makes it interesting and makes it fun. It also makes it challenging, but I think that's the point. That's something that can be helpful. Even just looking those up, just try them out with your partners or your friends or whoever you're around right now. Then I also thought about role-playing.
Emily: Like sexy.
Jase: No, like sexy roleplaying.
Emily: I’ve got a cloak in the closet.
Jase: That's very much a form of that.
Dedeker: Is the cloak specifically for sexy roleplay?
Jase: Like your vampire roleplay?
Dedeker: Are you sure? It could be though.
Emily: It could be.
Dedeker: Why not?
Emily: That's so then you're absolutely right.
Jase: Think about that. Think about a roleplay where it's, one person who is that, I don't know what, the doctor that, I don't know.
Dedeker: The vampire doctor.
Emily: The vampire doctor.
Jase: That's funny because I just recently was playing a video game where you are a vampire doctor.
Emily: Oh of course, there you go. you're going to go off the bat.
Jase: You're playing that scene with your partner it's like sexy times and it's like, "Come into my office,and I will check you out," and the other person--
Emily: From Transylvania?
Jase: You right there by saying that have set up a scenario that the other person didn't necessarily know was going to happen right before you said it. Then they might say, oh, right, well, I have to let you know I'm afraid of blood or something.
Emily: Oh too bad.
Jase: It's like, as you're going, you're having to renegotiate and reevaluate, like, "Okay, where's this going? Where's the fun?"
Dedeker: It's Count Duckula.
Jase: Oh, that's good.
Dedeker: It's good.
Jase: All right. There it is. Everyone go to Count Duckula, that's the end of the episode. Thank you everyone so much.
Emily: Time to play Count Duckula. I love that.
Dedeker: The new sexy game sweeping the nation.
Emily: Count Duckula.
Dedeker: I'm going to move us past the roleplaying if that's okay.
Emily: Thank you. Those are great, great suggestions. That's wonderful.
Dedeker: I think that it's interesting that you brought up the sports team thing, Jase. I think that plenty of people out there get great joy and great fun out of being on a sports team or your local your local racquetball club, or whatever it is the kids are doing these days. I also think there's something really important in finding fun in moving your body in ways that feel good to your body because I think again, with movement and body movement that also has gotten swept up in this whole very growing culture capitalist sense of like,
if you're going to be doing this--
Emily: How many different yoga classes can you definitely take?
Dedeker: You're going to be doing this, it better be getting you abs basically.
Jase: There has to be end-results.
Dedeker: If you're going to be doing this, it has to be fitness. That was something I really ran into actually when I was belly dancing that I didn't spend a lot of time teaching, I was mostly performing. There would be times where I'd pitch to a dance studio or workout studio, like, hey, I'm a teacher, I would love to be able to teach a class or something but the problem is like no one really wanted belly dance classes. They want to get to fitness classes specifically.
I don't want to learn the technique. I want it if it's going to give me abs and I ran into that a lot. Also, a lot of yoga classes in Los Angeles is that we do yoga, yoga, yoga, yoga, yoga, yoga, yoga, so great, so meditative. Then our last five minutes, "Okay, now we're doing yoga crunches," because you come to the class, and didn't do crunches-
Emily: Yogi by cycles.
Dedeker: -you're going to walk away thinking that, "That was a waste of my time." There's a lot more people out there who've done a lot more extensive writing and thinking about this than I have or that I'm doing right now. I do think there's something really important about reconnecting to movement that is fun to you, not for the purpose of losing weight, not for the purpose of getting fit, not for the purpose of any particular goal other than just moving because think it that's something that kids do all the time as well, very naturally.
Emily: Move weirdly.
Dedeker: Yesterday, I spent a lot of the day watching these three kids across the street playing in the snow, literally all day long. I was just like, "Where do they get off?" They're just like how are they having this much fun, literally just running around in the snow and shoving each other and rolling around. That's just a thing as a kid, it's like you don't think about, "I'm doing this for exercise." It's literally just like, "This is how I want to move my body because this seems fun and this is the way that I can move my body."
I would invite people to that as well of thinking about what are the ways that your body wants to move that actually feels good to you instead of feels like an obligation or a chore or like I'm doing this to get abs.
Emily: It's a good thing to remind myself.
Dedeker: Emily, are you obsessed with getting abs? Are you not moving for fun?
Emily: I definitely have been working out seven times a week just to get outside. That was what it was first, to not be so sedentary and now it's just an obsession. I need to get back to the fun of it because it made myself feel like if you don't do this, you're a failure.
Dedeker: Exactly. That's the problem.
Emily: Oh my god, it's happening again. I appreciate working out's good for a lot of reasons but when it becomes like that-- I think my partner said to me, like, "Statistically, if you work out more than five days a week, it's not helping you in any way. It's not making you happier in any way." I don't know. Something to think about there. Let's talk about learning because learning can be fun.
Jase: It sounds like a PSA, yeah.
Emily: Go learn something, kids. I really am impressed by both of you because I feel like you always are learning things. You're so good at it and you're really committed to it. It's very lovely. I definitely have always felt like I'm a person who like, "Okay, I know how to do a couple of things pretty well" and that's it. This year, I decided I really need to learn music theory.
Jase is awesome at it and is helping teach me music theory. At first I was like, "This is going to be a drag and rough because I just need to learn how to do it." Now it's, three classes in and I've been having a blast doing it. It makes like everything meld together so much better and I'm really impressed by that. Basically, you can teach an old dog new tricks.
Dedeker: You're my favorite old dog.
Emily: Thank you. I really appreciate the fact that learning new things can be fun, no matter how old you are.
Dedeker: It's great in relationship also, finding something non-work-related that you and your partner can learn together is fantastic, especially if it's something neither of you've ever done before. Hopefully, both of you maybe have at least a mild interest in it. It's like that's a wonderful, amazing bonding activity and that also is play between the two of you.
Emily: That's true.
Jase: I think the same caveat that happened with exercise, though happens with learning, where I find this for myself comes up and I know this comes up for Dedeker as well, where that learning can easily stop being fun and become another work, where it can feel like another hustle. Even if it's not a skill that directly applies to your job, it sometimes it can be hard If you find yourself slipping into that, I need to structure this. I need to maximum efficiency in learning this thing I need to really-- it can get focused in the same ways that like exercise can. I think that's also important to remember.
Maybe you do have some things that you learn in a more like this is a serious thing, but it's okay to learn things also just in a fun way of like, Oh, I'm going to learn about gardening just because it's a fun hobby or I'm going to learn about European history or something just because like whatever, I don't know. It's fun and interesting and I enjoy learning stuff. Not because I want to do anything or want to pass some qualification tests or get certified in something.
Emily: My best friend from home, he asked me for Christmas for a like DVD set of what was it? It was like World War II, like the rise and fall of Europe during World War II and like, that's his idea of fun and then Victorian England so that he can like sit and listen to it on his, while he's not lawyering, I thought it was very cute and impressive.
Jase: Then our last category of fun in these here is also just daydreaming, zoning out, sleeping, meditating. I know when I think of like, I'm going to go have fun. I usually don't think of sleeping, but that it is--
Emily: Sometimes it's so great.
Dedeker: Yes, sometimes I do.
Jase: Like the whole, the nap ministry thing that Dedeker was talking about before, it's just allow yourself unstructured time that's just unstructured, unoccupied. Allow yourself to be bored is essentially what it comes down to and embrace that and be like, wow, this is wonderful to be able to just sit around and do whatever and not have every moment structured, which is a little bit different from the unstructured play, which is more about co-discovering with someone. This is just more about with yourself. Just allowing yourself some time of not doing, of being a human being and not a human doing all the time.
Emily: Let's just quickly talk about some angle we've discussed before in, I don't know what episode, but a different episode, about how this can all go into relationships and bringing it back to relationships because that's what this podcast is about and help play is great in relationships. The Guttman's, our favorite, Gutmann's they-
Dedeker: They are our favorite Guttman's, that is true.
Emily: -they say that research has shown that engaging in novel experiences as a couple, it activates the brain's reward system and that can produce favorable benefits for couples.
Dr. Arthur Aaron and his colleagues conducted experiments and revealed that couples who go on exciting and novel date nights and engage in fun and challenging activities have higher relationship satisfaction. The novel experiences released dopamine and norepinephrine, which are the same chemicals that are released during early romantic courtship. If you want to get some NRE back in your life, do something novel and fun.
Dedeker: Just hard to do right now when a lot of us are stuck at home. Not impossible. Definitely not impossible, but you just need to put your heads together
Jase: I like Dedeker's suggestion of learning something together or exploring a new game, reading something together. Just doing something that's not part of your routine. Like change it up sometimes, do something that's new. One of the suggestions that the Guttman's gave was dancing specifically because dance--
There's not only the learning dancing, but there's also the fact that dance is itself a little bit of an improvisation of trying to interpret where the other's going and what's happening. It's always different. You're not doing, it's not like you're doing choreography every time when you're doing like partner dancing. That's absolutely something you could do online, that you could learn online to do with whoever it is that you-- who's in your bubble or who you live with.
Dedeker: In conclusion, our capitalist culture teaches us many things that we need to be working right now. We need to be working as much as possible. I think most importantly teaches us someday, you'll have fun. Like fun is the reward--
Emily: When you're tired or when you're dead.
Dedeker: Yes. Fun is the reward for when you've finally done all the things, when you've finally done enough and then the .
Jase: If you've done all the work there is to do.
Dedeker: Yes, exactly. The kicker being, there's no way to do all the work that there is to do and there's no way to do enough really, because enough is never actually defined. That's another recurring refrain in the Nap Ministries work is about this idea of like, you are enough as you are without having done anything or regardless of what it is that you have or haven't done anyway. Just remember it's bullshit, it's false, it makes us less healthy, less happy and also less productive if you're still worried about that at this point in the episode. I guess I can hope that what y'all will take away from this is this idea that like fun and rest are good in and of themselves.
Jase: For our patrons, we are doing a bonus episode, specifically we're going to be talking about some research about video games which is a type of fund that we didn't mention in this episode, specifically some research on that and their effects on adults. Again, that's something that's been studied more children in the past, but some newer research over the last few years focuses on this with adults. We're going to look at that in our bonus episode for our patrons.