The fundamentals of fun

In a world full of stressors, we’re all trying to get more sleep, more vitamins and more exercise to put a spring in our step. But what if the answer lay in a simple – and much undervalued – three-letter word?

- GENEVIEVE GANNON

One of the first pieces of advice Dr Mike Rucker gives in his book about fun is to throw away your iron. Ironing, he contends, is “agonising”. It’s a needless, thankless task that monopolises time that could be better spent enjoying exuberant, uplifting fun. Play is good for your body, mind and soul. Ironing offers none of that.

“Unless you’re in a handful of fields that demand starch, you could probably throw out your iron and nobody would notice,” the organisational psychologist writes in The Fun Habit.

As far as self-help messages go, it’s an easy one to obey. But that makes it no less important. For Dr Rucker, fun is serious business. He believes we are in an epidemic of drudgery that is not only sapping our vitality but destroying our mental and physical health.

“We live in a world which is critically fun starved,” he tells me over the phone from his Californian home. “We’re conditioned, as we age, to believe that trying to have fun is childish, even inappropriate. We undervalue the mental and physical benefits of fun.

“There’s emerging research that’s making the case that leisure and fun are as vital as sleep,” he continues. “There’s the need for rest and then there’s the need for restoration.”

We know, intuitively, that enjoying ourselves reduces stress but it goes far deeper than that. When we do something spontaneous, surprising or unexpected, we create special moments. “When we’re indexing those memories, it creates neuro-plasticity,” Dr Rucker says. Fun is good for our brains.