Each week, a new group comes to the Hotel Santa Catalina for a retreat coordinated by Santa Catalina Retreats. Many of the retreat participants fit a similar mold: high achievers, doers, people who don’t stop enough to rest in their day-to-day lives.
In conversations with participants of the various retreats, I’ve noticed a recurring theme that sounds like this:
I’m good at “getting shit done,” but that somewhere along the way, I stopped having fun.
It’s a theme that comes up often with my coaching clients.
And it’s a predicament with which I am intimately familiar in my personal practice.
Sometimes I can be so focused on the thing that I’m doing — on doing it well, or on what I can learn from the experience — that I forget to enjoy the experience.
I forget to have fun.
I noticed this during a surf lesson last week. I was frustrated by the process — I wanted to “get it” so I could enjoy the actual process of surfing. Everyone else was talking about how much fun they were having. I took a step back and reminded myself:
This is supposed to be fun. Even in the process of getting smacked around by the waves.
The moment wasn’t unique to surfing. Back at home, I often must remind myself of this in the middle of flying trapeze and trampoline practices.
The fun doesn’t start when you finally learn the skill or become proficient. The process of learning is fun too.
In fact, that’s what keeps you coming back for more practice.
The Other Side of Work
And yet most of us resist fun. Fun is something to do “after.”
After the work is done.
After the chores are complete.
After the laundry.
After the dishes.
After the homework.
After the kids are asleep.
After this big project.
After the launch.
After the “real work.”
It’s an illusion.
There’s no “after.” Because the work is never done. The chores are never complete. There is always more to do.
We live our lives in the belief that we can work for a certain number of years and then hang it up to retire and that’s when the fun starts. But life doesn’t really work like that anymore.
And even if it does — even if it could — is that really what you want?
Do you really want to put fun on the shelf until the work is complete?
Why is fun on the other side of work?
To me, that seems silly and self-defeating.
Productive vs Unproductive “Procrastination”
I’ve always been a big fan of what I call “productive procrastination” — procrastination in which I’m inadvertently learning a new skill or create something that turns out to be useful.
But what about “unproductive procrastination”? Things that appear to have no productive value, that don’t advance you to your goal.
The only reason that exists for doing them is that they make you feel good.
Reading a novel. Doing a puzzle. Flipping through some fashion magazines. Walking the beach and looking for shells. Aimless wandering through a few stores on a Saturday afternoon. Doing an arts and crafts project. Making a sand castle on the beach.
Watching a good movie or a good television show.
Engaging in an abandoned hobby. Maybe even discovering a new hobby.
When we find ourselves getting sucked into one of these activities we often berate ourselves for weak willpower and succumbing to the pull of procrastination.
These activities don’t feel productive in the traditional sense.
They feel like the not important and non urgent activities.
They may feel like fun.
That’s why we fall into their “traps.”
But aren’t they important?
The pursuit of peak performance and increased productivity through purposeful doing can only take us so far.
If we’re not having fun, then what’s it all for?
Making Fun Part of the Process
What about creating a life where fun is the path?
That doesn’t mean you don’t work hard. It doesn’t mean you allow distractions to take over.
It means you recognize that fun can be part of the work, and distractions can be part of the process.
Sometimes these moments of distraction and fun even fuel the process.
What if the magazine that called to you when you “should have” been writing had a message for you — even if that message was simply to slow down and shift your mind to something else for a while?
Flowers in the Garden
Fun activities are the flowers in the garden of our lives: they don’t necessarily produce fruits and seeds that provide material sustenance, but they sustain us in a different way.
Fun nourishes the spirit and soul; it enhances our experience of life.
Fun makes us feel alive.
Maybe the only reason to do something is because it’s fun.
Isn’t that enough?
I would love to hear from you on this one: What are some things that you used to do for fun that you stopped doing because they don’t feel productive?
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