Are You Having Fun Yet?

Once upon a time, as a kid back in the 80s, I was a reader. Actually, that understates things. I was a READER with a capital R. to the point that it now embarrasses me that it took until my late 20s to figure out I was meant to be a librarian. I read broadly, from fantasy to history and back. I read deeply.

I could read through doorstops like Woodership Down or The NeverEnding Story in a day or two. Reading was my comfort in bad times and my joy in good times. It got to the point that when I was in trouble, I wouldn't be grounded from TV or going out to play. But from my books. Simply put, reading was a major source of fun and imagination for me.

And given the stacks of books I had strewn around my bedroom, it was always in arm's reach. But as adolescence gave way to real life, reading gradually faded into the background. The internet came along in high school, and I was able to find more friends I clicked with. As I rose in college, and then my career, weekends spent with fantasy epics and the latest historical fiction tomes gave way to Stephen Covey and David Allen.

The PhD was probably the nail in the coffin, as I found myself reading so much scholarship that I didn't have brain power to do much more than watch TV or YouTube during the few hours I wasn't working or studying. Let's just say the jump to leadership didn't help matters. Recently, I've been feeling the need to change things up, all work and no play makes your leadership practice stale.

I And as I pondered and experimented with changing up my routine, I picked up a good fiction book for the first time in years. And after inhaling it in about a day, I realized what my leadership life had been missing. 

Fun! 

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To be clear, I get it. We've all got a lot going on. You have your work as a leader, yes, but you also have home commitments, family commitments, errands, chores, bills, a bit of a social life, and you'd like to get at least a little sleep in there, too.

There just aren't many cracks in our lives to fit in entertainment and hobbies. And yet, play is an important aspect of our lives, regardless of our age and responsibility level. it lets different parts of the brain engage while overused bits get some rest. Play forces us to step back from things we may be paying too much attention to, so our subconscious can work on those issues in the background.

And most of all, by focusing on something unrelated to your leadership challenge, you may accidentally have an insight that helps you see the world in a new way. I think of this kind of fun as falling into three buckets. Restful fun, physical fun, and creative fun. Restful fun is pretty much what it sounds like, and it's what I did this morning as I have the day off work today.

I slept in, ran one quick errand, then watched a movie, read a little bit, and kind of just messed around social media. 

 Physical fun for me is something where you physically change it up from what you do in your daily life. In my case, that means getting out of the house in my daily routine, or getting some sort of exercise or adventure in.

 As for creative fun, That old habit of fiction reading definitely counts. I've got 100 pages or so of The Count of Monte Cristo to read this week, and some discussion questions to ponder for the book club I just joined.

 And between you and me, the kind leadership challenge sometimes falls into the category of creative fun, too, as long as I'm not taking it too seriously. Especially when I get towards the end of writing an episode like [00:05:00] this and realize I've accidentally set a challenge I need to take on for myself.

Because, even with the reading, I could use a little more creativity in my life right now. So here's your leadership challenge for this week. What flavor of fun are you missing in your life? Restful, physical, or 

Creative? and how can you increase that fun?

 if in doubt, what you probably need the most is rest. Just know that having fun isn't selfish or lazy. It gives you the energy and perspective you need to be a better person and a better leader. And in any case, it's a great way to be kind to yourself, which is sort of the point of this podcast.