I an Bogost studies fun for a living. A professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Bogost has written ten books, including quirky titles like How to Talk About Videogames, The Geek’s Chihuahua, and, most recently, Play Anything. In his latest book, Bogost makes several bold claims that challenge the way we think about fun and play. “Fun,” he writes, “turns out to be fun even if it doesn’t involve much (or any) enjoyment.” Huh?
Doesn’t fun have to feel good? Not necessarily, Bogost says. By relinquishing our notions about what fun should feel like, we open ourselves up to seeing tasks in a new way. He advises that play can be part of any difficult task, and though play doesn’t necessarily have to be pleasurable, it can free us from discomfort—which, let’s not forget, is the central ingredient driving distraction.
Given what we know about our propensity for distraction when we’re uncomfortable, reimagining difficult work as fun could prove incredibly empowering. Imagine how powerful you’d feel if you were able to transform the hard, focused work you have to do into something that felt like play. Is that even possible? Bogost thinks it is, but probably not in the way you think.
Fun and play don’t have to make us feel good per se; rather, they can be used as tools to keep us focused.
We’ve all heard Mary Poppins’s advice to add “a spoonful of sugar” to turn a job into a game, yes? Well, Bogost believes Poppins was wrong. He claims her approach “recommends covering over drudgery.” As he writes, “We fail to have fun because we don’t take things seriously enough, not because we take them so seriously that we’d have to cut their bitter taste with sugar. Fun is not a feeling so much as an exhaust produced when an operator can treat something with dignity.”
Bogost tells us that “fun is the aftermath of deliberately manipulating a familiar situation in a new way.” The answer, therefore, is to focus on the task itself. Instead of running away from our pain or using rewards like prizes and treats to help motivate us, the idea is to pay such close attention that you find new challenges you didn’t see before. Those new challenges provide the novelty to engage our attention and maintain focus when tempted by distraction.
Countless commercially produced distractions, like television or social media, use slot machine–like variable rewards to keep us engaged with a constant stream of newness. But Bogost points out that we can use the same techniques to make any task more pleasurable and compelling.
We can use the same neural hardwiring that keeps us hooked to media to keep us engaged in an otherwise unpleasant task.
Bogost gives the example of mowing his lawn. “It may seem ridiculous to call an activity like this ‘fun,’” he writes, yet he learned to love it. Here’s how: “First, pay close, foolish, even absurd attention to things.” For Bogost, he soaked up as much information as he could about the way grass grows and how to treat it. Then, he created an “imaginary playground” in which the limitations actually helped to produce meaningful experiences. He learned about the constraints he had to operate under, including his local weather conditions and what different kinds of equipment can and can’t do. Operating under constraints, Bogost says, is the key to creativity and fun. Finding the optimal path for the mower or beating a record time are other ways to create an imaginary playground.
While learning how to have fun cutting grass may seem like a stretch, people find fun in a wide range of activities that you might not find particularly interesting. Consider my local coffee-obsessed barista who spends a ridiculous amount of time refining the perfect brew, the car buff who toils for countless hours fine-tuning his ride, or the crafter who painstakingly produces intricate sweaters and quilts for everyone she knows. If people can have fun doing these activities by choice, what’s so crazy about bringing the same kind of mind-set to other tasks?
For me, I learned to stay focused on the tedious work of writing books by finding the mystery in my work. I write to answer interesting questions and discover novel solutions to old problems. To use a popular aphorism, “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” Today, I write for the fun of it. Of course, it’s also my profession, but by finding the fun I’m able to do my work without getting as distracted as I once did.
Fun is looking for the variability in something other people don’t notice. It’s breaking through the boredom and monotony to discover its hidden beauty.
The great thinkers and tinkerers of history made their discoveries because they were obsessed with the intoxicating draw of discovery—the mystery that pulls us in because we want to know more.
But remember: finding novelty is only possible when we give ourselves the time to focus intently on a task and look hard for the variability. Whether it’s uncertainty about our ability to do a task better or faster than last time or coming back to challenge the unknown day after day, the quest to solve these mysteries is what turns the discomfort we seek to escape with distraction into an activity we embrace.
The last step in managing the internal triggers that can lead to distraction is to reimagine our capabilities. We’ll start by shattering a common self-defeating belief many of us tell ourselves daily.
REMEMBER THIS
• We can master internal triggers by reimagining an otherwise dreary task. Fun and play can be used as tools to keep us focused.
• Play doesn’t have to be pleasurable. It just has to hold our attention.
• Deliberateness and novelty can be added to any task to make it fun.