Introduction: The Brainy Business Podcast
Melina Palmer: Welcome to episode 586 of the Brainy Business, understanding the psychology of why people buy. In today’s episode, I’m excited to introduce you to Dr. Mike Rucker, author of The Fun Habit. Ready? Let’s get started.
Announcer: You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast, where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain-friendly. Now, here is your host, Melina Palmer.
Reclaiming Joy When Life Gets Heavy
Melina Palmer: Hello, hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. When life gets heavy—and it always does, at some point—what’s usually the first thing to go? For most people, it’s fun. The hobby you haven’t touched in months, the friend you keep meaning to call, the thing that used to light you up that somehow got worked out of your schedule. And yet, the research is pretty clear that those are exactly the things we should be protecting most when things get hard.
My guest in today’s Refreshed Conversation, which originally aired in January of 2023, is Dr. Mike Rucker. Mike is an organizational psychologist, behavioral scientist, and the author of The Fun Habit. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Fast Company, Psychology Today, Forbes, and more.
What I love about this conversation is that it isn’t just about having more fun for fun’s sake. It’s about understanding why happiness is valuable for all of us, why we truly need it, and about how chasing happiness the wrong way can actually make you less happy. And don’t worry, we are definitely going to get into some stuff to avoid so you can bring more fun back into your life right away, in the right way.
As you listen today, think about something that used to be genuinely fun for you that you’ve let slip. Keep it in mind. I have a feeling you’re going to know exactly what to do with it by the end of the episode. Really quickly, before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch, and more. It’s all waiting for you in the app you’re listening to and at thebrainybusiness.com/586. Now, let’s jump right in.
Melina Palmer: Dr. Mike Rucker, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.
Dr. Mike Rucker: Hey, thanks for having me.
Melina Palmer: Absolutely. I’m so excited to talk about fun today and habits. And what better way to kick off the year than that, really? For anything, I think any day is better with a little bit of fun. Before we get into the meat of the fun—it’s weird to say, but before we get into all that—how about you share a little bit about yourself and your background for everyone who’s not yet familiar with you?
The Paradox of Chasing Happiness
Dr. Mike Rucker: Yeah. So, by academic trade, I’m an organizational psychologist. Since getting my PhD, I’ve focused more on behavioral science. I have a book out called The Fun Habit, which is essentially looking at living a life more joyfully through the active pursuit of the activities you engage in, rather than pursuing happiness as kind of an ideal.
Melina Palmer: Yeah. So, dig in on that a little bit more.
Melina Palmer: Right.
Melina Palmer: What does that mean to you? What should that mean to the listener? Knowing that this episode is scheduled to come out right after the book launched—you know, three days ago in the “future” of when this happens. But this is the time of year where people are thinking about what they’re going to be wanting for the rest of the year, reflecting on the year before, and looking forward. So when you talk about that pursuit of happiness as an ideal, what does all that mean?
Dr. Mike Rucker: Yeah. So, for quite a long time, I was kind of a grind-it-out entrepreneur, and then evolved into a grind-it-out entrepreneur for the company that I still am associated with. But I’ve also been a purveyor of the Quantified Self movement and a charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association. So I’ve always been fascinated by what now is commonly referred to as “life hacks.”
For a long time—I usually talk about the period of 2009 to 2016—I’d really optimized my life for living a joyful life and trying to extract as much happiness as I could. Obviously, fitness and success and all of that was going fairly well. I would show up to Quantified Self conferences and talk about those types of things. I was working for a fitness company and trying to help others sort of lift themselves with regards to fitness, too. I felt like I was fairly happy. I was using the tools of positive psychology fairly effectively.
All of that was going great until 2016, when a few unfortunate events happened. I lost my brother quite suddenly to a pulmonary embolism. Then, being a purveyor of fitness and an amateur fitness enthusiast, I had done a couple of Ironmans and a couple of half-Ironmans. I found out quite suddenly—there wasn’t a slow onset, I essentially ran my fastest half marathon and then a few weeks later found out I had advanced osteoarthritis and wouldn’t be able to run again. I had no more cartilage and was a candidate for a hip replacement. At such a young age, it meant I had to give up running or anything that put a lot of impact on the hip.
So I was like, “Okay, well, I’ve faced challenges before. I’ll figure this one out.” I tried to continue to pursue happiness as aggressively as I had in the past. Paradoxically, I found out really quickly that the more I tried to chase happiness, the more unhappy it was making me. I wanted to figure out why, because it was a downward spiral leading to some pretty negative consequences.
So, like a good academic, I went into the research to try and sort out why this was happening. There was this emerging research coming out of the University of California, Berkeley, and some other places. A professor whose work I really like in this area, Dr. Iris Mauss, had identified that folks—especially in Western cultures—who were overly concerned with happiness (not necessarily valuing wanting to be happy or wanting others to flourish, but people who were obsessively focused on “I want to be happy”) were actually some of the most unhappy. It went to the point that there was a fairly direct line to a lot of mental distress, like depression and things of that nature. You can completely overthink this and it leads to weird outcomes.
If these tools of happiness that were working for me so well were no longer functioning, what was left? What I found is that if we take an action-oriented approach—which is essentially a tool of mindfulness—and use our time to invite joy and delight by doing things we genuinely enjoy, we get much better results. Whether that’s reconnecting with a hobby, making sure we’re hanging out with friends, or doing things we feel a connection to that light us up, over time, indexing those opportunities to do joyful things ultimately gets you out of that rut.
In short, a lot of us, especially those of us who are Type A, highly driven personalities, don’t realize that we’ve relinquished a lot of control because we’re letting outside influences take control over our time rather than spending our time deliberately.
Maximizing Time Affluence and Activity Bundling
Melina Palmer: Yeah. This is coming out right after last week’s episode, which was a conversation with Ayelet Fishbach and Cassie Holmes. Ayelet’s book is called Get It Done (she’s at the University of Chicago), and Cassie’s book is called Happier Hour.
Dr. Mike Rucker: And Cassie’s work is integrated into mine! I mean, the vacation mindset—these are all amazing tools. So that’s great.
Melina Palmer: Awesome.
Melina Palmer: Yeah.
Melina Palmer: And yay! Okay, good. It’s very much about stacking these up in a way that’s going to line up for everybody as a theme for this time of the year. Did Cassie talk about Caitlyn Woolley? Because she’s another researcher I really admire, and they’ve done a lot of research together.
Melina Palmer: No, not really. Tell us more about that work.
Dr. Mike Rucker: Yeah, so one of her colleagues, Caitlyn Woolley—I really admire her work, and she specifically uses the word “fun,” which obviously makes me say, “Yes, let’s take ownership of that.” She has shown how we can have more longevity with certain tasks if we just add a component that makes it pleasurable for us. One of the tools I talk about in the book is “activity bundling.”
So many of us do mundane things, but with just a little bit of creativity, we can reframe them. We can pair a task that doesn’t take a lot of cognitive load—like domestic work—with a podcast we really enjoy, like yours, or music we love, and make it more fun by proxy through bundling those activities.
Melina Palmer: Yes! Every Tuesday is a refresh episode from the back catalog of the podcast, and then there’s a new episode on Fridays. I actually have an episode about temptation bundling, talking about Katie Milkman’s research, which fits right in.
I think word choice is so important. We were talking about this a little bit before we started recording. I don’t like to say people are “overachievers.” I feel like I’m just an “achiever”—I don’t need to be “over” anything! But like you said, there are a lot of achievers who listen to the show. As we’re looking at entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, and academics striving for greatness, we are judging ourselves on a scale all the time. I really like how you point out that the myopic pursuit of happiness can make you focus too much on the little evaluations instead of enjoying the full journey. What is some high-level advice you can share about helping people get out of that happiness chase?
Dr. Mike Rucker: I think there are a couple of mental frames you can use. One is recognizing that happiness is often an exercise in evaluation. How can you evaluate less? Because evaluation is a poor use of time. Instead, how can you refocus your thoughts toward an action bias? You say to yourself, “It doesn’t necessarily matter where I’m at. I have control in this moment to be present where my feet are and enjoy the time that I have.”
Instead of our brains operating strictly on cause-and-effect, we now understand that the brain is a predictive engine. If we take control over how we spend our time and bias it towards fun things, ultimately we’re going to start to perceive the world in a more positive, optimistic light.
Research that I really like from one of Cassie’s colleagues, Colin West (he co-wrote the vacation study with her), talks a lot about this sense of control. When we talk about time affluence and time poverty, that’s an essential component of my work, too. How can we perceive ourselves as more time affluent? The way we do that is to regain our agency and autonomy, figuring out how we can have control over our time.
One of the exercises I suggest is taking a “time audit” and really seeing if the activities in your 168-hour week are things that you find enjoyable. I know I’m speaking to entrepreneurs, and I speak that language because I was one. We have taught ourselves to be so critical of our calendars for the sake of productivity, but we haven’t thought about whether the time we spend actually brings us joy. Looking at that and trying to figure out how to adjust your routine to integrate things that make you feel good is incredibly important.
A whole host of empirical research now suggests that there are many reasons we should do that, especially for high achievers. First, we need renewal. If we’re working right up until the end of the day, our productivity eventually falls off a cliff.
Melina Palmer: Right. I’ve talked about it, but not as a dedicated episode, so feel free to build on that.
Dr. Mike Rucker: In the literature, it’s often called “admin work” or busywork. It’s things we do to feel good because we’re “working 60 hours a week.” But if you look critically at that work, it should either be outsourced because it’s a terrible ROI on your time, or it shouldn’t be done at all. You’re essentially reading email newsletters you don’t need to, but because it feels like an extension of work, you tell yourself you’re grinding it out.
The important thing here, especially for folks who are time-poor, is to realize that if you don’t take time off the table for yourself, you’re not showing up as the best version of yourself. A simple math equation can explain it: if you work 40 hours a week and save time for renewal, that renewal gives you the capacity to have a 2x output. Meanwhile, the person who thinks they’re working harder by logging 60 hours a week might only be producing one unit of output because they are exhausted. The person working 40 hours is getting 80 hours’ worth of output, and they are also having a lot of fun! It becomes an upward spiral because they can use those extra hours for non-work things that increase their vitality.
Unfortunately, people who are stretched thin often fall victim to “passive leisure”—like plopping down on the couch to watch a show they don’t even care about, doom-scrolling social media, or doing things out of convenience just to pass the time before sleep. But if you make space and create psychological safety in your schedule, you can add in “active leisure”—activities that require a little bit of energy to get started but are ultimately additive to your vitality.
The PLAY Model: Designing a Balanced Life
Dr. Mike Rucker: When our lives are overly habituated and we’re always doing the same stuff, we store those memories as single units. When you look back at your life—and I can tell you, having just turned 50, you start to look back at what your legacy looks like—if it was just one long, boring list of routine details, it all blurs together as one thing. But when we encode a rich blend of interesting experiences through spontaneity, curiosity, and relationships with interesting people, it makes life feel so much more robust.
Melina Palmer: I love all of that. The closest concept I’ve covered is “bike-shedding,” which I talk about as a form of productive procrastination—doing all the things that feel urgent and important but are really just distractions.
One of the things I found really interesting early in your book is that you say seeking out fun is not actually the norm for most adults. Can you talk about that?
Dr. Mike Rucker: Well, it’s funny because there is a selection bias with podcasters. You’re doing something where you’re clearly having fun—I can tell by the big smile on your face! Usually, that requires being deliberate about your calendar so you have the time to do this.
But for the general population, most people live a habituated life. They submit to routines and rhythms, which become comfortable, but they forget they can have a little bit of time for themselves. Especially folks who are working and also have the burden of domestic duties; they just let all of those responsibilities crowd them out.
The reasons for this are complex, but the underpinnings are certainly that the Puritan work ethic is still alive and well. Hustle culture suggests there’s some sort of trophy you get for grinding. Although, what’s really great is that post-pandemic, you’re seeing even the folks who championed it, like Gary Vaynerchuk, come out and say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, I need to course-correct.” The tenor of what they put out has completely changed.
The small silver lining of the pandemic is that a lot of us got displaced. Disruption is a great opportunity for change. It made people ask, “Holy cow, is this the life that I want to lead?” Because we saw folks face their mortality, I believe you’re seeing a mild awakening of people deciding they want to live life more joyfully now, instead of just waiting for a prize at the very end of the finish line.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, for sure. Seeking out fun shouldn’t be that hard, right? We should know what makes us happy, but maybe we’ve lost some of that over the years. What advice do you have for people to start discovering what is fun for them? Fun isn’t the same for everyone, and it’s not the same in every situation.
Dr. Mike Rucker: Absolutely. The initial step, if you’re really struggling to figure out what you like, is to sit down and brainstorm. Approach it with curiosity and have fun with the brainstorming itself—don’t make it a chore.
You can look back at what your hobbies were when you did have more time affluence. What did you authentically feel connected to? A lot of times, people write down things out of FOMO (fear of missing out), so make sure it’s something you actually want to do.
Once you have a list, pare it down to about 8 to 15 actionable items. I suggest including some pro-social activities, whether that’s connecting with friends you haven’t seen in a while or pairing fun with kindness by volunteering.
An important second step is making sure you aren’t just adding more things to an already busy life. I suggest doing a time audit of your previous 168 hours. I know “audit” is not a fun word, but it’s an important step to see where you are spending time in ways you didn’t intend.
In the book, I share a simple framework called the PLAY model. It stands for:
Pleasing activities are things where you can have fun without needing a lot of energy. Research from Daniel Gilbert and Matt Killingsworth shows that integrating these into your week keeps you feeling satisfied and gives you a sense of purpose.
The Living quadrant contains those big, effortful experiences that allow us to grow. We can’t do them all the time, but they let us express our identity, connect to nature, or build mastery in a hobby.
The more critical part of the model is managing Yielding and Agonizing.
Yielding activities are things we do passively because we are burnt out—like mindlessly scrolling social media or turning on a TV show we don’t even care about just to pass the time. These are low-hanging fruit where you can playfully swap them out for something that actually lights you up. For entrepreneurs, this is often busywork or administrative tasks you could easily delegate.
Agonizing activities are the things we absolutely have to do. To create space here, ask yourself: Can this be outsourced? Or, can I pair this task with something fun to completely change its tenor?
Transforming “Agonizing” Tasks into Engaging Activities
Melina Palmer: So, even for tasks we still have to do that aren’t inherently fun, there are ways to make them more enjoyable?
Dr. Mike Rucker: Yeah! For instance, if meetings have become agonizing, can you change the environment? If you go outside, does that make it more pleasurable? These changes don’t need to be profound. It’s just about taking things you dread and coupling them with something else, or changing them to be more interesting.
If you have to grind through a ton of emails, can you gamify it? Or, bringing up Katie Milkman’s work on temptation bundling, can you make the reward after the task so fun that the whole experience feels lighter? You can change up the people you work with, the environment, or the way you execute the task.
Melina Palmer: When I was fresh out of college, I started working at an advertising agency. They were generally pretty good about incorporating fun, but one of my favorite things they did was during our Monday morning staff meetings.
Along with talking about upcoming projects and pitches, we played a game called “Bucks and Quarters.” We would go around the room and share one cool thing we did over the weekend, and we could give kudos to a coworker for doing something great the week before. If someone did something amazing, you could give them a dollar. The person with the best weekend story got a quarter. It was a silly little thing, but it got all the weekend chatter out of the way at once, reducing extra water-cooler distractions. Because everyone was laughing together, we bonded over shared interests like camping or concerts. It was a great way to reduce idle time while building team connections.
Dr. Mike Rucker: Yes, and that was likely predicated on the psychological safety of the group. For any leader listening, the hard work of organizing fun is ensuring you are creating a safe space where everyone actually wants to share.
When you hear about successful fun interventions at work, they need to be inclusive. Leaders need to set the example because employees naturally model leadership behavior.
Melina Palmer: Absolutely. I’ll link to the episode on vulnerability loops, which explains that if you open up first, trust will follow.
In my book, What Your Employees Need and Can’t Tell You, I have a chapter called “Where’s the Fun?” where we look at how to help people navigate change at work. You also have a chapter dedicated to fun in the workspace. I’d love to talk about how fun and change management intersect.
Using Fun as a Tool for Change Management
Dr. Mike Rucker: I love this question. From my academic background, we often looked for disruption to orchestrate change, which is usually developed around chaos. But I think fun can be an incredibly powerful tool to get people to buy in.
First, fun in the workplace unites people around a common goal. If you are enjoying your time together, that cohesion makes you want to accomplish things as a team. As you are architecting a change, what elements of fun can you integrate so that you are actually attracting people to it? If we can make the transition more comfortable, people will naturally gravitate toward it.
Melina Palmer: Exactly. My framework for change is called “It’s Not About the Cookie,” which already has a lighthearted slant to it!
One of the big problems with change at work is that we’ve been told change is always hard and painful. But does it have to be? We change all the time for things we want to do, and we do it effortlessly.
Another mistake organizations make is thinking that “change” only refers to massive initiatives like mergers, rebrands, or leadership restructures. Because our brains work in micro-moments, we should actually be looking at the little things. I talk about these little moments as “snowflakes.” They either build a beautiful snowball of positive change, or, if ignored, they create an icy tundra of nightmares.
If you look at all the small moments where you can build toward change, you can ensure you aren’t throwing too many new processes at people at once, which makes them unreceptive to the changes that actually matter.
Dr. Mike Rucker: You are spot on. Most of the consulting models taught in organizational psychology assume that change has to have jagged edges and rely on chaos to put things back together. I love your reframe of this. Does it have to make everyone feel so uncomfortable that it feels like a substantial loss? There has to be a better way!
If people feel like their lives are genuinely better and the new way of doing things feels natural, you will get a much better result. It pairs perfectly with the buy-in component of change management.
Melina Palmer: Yes! I actually use the exact same framework for pricing strategy as I do for change management, because even if money isn’t changing hands, you still have to “sell” people on the idea and get them to buy in.
We also know from research that employees who have a best friend at work are more loyal, engaged, and productive. Fun is a natural catalyst for those relationships.
Dr. Mike Rucker: Absolutely. How do you create those fun opportunities outside of an employee’s immediate department? For larger organizations, this can happen through employee resource groups or shared interest affinity groups. It’s important to allow that cross-pollination.
Within a single department, power dynamics and social norms can make it hard for someone to let their guard down. But when two people from different departments connect on equal footing around a shared interest, they can enjoy themselves without professional pressure. That non-linear connection often leads to highly innovative ideas for the company.
When introducing fun at work, you have to be empathetic because we are all so different. Forced fun—like mandatory happy hours—is not fun. The world has voted on this!
Instead, you can empower individuals to find their own fun so they return to work with more vitality, or you can design inclusive, organic opportunities where people can self-select. Whether that’s a walking meeting or gamifying a creative task where it’s safe to fail and try multiple ideas, autonomy is key.
Melina Palmer: I talk about this in my book as well—the difference between telling a team to write an orderly list on a legal pad versus giving them colorful post-its and markers. Just having physical space to move around and a bit of color makes the task feel more collaborative and fun, which leads to stronger ideas.
Dr. Mike Rucker: What you’re describing is allowing folks to flex their autonomy. When someone prescribes exactly how you must complete a task, it is almost impossible for it to be fun. If you keep the required outcome the same but allow people the freedom to achieve it in a way that feels comfortable for them, they will have more fun every single time.
Melina Palmer: I love it. We could talk about fun all day, but our time is coming to a close. I will be linking to your book, The Fun Habit, in the show notes. What is the best way for people to connect with you and share their fun ideas?
Dr. Mike Rucker: I am always down for the dialogue! My website is michaelrucker.com. I have a lot of posts sharing the science of fun, and it’s a great place to reach out to me directly or find my social media channels.
Melina Palmer: Fantastic. We will link to all of those resources. I wish you a very fun rest of your day!
Dr. Mike Rucker: You too! Thank you so much for having me, it was an absolute pleasure.
Conclusion: Reclaiming Joy in Daily Life
Melina Palmer: Thank you again to Dr. Mike Rucker for joining me on the show today.
What got your brain buzzing in today’s conversation? For me, it probably isn’t too surprising to know that I love being able to make all of work and life a little—or a lot—more fun.
Who ever said that learning has to be boring anyway? Who decided that change had to be hard, or that business had to be stone-faced and serious? It just doesn’t have to be this way.
There is so much research showing the real physical and mental benefits of fun. When we incorporate it, we are healthier, happier, more engaged at work, and better in our relationships. We are a species that is meant to have fun. It doesn’t mean being ecstatically happy every minute of every day—we aren’t built for that either. But we should make the effort to bring fun back in, especially when life gets heavy, because that is exactly when it matters most.
So, what about you? What can you do right now to have a little more fun today? Is there something you used to love that you don’t do anymore? Why did you stop? How could you add even a small version of it back into your schedule? It doesn’t have to be a daily commitment—maybe it’s once a month or once a quarter.
Whatever it is, come share it with me on social media! You can find me as @thebrainybiz pretty much everywhere, and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn.
All of the links to Dr. Mike Rucker’s book, The Fun Habit, and our related past episodes are waiting for you in your podcast app or at thebrainybusiness.com/586.
Thank you again for listening and learning with me. Join us next time, and remember to be thoughtful.
Announcer: Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops, and other services to help businesses be more brain-friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.
