Have Fun to Be More Productive

Have you ever caught yourself saying, "I'll have fun once everything is done"—only to realize that everything is never actually done? Or felt guilty for taking time to do something you enjoy because there are still tasks waiting for you?

Many of us were taught that fun is something we have to earn after we've finished working. But when the to-do list never ends, joy keeps getting postponed. What if having fun wasn't a reward for productivity—but one of the things that actually made you more productive?

In this episode, Lisa challenges the belief that productivity has to be serious. She explores the science behind play, explains how fun fuels creativity, motivation, and resilience, and shares practical ways to intentionally bring more joy into your daily life. You'll learn why making space for play isn't indulgent—it's one of the smartest productivity strategies you can adopt.

This week, episode 321 of the Positively Living® Podcast explores why having fun makes you more productive and shares simple ways to use play as a powerful tool for boosting your energy, creativity, and capacity.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand why fun is often treated as a reward instead of a productivity tool.
• Learn how play supports your brain, creativity, and long-term productivity.
• Discover the connection between dopamine, motivation, and creative problem-solving.
• Recognize why delaying joy until your work is finished creates a cycle of burnout.
• Learn why play is productive work for your brain, not a distraction from it.
• Understand the difference between play and fun—and why both matter.
• Explore how guilt and cultural beliefs keep adults from prioritizing play.
• Reframe fun as an investment in your energy rather than something you have to earn.
• Identify activities you've stopped doing that once brought you genuine joy.
• Learn how to use play to prime your brain before tackling difficult tasks.
• Discover why even 5–20 minutes of fun can positively impact your focus and motivation.
• Build a personalized list of joyful activities you can easily incorporate into busy days.
• Hear a real-life coaching example of how prioritizing creativity improved productivity.
• Learn why protecting time for play helps reduce stress and increase resilience.
• Discover how making room for joy allows you to show up more consistently in every area of your life.

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the episode to post in your stories and tag me!  And don’t forget to follow, rate, and review the podcast and tell me your key takeaways!

Learn more about Positively LivingⓇ and Lisa at https://positivelyproductive.com/podcast/

Stop trying to fit into someone else’s productivity rules! Grab my free Productivity Toolkit, a collection of workbooks designed to help you explore how you work, uncover what truly matters to you, and create your very own energy-friendly systems. Get it here: www.positivelyproductive.com/plpkit

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LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Episode 56: How Play Helps Quiet Your Inner Critic with Jeff Harry

Episode 197: Why Prioritizing Happiness Makes You More Productive

Episode 312: Energy Management: Build Capacity Instead of Just Managing Time

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Transcript

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Lisa Zawrotny: 0:21

Somewhere along the way, most of us got the message that fun was a reward, something you earned after the work was done, much like rest, and since the work is never really done, fun just keeps getting pushed to later until you finally break down and you have it, and then you feel guilty about it, and it's this vicious cycle, you snap like an overstretched rubber band, but then along with it comes the guilt. You're listening to the Positively Living Podcast. I'm your host, Lisa Zarotni, founder of Positively Productive Systems, and a productivity coach certified in positive psychology and stress management. Join me as we explore ways to live a more proactive, positive life with episodes on productivity, self-awareness, mindset, entrepreneur life, habits, and systems, simplicity, fun, and more. I understand overwhelm personally as a multi-passionate entrepreneur, wife and mom to kids and cats, and as a caregiver, I'm here to help you choose what's right for you, so you can do less, live more, and breathe easier. Sound good. Let's get to it. Welcome to the Positively Living Podcast. I'm your host, Lisa, and if you've been feeling like the world is a lot right now, like the weight of it just keeps getting heavier, and there's always something more urgent, more serious to deal with, and you need to be responsible. You're going to love this episode, because today we're talking about having fun, about playing, about the things we think of as optional, or that we used to do when we were kids, but there's so much more than that. Of all the practical productivity conversations we've had on this show, this might be the one you'll feel the most resistance to, and you might also be intrigued. I mean, it sounds a bit like cheating, right? Enjoy yourself and still get things done, and maybe even get them done better. How can that be? Well, that's what we're digging into today. And I'm so happy to inspire you to embrace joyous things, knowing they're going to benefit you in so many ways. Somewhere along the way, most of us got the message that fun was a reward, something you earned after the work was done, much like rest, and since the work is never really done, fun just keeps getting pushed to later, until you finally break down, and you have it, and then you feel guilty about it, and it's this vicious cycle, you snap like an overstretched rubber band, but then along with it comes the guilt, for those determined to be productive, it feels indulgent. Play feels juvenile, right? Like we did when we were kids, and somehow that's not okay when you're an adult. And any kind of lightness, especially in a heavy world, needs to be justified. You have to be serious about everything, because that's how you're going to get things done. And the world has made this worse, not better. When things feel heavy and uncertain, we tend to double down on the seriousness, and I understand why. Sometimes it's survivor's guilt, sometimes it's just this matter of staying focused, and we feel like seriousness has to come with that. We go with what's practical, what's necessary, what's efficient. We've been taught that that equals serious. We tell ourselves that there will be time for joy when all the rest of it's done, when things calm down, when we fix what's broken, then we'll have fun. But what I've come to realize, both in my own life and in my work with clients, is that things don't ever completely calm down, so we're setting ourselves up for misery. We're setting ourselves up to miss out on the fun. It's a trap. There's always another difficult season ahead, and if we keep deferring play and fun until things get easier, until things get better, it won't happen, and that's a problem, not just for our own happiness and satisfaction, which should be enough, but also for our productivity. Although we think of play and fun as a break from productive work, it's actually productive work for our brains. Psychiatrist Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play has spent decades studying the relationship between play and human development. His research found a strong correlation between playful activity and success. We may think of this as relating to childhood development, and it most certainly does, but the benefits don't stop there. Play supports neurological growth and development throughout our lives, helping us build complex, skilled, flexible, and socially adept brains. I feel like there's a joke in there, but seriously, all of these things are part of what develop in our brains when we play at the neurochemical level. Play and fun trigger dopamine. Brain, and I've talked about this quite a bit on the podcast. That's the brain's reward and motivation chemical. When dopamine arrives, so do those positive emotions, which drive us forward to do the things that are difficult. It's a domino effect of the best kind that promotes attention and learning ability. Dopamine is also deeply connected to creativity, when you solve a problem, when you have a flash of insight, dopamine is released and deep brain reward structures are activated, which is part of why creative play and problem solving feel so good and support each other so well. We first explored an aspect of this topic back in episode 56 with Jeff Harry, who explained exactly how your brain responds to play. He shared the science behind why it opens up creativity, it releases perfectionism, and he did that in the context of helping you deal with your inner critic, which is one of the things that blocks you from being creative and productive. So, if you haven't listened to that episode, I encourage you to check it out. He is a fun guy with a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm, and you'll love it. It's a fun listen, so there you go. It's one way to take an active step on the topic we're talking about today, and in episode 197 I talked about how prioritizing happiness actually makes you productive long term. When you focus on being productive, you may or may not be happy. Odds are probably not, but when you focus on being happy, you get happiness with productivity as a byproduct, and having fun is one of the most reliable paths to happiness. How amazing is it that enjoyable dopamine-inducing activities facilitate exactly what we need to be efficient, innovative, productive? So, if play is good for us, why aren't we doing more of it? Great question. As Elise Myers says, I'm so glad you asked. I'd love to tell you. Perhaps part of it is because we don't realize just how good it is, just how necessary it is. But I suspect the bigger reason is that we haven't given ourselves permission to do so. We equate results with difficulty. Hard work is a phrase that is baked into everything we talk about in society, and everything that we elevate, it's a mantra, it's an identity, it's what we aspire to, it's how we grew up, and how we want the next generation to be. When we wipe our brows and let people know how difficult it was, it's a badge of honor. So we feel guilty doing something purely for enjoyment when there are tasks to be done, we feel like we haven't earned it. We feel like others would judge us for taking time to do something fun, and it's true they might, because when we have this concept built into society, and that's like the level in which we judge others, it's bound to happen. I want to break that cycle together, and I understand that it feels a bit like cheating. We can't fathom that something so good could be exactly what we need to be doing. I get it. I've lived those thoughts too. I grew up with parents. My mom was German, and they are known for working hard, so I've lived it as well, but that misperception I have come to understand is costing us more than we realize, and if you take nothing else away from today's episode, I hope it's the desire to have more fun, knowing how good it really is for you. Before we talk about how to bring more fun into your life, I want to quickly compare play and fun, just so we have the distinction. Play is a path to fun, it's active, engaged, intentional, sometimes absorbing, and you see that with kids all the time, right? They lose track of time doing something, and it's one of the most direct and natural paths to having fun. It might be a game, a creative project, could be a physical activity, something you do with your hands. Stuart Brown defines play as voluntary, naturally motivated, and pleasurable, and the key point here is that you're intrinsically drawn to it. So it's not that there's a specific purpose, other than you're drawn to it, and you're doing it not for a goal or outcome, but just because, because you love it. Now, I realize I'm encouraging you to see that productivity is a byproduct, so it's technically an outcome, but the point of play is that you're not doing it for that reason, it's just that you happen to get it, so it's a bonus. It's a little bit like exercising for your health. When you start with that reason in mind, there are so many bonus results you'll experience as a result of doing it, and we find it's better to start for the right reasons, but you still get the bonus byproducts. Fun is the overarching. Experience the destination, if you will, light often more social. It's what you experience when you play. It's when you laugh at ridiculous things at the dinner table, or you take a random detour that I call an adventure. Whenever I take a wrong turn, I reframe it as an adventure. It's experiencing wonder and whimsy. It's the thing that makes you feel human and joyous, and fun can be experienced in the smallest moment. It doesn't have to be big, it can be big, but it doesn't have to be. That's key when it comes to adding more fun to your life. There isn't really a how to, because it's subjective. What you find fun may not be what I find fun, that doesn't matter, because the only thing that matters is how you perceive it. Now, there are some guidelines for assessing and approaching that may help you, and I'll share those with you, and these are especially important if you realize you haven't been having much fun, or you find yourself resistant to it for the reasons we talked about earlier. Here are three things I encourage you to do. One is notice what you've stopped doing, the fun you used to have that you decided you don't have time for, that it isn't a priority. Think back to what you used to do that felt genuinely fun or playful, and for a lot of people, there's something there that they miss, but they haven't made space for, haven't felt like they could. It could be a passion project, it could be an experience, something that might feel frivolous. Think about those things, that's a great starting point to bring back something that's going to tap into your joy, number two is to treat play as a productivity input, not a reward. It's not that you can't reward yourself with play, but I want you to think of doing it before. It's a big reframe when we're always thinking about rest and play and fun and treats and things as rewards. Now I want you to see it on the front end, what it can do for you. This reframe will change everything. In episode 312 on energy management, I talked about how creative outlets, rest, replenishment are all direct inputs to your capacity, not the other way around. So it's not that it's optional, it's not like a luxury, it's what you need, and fun belongs in that same category. When you schedule it with that reframing, it stops feeling like a reward you didn't earn and starts feeling like a way to invest in yourself and the quality of the work that you're going to be doing. So often we are the vessels of what we do and what we create, and how we show up, we need to treat those vessels well. We talk about that in terms of self-care. Now, I want you to think about it in terms of how you're investing in yourself for energy and for life satisfaction. And number three is to start small and to protect it. You don't need a whole afternoon or a weekend getaway again. It doesn't have to be big. Those are great, and if you can do that, go for it. But a 20 minute block of doing something you genuinely enjoy just because you enjoy it can shift your energy in ways that ripple forward into your work, into every part of your life. 10 minutes of reading a favorite book, and that's one of my favorite tricks. And read a book because you love that book, because you love the story, not because it's one of the classics. This is not about feeling super intelligent or about learning something. It's a fun book for you to read to escape, to be into that story. 10 minutes of that, or five minutes of laughing with a friend, making ridiculous jokes, watching ridiculous reels, all of those things count. You're carving out time intentionally and making sure that you protect it, because too often the idea of play and having fun is the first thing to get cut when things get busy. This is why setting aside small bits of time to do this really helps, because even on a busy day, you can find five to 10 minutes. It can be helpful to figure out not only what lifts you up, what you consider to be fun and joyful, but also what you can do in short periods of time. How it can be a sliding scale. And a great starting point for figuring this out is my Joy List Workbook, which you'll find in the Positively Productive Toolkit for free at Positively productive.com/resources It's a short set of prompts that reminds you of the things that bring you joy, and when you collect them all in one place, it makes it so much easier to integrate them into your life, it becomes a self-care and energy management guide, just for you. Here's a real-life example of what this can look like when you prioritize fun and play. I had a client who was struggling to get tasks done, he was working full time at a demanding job while caring for his parents and. Taking care of a house and everything else without anyone to help, his routine suffered understandably. He struggled to do what he needed to do, always felt behind, and because of that, felt completely lost and felt shame that blocked him from doing what he loved as well. He couldn't bring himself to have fun to do the things he was passionate about when he wasn't doing his work, and he had so much he needed to do. It's like, if you don't eat your meal, you can't have dessert, right? It was that kind of thing, or if you don't eat your vegetables, whatever the contingencies are that we come up with, and in our time together, when it came up that he'd essentially stopped doing the things that he loved that made him who he was, like playing guitar, like drawing, he was an amazing artist and musician. Well, I insisted he find the time. Now, this was surprising to him at first. He was resistant, understandably, because he felt like the other must-dos were so important. There's only so much time in the day. He wasn't getting to them already. How could he make the space for something else, especially something that might be perceived as frivolous? But I countered with this. I believe that the fun stuff was the solution to this problem. The creative outlets that had always been part of how he moved best through the world, and that had been edged out by responsibility and exhaustion and guilt, were the very things that would get him moving and motivated again. I gave him explicit permission to prioritize those things, not as a reward for after work, but as part of the work to prime his energy and creativity. I refer to this as priming your productivity. We established blocks of time where he'd be doing tasks, but then quick sessions prior to those where he would allow himself the freedom to create, and there were no rules about it. It wasn't practice or skill development time, it wasn't to get something done, it was fun. He could strum and sing, he could doodle, he could do any creative project he wanted to, and not a full project, just a creative activity. The only requirement was that he do what he loved and what he felt like in that moment before he had to go and do the must-dos, and the difference when he approached it this way was significant. It was like this huge aha moment. He found energy he was missing and an excitement in the process. It was like getting to have dessert first, and it helped him tackle his to-do's with a better attitude and focus. There's a lot of stuff we have to do that we're not looking forward to, but when we get to do something fun first, it can boost our energy, so that we can look forward to the tough stuff a little more, or at least handle it with a better attitude. And while it wasn't magic, there was still a lot we needed to work on, and it takes practice to adjust your schedule and your approach this way, it made a huge difference for him. It helped him show up because creative expression calmed his nervous system and recharged him, allowing him to step into the tasks he needed to do, feeling better, feeling more energized, and having the resilience he needed to keep going and keep trying. It's a positive feedback loop. Fun and play are how you stay creative, connected, and motivated. Adults who play experience less stress and more optimism and boosted well-being, and those things make you more productive in the ways that actually count. If you like this idea, but you could use some support figuring out what this would even look like for you. I encourage you to go to Positively productive.com/coaching for options to work with me. We could do one clarity call session that so many clients have said make them feel lighter by the end of it, and set up a routine like I did with my creative client, or we could chat through a messaging app in my on-demand async coaching package. This way you can figure out your favorite ways to incorporate fun, but keep checking in with me to make sure that it makes sense, and to ask questions as you go to make adjustments, and do this all on your own time without having to worry about when to place sessions on the calendar, there are many options for ways we can work together, and that I can support you in this, and it's one of my favorite conversations to have. Also, I'm just gonna put this out there: coaching with me does count as fun, at least I think so. We're gonna laugh a lot while we're being productive, and as we close today's episode. I want you to remember the world doesn't need you to be more serious all the time, and doing so doesn't serve you or anyone else. When you make room for lightness in your life, it helps you show up consistently and be at your best. Besides, you're allowed to enjoy this life. Life while you're building it.