Ep 16 Make Fun a Habit: Mike Rucker, PhD on the Science of Joy, Play, and Living Fully

What if you stopped putting fun on hold until life felt easier and you have more time? What if research says fun is not a luxury at all, but one of the most restorative tools you have?

In this conversation-packed, science-rich episode of The Magic in the Middle, Sarah sits down with Mike Rucker, PhD, behavioral scientist, author of The Fun Habit, and fellow Chapman University alum, who found each other again across decades through the most magical of coincidences. What followed was one of the most refreshing, permission-giving conversations this show has ever had.

Mike spent years immersed in positive psychology, convinced he had the tools to wheel himself out of the hardest season of his life, the sudden loss of his younger brother, the discovery of a hip injury that ended his running, and the slow erosion of the identity he had built around his body and his joy. The tools did not work. Not because they were wrong, but because he was chasing the wrong thing. That search led him to fun, and it changed everything.

This episode will make you laugh, make you think, and quite possibly make you look at your week in a completely new way.

In this episode you will discover:

• Why chasing happiness can actually make you more miserable, and what the research says to do instead
• The four quadrant PLAY model, Pleasing, Living, Agonizing, and Yielding, and how to use it to redesign your 168 hours/ week so fun stops being an afterthought
• Why the body cannot tell the difference between fun you planned and fun that just happened, and how to use that to your advantage
• How Mike completed an Ironman in board shorts and a mohawk by making the whole thing fun, and why that approach beat grit every time
• Why yielding behaviors like doom scrolling feel like rest but leave you more depleted, and the simple science behind breaking that cycle
• The surprising research on how people whose fun cups are full become the most productive, the most generous, and the most resilient
• Why in a world that feels heavy and uncertain right now, fun is not a luxury. It is essential to thrive.
• And where Mike finds his own magic in the middle, the mystery of quantum mechanics, the beauty of not knowing, and why feeling small in the universe is actually the most freeing thing of all

Mike is warm, funny, deeply human, and extraordinarily well researched. This is the episode you share with someone who needs permission to enjoy their life again.

Find Mike at mikerucker.com and take the Fun Type Calculator to discover your personal fun profile. Pick up The Fun Habit wherever books are sold.

Join Sarah's free Qigong practice group, Monday through Friday, 7 to 7:35am Pacific on Zoom. Learn more at marrvelouslife.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi Mike, welcome to Magic in the Middle. I'm so happy to have you here. I so everybody I'm here with Mike Rutker from The Fun Habit, and I have to tell you a fun story. So I've been reading The Fun Habit. I love it. And I was like, I have to see if I can reach Mike Wrecker to be on The Magic in the Middle for an interview. So as a couple weeks go by and I'm heard nothing evolved up and stuff, which isn't unusual. I mean, um, people are busy or like, who's this person? Mike gets back to me and says, Oh, hey Sarah. Um, I looked you up on LinkedIn and we went to Totman together, and Dan Leonard is one of my favorite professors from Tantman Film School, which was a really tiny school at the time. Everybody has to tell you the school was so small. Um, and I was like, what are the freaking odds? And I think we graduated the same year, right, Mike?

SPEAKER_01 1:02

99, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

So wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

It was such a joke. I was like, that is so cool, this energy. And I gotta say, Dan Leonard, he is just one of the best teachers ever. He's so kind. He pushes you to stretch. Um, but he's just really clever, too, and a great musician like you.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Yeah, well, he is a great musician. I'm a musician. Or was, I suppose, but we both play bass, so we have that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yeah, in common. Yeah. Um, so like I said, Mike wrote The Fun Habit, which is an amazing book, and it really opened up a lot for me in my life. And um, as we're talking through this, I'll be talking about that. But I really do encourage people to grab this book because it's so good. So um, you know, I want to open with what led you to study fun as something serious, meaningful, and deeply connected to how we live.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah, so the roots in that are that I had an interest in positive psychology early on, and that led to some serendipity uh where I got invited to kind of be part of the broader conversation early on, and was invited to join the International Positive Psychology Association. And back then, because we weren't really looking at happiness as this construct, that's what we focused on, right? And so I guess to take one step back for folks that don't even know what positive psychology is. Um, the term was coined because in regular psychology, academic psychology, we had tools that anyone can use for their own betterment, things like mindfulness and gratitude, which I think uh we sort of generally understand now, 20 years later. But back at the turn of the millennium, we weren't really talking about those things except in the context of poor mental health, you know, tools that could help folks, you know, i if they had some sort of problem to treat. And so positive psychology was like, why don't we make these tools accessible to everyone? And that really resonated with me because I've always been into lifelogging and like, you know, how can you optimize yourself? And as my interests started to grow, I got more involved as you know, a practitioner of these and study them academically. But something interesting happened around, you know, after 10 years of kind of talking about it openly and getting people to sort of think about what happiness means to them, research started to come out that paradoxically, as we made, you know, put happiness up on this pedestal and made it this ideal, like this thing to strive for, paradoxically, we're making some of the most unhappy people. And so we've come to find out, right, that if, you know, it is really meant to be ephemeral, but if we're always trying to chase it or we're trying to optimize for it because it does ebb and flow, it really does create these problems, especially if it's something we can't maintain every day, which is certainly all of us, right? I meant we're all gonna get slings and arrows thrown at us. And I certainly did. I know you asked if I would be open to talk about it, but as I was going through this process, and quite frankly, like getting the deck stacked in my favor, you know, I was, you know, having a really good run um in life. I had the job I wanted, you know, married an amazing woman, um, you know, was uh an amateur athlete. So, you know, it wasn't like I was competing, but I was, you know, liked where my body and and mind were at. And then all of a sudden, um around 2016, uh, 2017, a bunch of things just kind of knocked me down. One was I lost my younger brother quite suddenly to a pulmonary embolism. And then two, I found out that uh I likely had a sports injury that went undiagnosed. Um, it was a torn labrum, but because I didn't repair it, it essentially ate itself and then I was gonna need a hip replacement. And when you get a hip replacement in your 40s, you're essentially told that you shouldn't run again. You can if you want, but it's ill-advised because um you'll have to get it uh uh revision at some point. And that some points, like in your 60s or 70s, and revisions generally don't go very well if you you'll walk with a limp at that point. Um, so they you know really encourage you to do other types of exercise. And why that's important is my identity was running. I mean, I I like triathlons, but the the fun part for me, um, and and I think that's why I like triathlons, because the runs always at the end, you know, is like, okay, here's the cherry on top. And now I was told, you know, this thing that you love, not only love, but like mitigated was my you know, remediation for mental health was was taken away. And so, but like I had all these tools and I was such a zealot, a positive psych. I'm like, I can will myself out of this malaise, you know, like I, you know, I'll find my happy again. And the more I tried to chase that tiger by the tail, I mean, I was getting pretty close to a clinical disposition. Uh, but you know, I like to pat myself on the back for being curious and explore and certainly, you know, pick up wisdom when it's offered to me. Uh, and so I went down that rabbit hole to answer your question. Like, okay, if happiness is problematic, there's got to be something there. Because there are a lot of folks living a joyful life that don't really seem to, you know, succumb to some of the trappings of you know these broader principles that we're talking about. Um, you know, one, just as an example of folks are like, what's you know, Mike talking about? Like, um, I think a good example is the uh, you know, the idea of finding three things to be grateful for a day. At first blush, for you know, a subset of folks, it's probably a good idea, right? But you know, it got in fact, I don't think anyone can really figure out the exact roots of that exact number. Certainly, gratitude, we know is a helpful tool. Um, but why, like all of a sudden, you know, it became common wisdom, you know, for life coaches to say, you know, go find you know three things to be grateful for. And in your neck of the woods, a researcher by the name of Sonia Lubermirski found out that that can actually be a horrible thing for folks, similar to chasing happiness, right? If you're not in a situation like you did just lose a loved one, and someone says, well, go off and find things, you know, three things to be grateful for, it actually sets you in in this mode of rumination where you're in a downward spiral instead of you know finding and creating the safe space to figure out you know what it means that you have are are now in this immense amount of change, you know, like you know, spending your time trying to find three random things to be grateful for is not a good exercise, right? And so it's that type of course correction that became of interest. And so I really latched on to this idea of fun, which is you know, how can we enjoy our moments, even if our emotional disposition isn't meant to be, you know, tell our friends, hey yeah, you know, life is you know all puppy dogs and butterflies right now. Um, because there still needs to be a reprieve, right? Even if that in you know our most challenging times is just a true escape from you know what what we're challenging, not saying that we'll we'll avoid it, right? Because there's nuances there, right? It you can get in you know bad spirals of escapism as well, but there's definitely healthy escapism where we can enjoy ourselves even when we're challenged. And the best part about it is that if we are in that period, you know, where we need that, it starts to build upon itself and it reminds us that there is, you know, an amazing amount of good out there to find, you know, enjoyable things, even though you know the reality is there's a plethora of horrible things too that we're you know always going to, you know, could be potentially around the corner. I hope that answers the question.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Yeah, no, I love that. And I love that you talked all about that because I feel like there's a swirling around that about um positive mantras and being happy all the time. And I know for me, I'm generally a happy person anyway, but I do know when you know, if something has hit me, and I've even done episodes about cracking open, like something has cracked you open, that that could be sometimes the greatest place of feeling. But I have tried to do the gratitude thing or the happiness thing when I'm being cracked open, and then I feel worse, I feel guilty because I'm not doing it right. And then there's that whole legation of the brain saying, Oh, you're such a loser, you can't watch you're teaching this, but you can't even do it. Like that whole thing. So I'm so happy that you named that, and you called that out because uh for me, I think it's really important that people see that this this, you know, from a psychology point of view, it is okay not to be okay. You know, I've even talked about that. It's okay not to be okay, and sometimes it's great to dive into that and and forget about the happiness and the gratitude until you can raise your vibration to a higher level. Well, it feels natural.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

100% at a more you know, sort of academic understanding of it. Um it's this idea of flexibility, right? We know that if you live in that space where you think that's the way it's supposed to be, your life becomes quite fragile. So it might feel really good, you know, for a very, you know, whatever that episode is, you know, hopefully it's long, but but if you start to believe that's the only way and you're not ready for, you know, for the things that are going to come at you, because we all age, right? So like at some point there are gonna be challenges that we're gonna need to face, regardless of even if you live a privileged life. And so if you don't have that level of flexibility to be able to navigate that, that's when we know really bad things start to happen. And you also start to recede emotionally, right? I mean, life, I believe, is supposed to be this tapestry. That's what makes it beautiful, right? We're not supposed to stay in one lane. And if we don't, if we start to lose that ability, you know, to maneuver around obstacles, then we run into them, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Yeah, I I do too. And I so for me, I I believe that as well, but also from a spiritual point of view, I have a very woo-woo mom. And so I've been taught that spirit came here to feel all the emotions. And like in Sigong, we d we say fear is not good or bad. It's simply emotion, but there could be too much, and so then it lodges the fear maybe in your kidneys and they become out of balance, but it's not bringing in gratitude and saying, okay, I'm healed now from this fear, but allowing the spirit to feel it. So I feel like, and then I like how you talk about that's part of the magic in the middle because I like the stuff, like how you talk about it. Like it is a tapestry, and sometimes I almost like going into like I'll put on a dumb, I don't usually like tick flicks, but sometimes I'll put one on just because I just want to cry. Like I want one of those good cry movies, like the new Sally Field movie with the octopus, just because it feels good to have that shower inside and go, oh, yeah, okay, I just did that. I'm human. I like the feeling of being human, Mike. So I love that you said that.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

And it's interesting how that is a shared experience, you know, whether you're secular or um, you know, have a spiritual slant, like to open up those pathways, right? To allow other things to flow in because you've essentially gotten something stuck and to be able to unearth it, uh, you know, it seems like a pretty universal shared experience, you know, even though it's you know, the narrative of it is, you know, dependent on your worldview. Um so I'm right there with you. Oftentimes I'll just like find that, you know, like put on a sad song to do the exact same thing. And then it lets it lets what you want back in. It's it's a very interesting phenomenon that I, you know, again is real. It's not that isn't woo-woo at all, you know.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Yeah, and I I I feel like we give ourselves permission to be human. We're human, and I've and I feel like that's been cut off. Like you're supposed to be this way all the time. No, we are human. We feel bad, we feel good. You know, some people have more of the extremes, but it's okay to be human. And I think it's really important uh to do that, you know, to be human. So um um so let me see. Um after talked about so many things, I have my list of questions. So I just I would just let the listeners know, I have my list. I want to make sure we talk about everything because I have to tell the listeners this book is so rich with so many ideas, with psychology, but also it's for every walk of life, it's for the parent, it's for the young person. Mike has really funny stories about um and I want to say this early about being a trial, about being an Iron Man. I just visualize you in your mohawk and your board short of doing the um the Iron Man competition and you are facilitated an Iron Man. And the reason I bring this up is because of your personality. You are somebody who um really seeks high arousal activities, right, is what you call it. Um and so I want to talk about that because what you did so part of the fun habit is taking things that can be really difficult, but putting this fun spin on it. And I'm I don't know if I said that right.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Oh, that's right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

And then starting in small bits and growing, which I think is important because we're talking about the nervous system. Oh, and the one thing I have to tell everybody. So we're supposed to have two hours of fun a day. It's why you just know that. And so if we just all of a sudden it's like that New Year's resolution, I'm gonna have two hours of fun every day, and then you fall off, and then you feel like crap. But you talk about even um starting small. So maybe we could talk about that Iron Man thing a little bit, relating it to all those millions of things I just said.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

So no, and so um, but I do want to give a tip of the hat. Uh, the two-hour um, you know, a day comes from a colleague of mine out at UCLA, Dr. Cassie Holmes. So they did some work in that. So it's not just a sort of you know, grab a number out of the air. Um, but it's really interesting you bring that up because this week uh Real Simple Magazine had reached out because there is a I guess a survey that just came out where folks felt like the right amount of fun was 17 hours a week, but there was no way that was achievable. So I'm always careful about that number. Like, sure, you know, do you need something? And then also, like, I think we should build a container around that and say those two hours could be at work, right? You know, uh a lot of us find ourselves in the sandwich generation. That's some, you know, kind of what I was talking to uh real simple about, you know, we're the most time povoverished generation ever, where we're taking care of our kids and we're taking care of aging parents. So we do need to give ourselves some grace. So yeah, our number's interesting. You know, if if you're trying to design a life um where you want to figure out the right inputs, um, yeah, you can hang on to that number. Uh but uh going back to your question about the Iron Man, something that's been self-gratifying since the book came out is this idea of how we've over-emphasize this idea of everything needing to be done through fortitude and grit. And that we actually see that the folks that are the most successful are, even when they're doing hard things, like an Iron Man, are the ones that are finding out how to make components of it fun. And so for some, and there's, you know, we have this concept uh in behavioral science called survivorship bias, where folks really find enjoyment in the suffering, right? And so we'll see those folks on ABC News, right? Because they're grinding it out and they're okay, uh, you know, giving it all away because that is something that's pleasurable for them, and that's fine, but they are such the extreme, right? They're not good models for who we are. In fact, I'm so embarrassed that I'm locking on her name right now, but you're that won the gold. Alyssa Liu, oh, Alyssa Liu essentially fired her whole team, including her father, because it she had found that practice wasn't uh enjoyable anymore. Yeah, the folks that, you know, in my field of research, I meant she was such a beacon of light for all of us because it's proof, right, that she did it, you know, flexing her own agency and autonomy. She wasn't enjoying, you know, the the rigorous workouts. She knew she needed to work hard, but you know, the way it was being kind of prescribed for her wasn't enjoyable, so she quit. She didn't like the music she was picking. She certainly didn't like, you know, this need to capitulate to the appearance of what a normal figure skater looks like. So she reinvented the game and did it through fun and you know, look at the the outcome. And so, but we usually don't champion folks like her. So I'm glad we're getting a chance to talk about her, right? And it's the same way I organized the Iron Man. I wanted to complete it, right? So I set the bar that I wanted, which still puts me in the top, you know, one of 1%, but it ran against the grain of what every other Iron Man was there to do, which was to try and get the best time possible, right? And so I knew that I'd also need to make a lot of noise because I am someone that has high affinity needs and needs high arousal. So instead of wearing, you know, kind of form-fitting biking and running gear, you know, I did wear Hawaiian board shorts. And I'm never the type of guy that would get a mohawk. You know, I tend to work at a desk, but yet um, and it's a nod to my, you know, now he's just he's a bit of a fire brand, but back then P. Diddy wasn't as problematic as he is now. And he had just gotten a mohawk to run the New York marathon. So it was, you know, I did steal the idea from him, but it like was something that was boisterous and and loud. And um, and as I said in the book, it worked. There were a couple of Kiwi families that um I now don't keep in touch with, but for over a decade did that were like, who is this guy? And they followed me around, and I kind of, you know, in real time acquired this like really interesting fan base just because I made the whole thing into a spectacle uh and did it my way. And so, you know, now it's a memory that I'll never forget. And also because it was enjoyable, I was able to do the work, right? And so, you know, one of the things that I often lampoon is this idea of 75 heart. Again, I think it's another amazing example of survivorship bias. And for folks that don't know what 75 heart is, it's uh was a social media trend where you did all of these ridiculous things for 75 days. And if you fell off the wagon for one of them, you were supposed to start all over again. And so, was it interesting to talk about? Sure, but like if you peel back the amount of moral injury it did because of the folks that just couldn't abide to something that stringent, um, right, it's like ultimately just not that helpful. And so spinning the conversation back to how can we create these things so folks can do amazing stuff, like win a gold medal in figure skating or an Iron Man when they had no business at 220 pounds, even doing an Iron Man in the first place. Um, and then you know, live the tail of the tail and say I had fun the whole time, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Yeah. And it sounded like it that you had fun. And I just want to highlight to people, yeah, you were not in shape when you started doing the Iron Man. 220 pounds, and you just started and made it fun and succeeded. And the other part I like about it is that it was your mom and dad, and your girlfriend at the time, but your wife now were at the finish line, right? And the Kiwis were two. Hearing you on. And so the community that that built, which to me I feel like is really important, is community around your fun habit.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Yeah, definitely. I think there's three elements that are important. And, you know, it's the activities that you're doing, right? And so, you know, real quickly, I think it's that connection that you have with it. So many of us oftentimes will just allow happenstance or habituated life to, you know, where we just kind of go along with what others like instead of taking one step back. And is this something that at the end of the day I really want to do? It's the environment that we're in, you know. I know you love gardening, right? And so like being in that space is just magical. People are rediscovering nature, and you know, we now know how restorative that can be. Um, and then even during COVID, right? Like, you know, at first we were happy working from home, but then you know, there were a subset of folks that like were starting to just hate being that confined and you know, found interesting ways to mitigate that. But to loop back to you know your original point, the people that we're doing it with make all the difference. Um, and yeah, so who is your tribe? Who is your community? And even for introverts, right? That doesn't mean that you need to spend a lot of time with them, but to be able to share those memories, uh, I don't work with her anymore. But at the time, and we worked together for years, but I do, you know, talk about her in the book. The person that was helping me edit my blog, Haley, is a staunch introvert. So when she first read the first edition of the book, she was like, This is still so much through your lens, you know, and we don't need another help self-help book that's like, hey, look at me, do all these, you know, crazy big things. She's like, could we, you know, have at least some, you know, for introverts. And um, so, you know, I I forget again if I talked about it in the book or or if we talked about it on my website, but she just makes play dates with her friends. They're very, you know, contained. Um, they're only a few people, folks that are really, you know, meaningful to her and her life. They organize what they want to do and then they give themselves space at night so that they can recoup their energy. But those opportunities are still so much more meaningful, right, than if they were a solo activity, because they're still getting to spend time with one another. And then, you know, even the relationship with you that you have with the activity itself. It's you know, in the book, um, you know, from an ethnography ethnographic, uh, I'm gonna from dancers, we won't go with the fancy academic word. Uh, you know, this love affair that I talk about with the craft, you know, and so the relationship doesn't have to be with another person, but that relationship is important, is important because if it's a if it's an eye proposition, right? If it's a look at me, I'm doing this for you know external validation or at its worst, you know, for likes and comments, like we just know that doesn't fill you up. But if you feel a connection to it, and at the end of the day, if no one knew that you did it except you know, the thing that you're engaged with or the that group of people that really matter, um, then it's gonna have you know it's gonna sustain you, it's gonna fill that fun cup and and make you realize that life is worth living.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Yeah, yeah. And you do talk about little taking little steps for the introverts. I loved that that chapter that I think that's really important. Yeah, go Haley. Um and go Mike because you've it is really good. Um so I want to get into um could we talk about the four quadrants, which are pleasing, living, agonizing, e-building, and could you walk us through that? Um I think some of our listeners are about to realize what they asked how much their week has spent in the bottom two, which is the need. Um, unfortunately, but there's not me to realize that. But there's nothing to realize that. And I actually have a little story last week. I had like, I was just in a spot, I don't know what the hack happened. I went to the Netflix void, which I watched positive uplifting things, like not watched violent things and stuff. Um I just could not pull myself out of this fun, and then of course the fun happened in my ear to be narrated. In my ear, and I'm like, I don't think I'm having enough fun. I think I'm living in the bottom quadrant. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, my energy is level, and I'm typically very high energy inspired. I get downloads all the time to make too many, and I'm like, ah, how am I gonna do all this? But it's exciting, like I get excited. And so I want to talk about these um quadrants um just quickly and what they are.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Yeah, of course. So um, for context for anyone listening, uh generally anyone that does the type of work I do, we have you look at um, you know, some form of how you're spending your time. There's 168 hours in a week, so that's generally the container that we have. Um, and especially again, this idea of time poverty, right? Like if we're living a life that just seems like Groundhog's Day, dealing that back and understanding why is the first step. Because the last thing we want to do is, you know, make fun a prescription on top of an already over-indexed schedule. That's as toxic as you know, some of the other things that we've talked about. In fact, you know, it's gonna send you in the wrong direction. So the play model is a way to look at each one of those hours in context. Um and uh yes, you you already said the acronym. Um, play is the acronym, it stands for pleasing, living, agonizing, and yielding. Um, and pleasing activities are things that don't require a lot of effort, um, but that do fill us up. But what we found is a lot of times we're not doing those things, especially not deliberately. You know, even if we're doing things that we might enjoy, if we're doing them through the lens of I have to do this instead of I get to do this, um, which can make all the difference, then we don't register it as fun. Again, if it's become routine and we're not adding elements that it's gonna encode any new memories, like, oh, yeah, I remember doing this, or you know, um, this was funny, or I enjoyed the company of my coworker or whatever it is, then when you look back, you know, at the week behind you, it's just gonna seem like it passed you by. So it's adding elements to the things that you're doing that you're like, yeah, you know what, this hour was enjoyable because of X, Y, and Z, but it's not really requiring any extra energy. The living quadrant are things that do require some effort and but really do light us up. And the reason that it's important to look at that in context, especially in a busy life, that generally is where growth lives, right? Cleasing activities are important because we know, again, if we're kind of just you know mind wandering the whole day that generally we it's a low level of malaise and we're gonna say that we didn't enjoy the day. But if you don't find anything that's stretching you in that 168, it's really just an imitation to figure out, you know, what is it that I could bring in. And it doesn't have to be like a Spartan race or an Iron Man race or whatever it is. You know, it could be like meditation, right? Which is cognitively very hard, or um a spiritual practice if that's something, you know, that you're uh, you know, something that would light you up, or um whatever it is, reading, you know, a really heady book or you know, going on you know, really strenuous hike, um, but just something that where you feel like it would lead to growth in some area of life is important. And so looking for those things um to just make sure your life's not devoid of it's important. But the other two, as you mentioned, are the most insidious in what we're really trying to do in this initial step. Um, agonizing are the things that are hard that we just don't want to do. And when we don't think about it, oftentimes we don't realize that a lot of those things are things that we probably could either better our circumstance or engineer out. I know one of the examples that you like from the book in our pre-interview was um for my wife and I, it was bathing our kids. Um, you know, they were, it was just tough for uh, you know, um for about a year's worth of time. And at the time, and still now, quite frankly, we couldn't afford a full-time nanny. Um, and which was like really the only uh, I think, socially acceptable sort of concept, you know, of someone that could do that kind of childcare. And so again, we just peeled back that, like you said, is that really true? I meant, you know, if you got a fractional nanny, you would just call them a babysitter. Why couldn't they do something like that? You know, this is just not fun for the four of us. You know, the more we tried to like make it fun, the worse it was getting. You know, we tried, I think it completely collapsed when you know we thought, oh, maybe if we put them in together, you know, the same time, they could play with each other. And that just, you know, I think was what broke our back, quite frankly. Um so we ended up hiring someone to do it, a babysitter that was willing to do it, and it was amazing. She was like the super fun person. I think just taking us out of you know this agonizing activity, um, you know, just like you changed the script just because it was a pattern interrupt. But not only that, we bought back a little bit of our time, and now we were able to have dinner with each other, you know, twice a week. And because they were so young, that was something that just hadn't been happening. So we're able to reconnect and talk, you know, uh the way that we used to. And you know, we don't need to do that anymore because our kids are older, but it's just a good example of you know something that you're you you take for granted as being you know immutable, and you know, how can you change it? And so if you know, even hiring a babysitter is you know too much of the lift, could you swap that, you know, could you do like a timeshare uh babysitting swap with a neighbor or whatever it is? So is there opportunities to kind of change your circumstance in that, or are there ways to add elements you know to it so that it's more enjoyable? Often, you know, um one of the things that's commonly talked about is like if you really hate a certain chore, um, but it doesn't require a lot of cognitive work, it's just you know, it's agonizing because you've done it for so long and so boring. Could you throw on your favorite podcast and just you know, and really focus on the podcast? There's some amazing research um from Katie Milkman in this area around exercise, where um it was folks that uh didn't necessarily like exercising, but identified of really, really liking certain podcasts. So all she asked them to do was um make the social agreement that you can't listen to your favorite podcast until you go to the gym. When you go into the gym, you're allowed to listen to it. And you know, if you've listened this long to us, it should be no surprise that um they started to not necessarily like fitness more, but forget that they didn't like it, liked the podcast more because now they were limiting their ability to listen to this thing, right? Because you know, if we really like something but do it too much, we can it can fall out of favor. So they like the podcast more. And then the result, again, going back to using fun to do hard things, they were working out more. So it was like a win-win-win-win, right? And so that's that's the opportunity of exposing agonizing things on your schedule. And then the most insidious, but I think the most well understood, is yielding. Um, so many of us displace, you just talked about it with Netflix, right? We we have a really bad week, um, and we kid ourselves by um alleviating, you know, that non-fund state with something um that is really just passive and displaces that discomfort or frustration or whatever you're facing, um, which is fine again, you know, if it's just one week. You had a bad week, you watched a little Netflix, who cares, right? But it's when it becomes habitual um and we find ourselves in a downward spiral, as you know, and this is gonna be the only geeky thing I'll bring up in the podcast, but there's some real science behind this. Um, it's called the hedonic flexibility principle. And what we know is that folks that get in that cycle, it just gets worse and worse, right? Because what you do is you're not really, you know, finding a way to recharge your batteries. You're really just displacing that discomfort. Um, but oftentimes that can lead to like poor sleep or habitual or you know, more addictive behavior, because all of these things built in the intention economy really were designed to hijack your attention. So, right, like scrolling, you know, to get yourself sleepy, all of a sudden it's 1 a.m. You don't know where the time went. But if I asked you if you enjoyed that, you certainly wouldn't say yes. You know, so now you have poor sleep, you show up the next day, you're more burnt out, so you feel worse. So, you know, and the cycle continues. But what we found was um in doing these types of studies, the the marquee study that I cite in the book that's really well done, uh, Stanford MIT and Oxford, I believe, 20,000 participants. So it's not like you know, one of these weird studies, it's 12 people and you make this big, you know, sort of assertion from it. Um they went out to ask, like, are we truly pleasure-seeking animals? You know, this philosophical idea of, you know, we're either always trying to chase pleasure or escape pain. So we've already, you know, kind of talked about, yeah, it does look like we try to escape pain. No one wants to live in pain habitually. But the big surprising finding was the folks that felt like their fun cup was full, that were integrating all the things that we talked about by deliberate design, were the ones that were actually ironically the most productive because they don't seek out more fun. Once they feel that they're fulfilled, they actually go seek out growth. And they also understand transition rituals, right? So they know that um there's certain times you know within their day that they need to spin down so they can show up the next day as the best version of themselves. So yielding is really those is why it's important. It's it's that kind of passive, it doesn't take much energy, but it doesn't fill us up. And so it just grows, right? It becomes an insidious amount in your um in your week, so much so that that's why all major uh smartphone manufacturers have had to put health elements in it. Because if they didn't, that would have gotten legislated anyways. But behavioral science is so clear of how much time you know uh we don't realize we're spending on our phones. So for most people, you know, unless they're pretty self-aware of their habits, when they look at that health meter either on their iPhone or or their Android and realize how much time, you know, sometimes it's not social media, but it could be, you know, in their email app or you know, their Slack app, things that you know, where they don't need to be spending 18 hours, 19 hours. And so these folks will be like, I just don't have time for fun. Oh, really? But you have 18 hours with Facebook, you know.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

How long were you on Instagram?

SPEAKER_02 37:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Um so right now, our world is experiencing a lot of change up and down, a lot of transit and um and it is a very scary unstable time, I think in my community. There's a lot of fear, there's a lot of uh um also in the world a lot of hatred and and anxiety. So is it okay for us to give ourselves permission to have fun right now? Is that and is this a good idea?

SPEAKER_01 38:27

I mean, I think we need to to survive, right? I mean, the idea behind this is social contagion. We need to set that example for others. And certainly if you're living in despair, then everything else is going to seem like it's that much darker. And so, you know, I meant Frankel talked about this in the worst of times at a at a concentration camp, right? I meant being able to find elements that are hopefully in shared humanity, but at least connect us to something bigger than ourselves. Again, whether that's, you know, the reason to live or the fact that um, you know, people are good, uh, I believe that fun is an amazing social glue for those types of connections. And so to say that we shouldn't have fun because life is challenging right now, um, you know, at the most basic scientific level would put us all in the trappings of that hidogan flexibility principle where we're just gonna continue down a downward spiral. And we know that when we are in this, you know, place where we feel safer, we can make better decisions, we want to contribute more, you know, we want to sort of approach things with curiosity and from a nonlinear fashion, which is where better solutions tend to arise, anyways. Um and this is a little bit out of my academic sphere of influence, but certainly, and I I think you've alluded to having an interest in this, we know that the ability to calm down our nervous systems too, you know, and collectively get out of fight or flight will alleviate some of this. Um, you know, and so we might not necessarily feel safe, but we won't have the physiological trappings that are um, you know, that can really be insidious if we keep ourselves in that space for the whole 168 hours. So when someone's like, okay, that's great, because you're kind of talking about it conceptually, like, what can we do? There's an interesting tool in psychology where if that's something that you do feel like I need to give some attention, and I think most of us do, create that space, that agreement with you that I will think about this, you know, I'll do scroll for an hour and a half, two hours during this period so that I can feel like I'm up to date. If I feel like there's any action I need to take, you know, I can put that into my schedule. But at the end of those two hours, then I'm done for that week. And I'll come back to it. So it's not like I'm, you know, an ostrich putting my head in uh, but I'm preserving a certain amount of time. So like other things, it doesn't become insidious. Because if we can't take action, right, it reminds us that um, well, it doesn't remind us, quite frankly. It it subjectively makes us feel like we're helpless. And we're not, right? We can always contribute to something. And so, as you know, I talk about that. Um, you know, that even the most staunch uh game changers, the folks that are making these huge ripples, um, preserve time for fun because they know if they don't, they can't play the long game. And there, you know, examples abound of folks that really burnt out super quickly, because if everything is bad, right, we just, you know, as a being, um we can't operate in that space for very long. So even if you're someone that feels challenged by the heaviness of everything, creating moments where you at least enjoy some moments of your week is gonna give you that scaffolding and energy to then go fight the battle, right? And so in that context, to answer your question specifically, it's probably more important now than ever.

SPEAKER_00 42:18

I yeah, I I think so too. Um and then um, so my last question, and so this is at the heart of the magic in the middle, is about the liminal space where science and spirit meet. So the place where what we know from research and what we feel in our soul confirm each other. So, where do you find your magic in the middle, Mike?

SPEAKER_01 42:41

Well, as I allude in the book, I think it's the mystery. You know, I've never been uh an atheist by any stretch, right? But I think I've been to some degree because I'm critical and I need the information first, that's been a limiter with regards to access to what in the book I call the mystery. And so now um I just let that in and it's it's a really neat space. And the neatest part about it is uh it's a really opportune time, right? I think when move uh so I was quite moved. I think kind of the kernel of it was when uh what the when what the belief do we know first came out, you know. Um, but there were because that was an interesting dissection of the beginning of an understanding of quantum mechanics, and then folks that in my opinion were a bit charlatans about it because we didn't know enough, and so they just kind of made major leaps, you know, and bent it to, you know, ideologies that were more uh, you know, I think creative than scientific. But now this idea that you know, no matter what the source is, that uh and you kind of alluded to it at the beginning of our conversation. That we're all just fractals of it, kind of trying to figure it out itself. I think is the middle for me, you know, this understanding that um that we're here for a reason, you know, as tried as it is, you know, that kind of saying that we're uh, you know, not humans having a spiritual experience, but you know, spirits having the human experience. Did I get that right? Right?

SPEAKER_02 44:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

I think there's some truth to that. Um, because even if it's just something where you want to park your faith, um, and even if you're secular like me, it still allows you in a way that's mysterious and um gives you access to wonder to be curious. Uh you know, it was weird. Like my editor tried to cut it out because the quote like took up two pages, but um kind of the second, you know, milestone for me was when I interviewed Lisa Feldman Barrett. If you recall, she's a you know popular neuroscientist that has a bunch of books of her own. Um, and I think our worldviews are are are somewhat similar, but she was like, just think about the immense amount of information that we don't know. And when you ponder that, right, all of like the fact that computers are just getting smaller and smaller, the fact that we understand the universe is probably bigger than we once thought. Um, all the mysteries of how uh traditional um physics, you know, Newtonian physics don't really mesh with what we are learning scientifically, you know, that uh things just kind of come in and out of an existence and we can't explain that. That how small that makes us. And that's a good thing. Because if we're small, then all these things that we think are these big deals, you know, the these big weights in the world are our own personal problems, then shrink with that. Because as we're shrinking, you know, uh kind of where we fit and we understand it's a much bigger picture, then the things that we're deeming are important right now are probably a little bit more insignificant than we made them out to be. And I just think that's a more beautiful way to exist. So that's my middle.

SPEAKER_00 46:17

I love that. I do too. I do too. And Mike, um, I'm I'm so thankful you're here. I'm so glad thankful that we reconnected your recovering screenwriter. But I want to so for people to find you, they will go to your website, michaelruckard.com, right on. I'll have it in the show notes. And then I thought it'd be fun for people to explore the fun type calculator. Um, and then your website too. I'm gonna go back to that because it is a fun website, and it and um so I do suggest to go to his website. There's a lot of great information. And the fun habit book, I mean, really, it's so good. There's so much science, like we were talking about, um, and then experiences. Mike has great stories, it's funny, made me, you know, sad and cry, and just all the different things. So, and you narrate it. And so you I just really felt the heart that you brought to that to the book.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

Thank you so much. That's very kind.

SPEAKER_00 47:22

Yeah, yeah. So thank you, thank you, Mike. And um we'll talk to you later. And thanks everybody for joining us on The Magic in the Middle. It's always a pleasure to have everybody here. And I I don't take for granted that you are joining us on The Magic in the Middle. And I invite you to share with friends and family if you feel like this is valuable and it's supporting you and giving a thumbs up and please connect with me too. I love it when you connect with me. Um, so we'll we'll talk to you next time. I was gonna say see you, but we'll talk to you next time.