On the surface it sounds simple... play is fun and work is not. But really... what makes one thing fun and another not?
Is it something intrinsic about the task itself? Well, there may be elements of that, and I'm sure each of us has different things that we find appealing or not, but somehow I think the answer is much more complicated.
Depending on one's outlook, a task that's generally considered to be "work" could be thought of as play, and vice versa.
Consider these examples:
I'm out in the yard pulling weeds. One of my neighbors comes by and says off hand, "You work SO hard!" My thought: "Actually I'm avoiding work, and this is fun. What I'm really supposed to be doing is sitting at my computer debugging a bunch of code."
Or how about this one. I'm at a cafe watching some songwriter friends perform. Someone requests a song which my friends play, and then come sit down with me to take a break. My friend says, "If I have to play that song one more time I think I'm gonna put an ice pick through my temple. I just wanna go home and relax."
So under the right circumstances, pulling weeds feels like fun and playing the guitar is work. But what makes the difference?
It's kind of an interesting question when you stop to think about it. I mean, if one could crack the code of the mysterious work/play boundary, then theoretically, one might be able to take tasks that currently reside in the "work" category and re-categorize them as "play".
Think about it the possibilities - "Oh Boy! I get to do the dishes!!!"
So maybe it's all just a question of attitude. If you approach it with a fun state of mind then it will be fun, and if you approach it like drudgery then it will be work.
OK... so repeat after me:
"Doing the dishes is fun! Doing the dishes is fun! Doing the dishes is FUN!!!"
Are you feeling it yet? ... Me neither.
Hmmm... So maybe I need to break this down further. When I really think about it, some of the elements of "play" for me include the following:
- It's optional
- Nobody is judging my results
- There is no hurry
- It has no bearing on my intrinsic value as a human being
- Nobody is "counting on me" to do it
OK... I could go on, but I'm starting to sense a theme here.
It would seem that for me, "fun" is defined as anything that steers clear of my old "I'm inadequate" buttons. Not exactly the answer I was looking for, but enlightening nonetheless. So maybe if I could just get past the idea that I'm intrinsically "not good enough", life would feel like one big never ending party?
Well, I'm not gonna hold my breath for either side of that particular equation, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt me to try to be a bit more Zen in my approach - you know, focus on the moment at hand rather than all of the judgments and stuff that I pile on top of it.
So what do you think? What makes something feel like work vs. play to you? Does your list look anything like mine, or do you think it's all dependent on our own individual "issues"?
Interesting question. I think for me...work is something I do at that moment because I have to, rather than want to. And that applies to paid and non paid work. When I'm writing cause I feel like it, it's fun. When I have an article due at a certain time, it becomes work. Cooking dinner = work, baking cookies = fun.
ReplyDeleteInteresting... so timing is a big part of it. A friend of mine who HATES cooking once told me that she'd had a big revelation about people who enjoy cooking. "They cook when they're not hungry" she said! Oh, how true! There have been plenty of times that I'll start to cook and get really grumpy about it because I'm starving and just want it to be done. In those situations I usually end up grabbing a peanut butter sandwich or something and then go back to the cooking once it doesn't feel quite so pressing - even if it means freezing the meal and saving it for later.
DeleteFor me, there are three categories: work, play & needs to get done. I only really like the one in the middle!
ReplyDeleteOh, that pesky "needs to get done" category! I think my strategy is to just punt on that sort of thing and push it into the "I'll do it at some point when I feel like it" pile... which might explain the state of my kitchen! :-)
DeleteGood question. You reminded me of an old boyfriend of mine who once told me that he had realized he actually liked doing dishes, and he decided he wouldn't resist that anymore. After that, I realized that I really didn't hate doing dishes, especially when I was cold (because you have to use hot water).
ReplyDeleteI haven't thought much about the factors of what makes things fun versus not fun for me, but I have thought about it some.
I always hate having to bother people. So if I have to ask someone to do me a favor, or even just remind someone to do something they've promised to do, or make a call to ask someone a question--even a customer service person who enjoys answering questions--I don't want to do it. This was easy to learn about myself since it's pretty crazy. I'd much rather learn by looking something up myself (yea libraries and internet and maps). So, I loved majoring in social science, but not doing social science research. I liked analyzing other people's data and theorizing about how that could be true, but not collecting the data.
Your factors ring somewhat true also. Especially the one about there being no hurry, although I think of it as having enough time to be able to do a good job.
I think low standards also helps, which probably ties into your ideas about being judged and being counted on. I love when people have super low standards for me that are very easy to beat. It's a lot more fun to be on intramural teams where everyone knows they're not going to win, so they focus on having fun, they let everyone play equally, they congratulate everyone's good moves even if they're on the other team, etc., than on intramural teams that win. I think I err toward perfectionism, so backing off from that feels good. People who err the other direction might prefer when someone holds them to higher standards and makes them achieve amazing things.
Another thing is that attacking projects that seem overwhelming are not an exciting challenge for me; they are a thing that I avoid. So this is why I disagree with you about whether weeding is fun. If we were neighbors, I could do some of your dishes and you could do some of my gardening! I don't know why some things seem overwhelming and others don't. One could argue that of course I'm bad at weeding because I have clay soil. But one could argue that I'm bad at dishes because I have no dishwasher. So, I don't know.
It's also fun when I think of a better way to do something or I learn a better way to do something.
I also enjoy translating/liaising between two people such as a programmer and a user.
I enjoy looked at details and drawing conclusions; I despise memorizing details or having to be detail-oriented and not make typos.
I've heard that when you turn a hobby into a job, it often doesn't work out but that could be because you have to speed up and the hobby becomes more like assembly line work than a creative activity. At first it's probably fun to figure out ways to get more efficient, but then you feel like an automaton. Another reason is that your boss could insist that you do something in a stupid way instead of a good way, or a client could insist on something that's not even possible. It's nice to do important or interesting things the best way you know how and to have that be good enough. And it's nice to figure out ways to do things that don't matter so much in a minimal good-enough way that's not stressing.
Unlike min hus, I don't really like cooking, regardless of what I'm cooking. I do like eating things just the way I like, though. For example, today it was good to have grilled cheese-and-pastrami sandwiches that were perfectly browned, made with whole wheat and sharp cheddar and nitrate-free pastrami with the bigger fatty bits cut off.
Well, that's enough babbling on this topic for now!
Oh yes, low standards... I LOVE low standards! I think this is why I enjoy weeding - I long ago gave up the notion that I'd ever be able to make a meaningful dent in them, so I never worry about getting it "done" because there is no "done". This lets me just enjoy it as a somewhat meditative experience. Gotta figure out how to apply that principle to the dishes...
DeleteI don't find it meditative. But I could make it about being out in the good weather being productive. As soon as we have good weather again.
DeleteWith dishes I find it's possible to be done (and have nice, empty counters ready for use again), so that's satisfying. It helps that I have a good place for all of my dishes, so they are very easy to put away.
I fear my kitchen suffers from terrible "counter creep" and I'm constantly battling the situation where even when everything is "done" there's still a pile of homeless crap on the counter. I think I need to do another culling/re-arrangements of the cabinets so that everything actually has a home to be put away to. The problem is that life always seems to change - and within a few months what started out as a good system becomes not so good, so I'm back to a bunch of homeless items again.
DeleteMaybe I just need to accept that fact and plan on doing a rearrangement once a month or so. Having less crap in there wouldn't hurt either.
I like doing the dishes- I think because I like tasks which restore order and cleanliness to the house! I don't exactly get exited about doing the housework, but generally I don't procrastinate about it because I know I will feel much better when it is done!
ReplyDeleteI think anything can feel like work if it is not the thing that you most want to be doing right now...I love knitting, but if I am trying to finish something for a birthday/Christmas etc it can start to feel like a bit of a chore because I can't just put it down and do something else/knit something else.
Big, overwhelming jobs like the garden also feel like work to me- until I actually get out there and get on with it, at which point it is more fun!
I'm finding your point about feeling better when the housework is done to be quite interesting. I'm not sure I've ever experienced that. I generally feel worse after doing housework because in the course of doing it, I end up looking at things much closer than I otherwise would, at which point I become completely discouraged by the hopelessness of it all, and end up feeling like the only solution would be to get a few sticks of dynamite, blow up the house and start over! :-)
DeleteSo even though I know intellectually that I've made things cleaner, it doesn't feel that way - it just feels like I've been forced to look at how hopelessly filthy everything is. Perhaps this is the old perfectionist dichotomy kicking in. You know... I can't do it perfectly, so I don't want to do it at all. Not that it's actually possible to clean a house "perfectly".
Hmmmm... very, very interesting...
NicolaB, when I used to have homework, I'd feel the same way as you do about gardening--I didn't look forward to it at all, but once I got started I was okay. (Taking breaks was a bad idea for me, even though they work great for other people, because then I'd be back to not looking forward to it.)
DeleteEcoCatLady, maybe you need to get quicker at switching back to your earlier perspective after cleaning. Maybe jump into something else right away (like a book) and then when you're done with that thing you can feel better.
That's an interesting strategy. Like setting clearly defined limits on the cleaning tasks rather than just my usual "clean up this dump" attitude.
DeleteI 'enjoy' the housework much more now that I feel that the house is pretty much decluttered- because when I have tidied up and cleaned a bit, the house feels 'done'- it didn't feel 'done' previously, when there were items that did not have a place, and surfaces were cluttered.
DeleteIt has taken me a while to learn not to set impossible housework goals, however- they only lead to despair!
Also- the decluttering is never 'done'- although it feels done for a while, I know that there will be something else that I get the urge to sort through sooner or later! Getting rid of stuff and organising what remains is something that I find quite fun- I think, like cleaning, because I enjoy the reduction in visual clutter that results from it...
DeleteYou know... I've been thinking about the decluttering/organizing thing quite a bit over the past few days, and I'm sort of coming to a better place with it. Perhaps the need to keep doing it over and over isn't evidence of some sort of failure on my part, it simply means that my life is evolving and my space needs to have the flexibility to evolve with it.
DeleteIn some places like the kitchen and bedroom it's a seasonal thing. My cupboards are currently overflowing with jars and containers that will fill up with garden produce and be frozen next fall. I've never actually done a wardrobe shuffle with the seasons - packing away winter stuff in summer and vice versa, but it might ease the clothing clutter considerably - even if all I did was to choose one drawer that rotates with a box on the closet shelf or something like that.
In other rooms it's because my life is changing. As I've gotten more into cycling, I've collected a whole pile of cycling stuff - in fact CatMan just gave me a pile more tools and stands for my birthday. Maybe instead of just trying to cram this all in around the edges, I need to honor the fact that this activity has become important to me and carve out some space that is reserved exclusively for my biking stuff. Hmmmm...
Anyhow, it's starting to feel more like doing some organizing could be a fun project as opposed to a sign that I'm a hopeless failure, which is a good thing. (Note the word "fun" in there... that was totally not intentional, which means that I think it might be genuine.)
Now THIS is progress!
Needing to declutter/organise more than once is definitely not a failure- as you say, life evolves and changes, and your home can reflect that.
DeleteYey for 'organising could be fun' progress :)
I got so excited about it all that arter tackling the dishes this morning, I actually culled the sock drawer this evening! Who am I, and what have I done with me?
DeleteI think it can be a bit addictive, the clutter removal thing...enjoy it whilst you have the cleaning mojo :)
DeleteYes... because it certainly won't last!
DeleteI've been thinking about this lately, as organizing music gigs is becoming more and more onerous. For me, it's not exactly a work/play distinction, as I mostly enjoyed work. A crucial factor for me is competence; I enjoy stuff I'm good at. For this reason, I'm happy to be judged - especially on something intrinsic to my value as a human being - if it's something I can do well. I crave approval, so I need the judgement: "Look how good I am!"
ReplyDeleteWhere I struggle is with things I'm not good at (stating the obvious here). This really came home to me the other day when I was talking to a friend about how to make the gigs work financially. Previous organizers had done this with grant support, but I'm adamant that I don't want to get into that because form-filling is too much like work. My friend gave me a quizzical look - with my academic background, surely filling in forms isn't too much of a challenge? I replied, "Form filling = grant applications = failure." I hadn't even known this until I said it, but it's true. It seems that repeatedly pouring my heart and soul into presenting my best ideas, only to have them rejected as unworthy of support... well, that's left me with a bit of an aversion to filling in forms, especially those asking for money.
Ooooo... that is such an excellent point. Come to think of it, there's probably no instance where one feels "judged" more than being on stage, yet I totally love that. People always talk about paralyzing stage fright, but I almost never experience it. In my mind I associate performing with people cheering for me and telling me that I'm great. Keeping house, on the other hand = failure.
DeleteAnd the whole grant application thing... oy! I've never applied for a personal grant or a grant for a project that I myself was terribly invested in, but I can imagine that it would feel like a personal rejection if you didn't get funded.
The thing to realize though, is that most granting agencies are FAR from objective. They're generally not judging a proposal on it's actual merits, rather they're looking for things that are a close match to what they've already decided ahead of time that they want to fund. It matters little if the proposal is well written or if the project itself is worth a crap - they just want something that forwards whatever their agenda is. And believe me, even public institutions have an agenda!
That was one of my constant frustrations when running the music school. I always felt like I had to invent projects, or at least do a LOT of twisting and spinning with the projects we already had going in order to have any prayer of getting them funded. It was a ridiculous little game and left me with very cynical feelings about the so-called "benevolence" of those giving away the money. My point is, you can't take that sort of "rejection" personally - easier said than done, but true.
I think my response is similar to min hus'. If I HAVE to do it, it's work to me. For example, child rearing often feels like work, so I got a job to avoid some of that work lol. As a child I LOVED to clean certain things. I had a friend actually give me Oxiclean when it came out because I was OBSESSED with it. One of my favorite things to do is clean shoes with a toothbrush (like sneakers). Most people never do this and consider it work, but I find it fun. Most things people find fun, I do not. Drinking and going to movies are some of them. Cooking is a lot of work to me (and eating in general), but I sure do love to bake. I think there are perspective shifts I could take, like when walking my dog feels like work and times when it's fun...it's all in perspective. One of the few ways I get get work to feel less like it is by putting on my Pandora station (and now the boys' since they finally have musicals on there). Otherwise, I'm dragging my feet the whole way through or avoiding work by being online or watching the boob tube.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree about being required to do something... it almost doesn't matter what the thing is - just the fact that I HAVE to do it sorta pisses me off and makes me not want to. I think that's a big part of my aversion to going to bed at a decent hour!
DeleteAnd oddly enough, I can understand the appeal of something like cleaning shoes with a toothbrush. Seems like a manageable task and one where perfectionism would be rewarded - unlike, say, cleaning an entire house.
The difference for me is when it becomes "work". I love to knit and I love to knit things for people but if I'm asked to make something for someone it becomes a job...with a deadline. I hate the pressure, even though I can start a project and work on it non stop because I love doing it,it's when I HAVE to get it finished that the "work" begins.
ReplyDeleteAnd I've found that's basically the same for me with everything I do.
So with routine chores, I like to do them in my own time...even if that takes all day:) and sometimes just starting, say- cleaning windows, once I get going I enjoy doing it.
Marie
Oh yes, the pressure of deadlines... I'm intimately familiar with that one. I think that may be why I pretty much refuse to do much of anything on a schedule - it just feels like too much pressure!
DeleteInteresting post and loved all the comments. For me a lot of things that other people define as work, I enjoy. I enjoy house cleaning, I enjoy gardening, I enjoy working out at the gym. BUT I fine what takes the joy out of any of those thing and TURN it into a chore is if I have a deadline. If I have to clean my house because out of town family is due in an hour, then there is no joy to be found. If I am trying to fit a workout at the gym in but have to be somewhere in an hour, I don't enjoy the workout. Nothing is fun for me if I am on the clock.
ReplyDeleteSo... another vote for the deadlines issue. You know, as I think about this... for me the real issue with deadlines is that it makes me feel like I have to hurry even when I don't. And there's nothing yuckier than trying to hurry through something. Maybe that's part of the housework thing. I feel like it's a horrible chore, so I try to hurry through it, but the act of hurrying is part of what makes it feel like a horrible chore. It's a vicious circle!!! Hmmmm...
Delete"Will sleep for food" cat LOOKS like my cat and ACTS like my cat. Hmmm. Maybe he has a side gig going on.
ReplyDeleteI have also thought a lot about this question. I think you hit on most of the main points. What I have also seen both with myself and my kids is that if an activity is a novelty (we haven't done it in awhile ... ), it's fun (for example, camping). If we start doing it regularly, it loses its novelty factor and becomes work ("I have to pack and do laundry and we have to set up the tent and I'm constantly sweeping it out and then we have to take everything down and come home and do laundry again and dry out the gear ..."). The other thing I notice is how the physical environment affects my notions of fun--planting flowers in the spring is fun because I can choose to do it on a sunny, mild day ... tending to these when it's super hot and humid out and I have to haul the hose from the back of the house to the front and I get muddy and sweaty doing it ... not so much. But for me, the biggest factor is whether or not it's optional. Oh yeah, and attitude ... although there are some things I absolutely hate to do because I hate the nature of the task and no amount of "good attitude" will make it NOT be work for me.
Fun question! You are thought-provoking, as always!
Ha! Wonder what else your cat is doing that you don't know about. :-) Seriously, if your cat looks like that, he must be really beautiful.
DeleteAnother excellent point about the novelty thing. Sorta like my friend and the song... I'm sure she loved singing it when she first wrote it!
And the environment - oh, so true! Going for a long bike ride outside on a beautiful day = fun. Spending an hour on the exercise bike in the basement = torture.
I think we're all in agreement about the optional thing - which sorta brings up an interesting point. Why, in a "free" society like our own, do we all feel like there is so much about our lives that isn't "optional"? Hmmm....
That would be another fun topic! I think we have ourselves to blame for a certain portion of it. The reason I say that is, several years ago (maybe 16 or 17?) I was sick with mono for many months. I was off from work for 3 months, worked part-time for 3 months, before being able to resume a full-time schedule, and it took me all of 10 months to feel healthy again. During that time I realized just how much I had voluntarily put on my plate to accomplish that really and truly wasn't mandatory--in my little brain I thought it was, but the reality of it was different. While that was a not-so-fun life experience, it has forever changed how I view the time given to us and how I use it. It also greatly affects my parenting--so often I hear parents sigh, "But I'm just so BUSY with the kid's activities!" and I think to myself, hmm, perhaps you need to scale back on that (but I usually don't say it aloud ... ).
DeleteI am in TOTAL agreement on this one. It seems that my entire adult life has been an exercise in learning to say no, and learning to not pile more expectations upon myself. I think it goes against the grain of our society - Calvinist work ethic and all that, but I really do think that things are reaching some sort of existential breaking point. I get exhausted just hearing about the schedules that some of my friends maintain!
DeleteI'm a little late to this interesting discussion. I don't know how much I have to add except to say that for my fun, I want control of it and I am excited when I am having fun and learning something at the same time.
ReplyDeleteAgreed... learning is great fun if there's no pressure involved. CatMan and I have studied Spanish for over 15 years, and it's wonderful fun. He's even managed to give me a few math lessons that I almost found tolerable... as long as he doesn't quiz me on it later! :-)
DeleteBucking the trend here, I don't get hung up on fun so much as satisfaction, contentment or accomplishment. I get much more satisfaction out of getting things done than through avoiding them...then I don't have a guilty conscience when I lay around and read books the rest of the time. I'm not a productivity machine, but too much relaxing stresses me out! My idea of fun would be going roller blading, discovering a new restaurant, or going to see fireworks on a clear summer night. All of which take minimal effort on my part!
ReplyDeleteMy problem is that I have a very hard time defining "done" - especially when it comes to housework. Even if I've spent the entire day on it, it still feels like there is infinitely more that I should be doing. Is that just my own personal variety of crazy? How do you decide when you're "done"?
DeleteBut I have to agree about fun and relaxation not necessarily being one in the same. There's not much "relaxing" to be had in a 40 mile bike ride, but it's incredibly fun!
What if you decided to do housework for a certain amount of time, say one hour five days a week - then you'd know when you were done. I once read the definition of housework - it's like putting beads on a string with no knot in the end. Which seems pretty true to me. So, no - it is never done, but YOU can be done with it - until the next scheduled time to do it. (Can you tell I struggle with this, too ... have done way too much thinking about it!)
DeleteHey Jenny... Well, I have considered that approach, and I agree that it does have merit. It would ensure that the basics would get done, and it would allow me to feel "done."
DeleteBut here's the thing... just telling myself that I have to do it for XYZ amount of time pretty much ensures that it's gonna feel like work... and not just work, but WORK, if you know what I mean. Oh, my rebellious nature is coming to light once again.
I dunno... I guess some little unrealistic part of me is still holding on to hope that I might be able to find some way to make it feel more like fun... or at least to dread it less. Because, to tell the truth, dreading it is much worse than actually doing it. Oy vay!
I have to agree with a lot of your other commenters - being forced to do something makes it work (writing a book report in 4th grade), boring tasks are work (scrubbing the shower), and deadlines really suck the fun out of most activities. Music can really change my mood, so I try using that to cheer me up when I have something wretched on my to-do list. And along the same lines, audiobooks while I wash dishes :)
ReplyDeleteMusic and audio books - those are great ideas. Sometimes when I'm really in avoidance mode I'll put on one of my favorite CD's and tell myself that I just have to work on it for as long as the CD lasts. It totally makes it bearable. Audio books would be even better for long-ish stuff - especially since they're designed so just be listened to.
DeleteI tried to fold laundry while watching a movie last night. It was a complicated crime thriller sort of a deal that has a whole bunch of twists and turns, and key information relayed in very brief visual only scenes - most of which I missed because I was, ahem, folding laundry! About 30 minutes in I realized that I had absolutely NO idea what was going on and had to stop it and start over. I guess some movies are not intended to be watched while folding laundry! Oh well...
I put upbeat music on if I am finding it hard to get up off the sofa and do something (such as now!).
DeleteTime to put the music on and go and tidy up..today's job- getting rid of random unused jars of stuff in the fridge..
Ha! For me the rhythm of the music matters less than the fact that I know the words and can sing along. Nothing makes a dull task better than being able to sing your way through it!
DeleteThis is my simplified definition:
ReplyDeleteWork is what I procrastinate, and fun is what I bounce out of bed ready to do in the morning.
My son's definition of work vs fun is work is what you need to be paid to do and fun is what you gladly do for free.
And that is somewhat true for me. So, I try to "pay" myself on the work stuff. I think of the rewards that are ahead of me. The rewards might not be intrinsically related to the job, but just something that I tell myself I'll get to do/have in the near future.
I've also just come to terms with the fact that we all have to do "work". It's just part of life. And I try to be grateful that my work is not back-breaking, humiliating, or disgusting. There are a lot of jobs out there that I am so grateful I don't have.
Ha! Oh Lili, I totally LOVE your definition!
DeleteYou also bring up a really good point. "Work" is part of life, and perhaps I need to find a way to make peace with that fact. I mean, lots of religious & spiritual traditions have ways of looking at this that don't involve a whole pile of self-flagellation. So perhaps I need to look at it as something that has an intrinsic reward (like getting to have a cleaner house) as opposed to a sign of inadequacy, or some sort of existential punishment. In other words, perhaps doing "work" doesn't have to be the emotional equivalent of donning a hair shirt!
CatMan has a very matter of fact approach that I've been trying to adopt for years. He always says that if I don't feel like doing it, I should just not do it. But there will come a point when the pain of not having the thing done will outweigh the pain of doing it, and at that point I'll just naturally be motivated to do it. He's really good at removing the whole "I'm a terrible person" judgment stuff from the equation.