With the challenges of everyday life, it’s easy to lose sight of the value of fun. Science journalist Catherine Price joins us to discuss her new book The Power of Fun and why fun and play are important parts of a fulfilling life. Listen in to how you can have more fun in retirement and the benefits you may not expect.

We discuss:

• The backstory that inspired her to write her new book The Power of Fun
  
• What gets in the way of fun for adults
  
• The three main components of fun (you’ll want to know to have fun in retirement)
  
• How fun is good for you – including ways that may surprise you
  
• How you can tell the difference between True Fun and Fake Fun
  
• How she’s brought more Play into her life
  
• How to have a healthier Screen-Life Balance
  
• How to find new interests, passions, and hobbies
  
• The value of trying new things
  
• Preventing perfectionism from getting in the way of trying something new things
  
• The main messages she wants people to take away from The Power of Fun
  

Catherine Price joins us from Philadelphia.

Hailed in The New York Times as “the Marie Kondo of brains,” Catherine Price is an award-winning science journalist, speaker, and author of How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life (Ten Speed Press), among other books. Her newest book, The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again (Dial Press) will be released in December 2021. As a speaker, consultant and workshop leader, Catherine helps individuals and organizations create healthier personal and professional relationships with their phones (and other devices), and establish best practices to encourage creativity, productivity and mental health. In other words, she helps people scroll less, live more, and have fun.

How to Break Up With Your Phone has been published in 30 countries and featured in scores of high-profile media outlets around the world, including NPR, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Wired, Vox, Refinery29, BBC World News Service, and many others. A New York Times article about Catherine and her 30-day program titled ” Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain,” went viral, receiving more than 2 million hits in less than a week.

Catherine is also the creator and founder of Screen/Life Balance, which is dedicated to helping people learn how to scroll less and live more. Screen/Life Balance is part of Catherine’s continued mission to create evidence-backed resources to help people around the world design lives in which they control their technology, rather than the other way around—with the ultimate goal of increasing happiness, productivity, creativity, health and wellbeing.

Catherine speaks, consults, and leads workshops on how individuals and corporations can set better boundaries with — and best practices for — their devices in order to maximize creativity and productivity, improve mental health and brain function, reduce burnout, spend more time doing the things that actually matter to them…and have more fun! Her engagements can be customized based on audience size and area of interest, but they are always compelling and actionable, chock-full of what Catherine calls “science-backed self-help.”

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For More on Catherine Price

Pre-order The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again (December 21, 2021)

The Power of Fun Website with a free quiz and resources

How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life

Wise Quotes

On What Gets in the Way of Fun

“We just at some point start to believe that fun is childish and it’s something kids do, but it’s not really that important to adults. It shouldn’t be at the priority on the top of our priority list because we think it’s frivolous, so it ends up at the bottom. We think that as responsible adults and citizens and members of society, we need to focus on the important things. We have this zero-sum approach to our lives where we think that if we were to pay attention to fun and enjoyment, it must mean that we’re not paying attention to the other things. But it always reminds me of that bumper sticker that you sometimes see that says If You’re Not Outraged, You’re Not Paying Attention and I always think: Well, I am paying attention I just would prefer not to be outraged all the time. And if I’m constantly outraged and anxious and focusing on the negative or even just focusing on my responsibilities, I’m going to be somewhat depleted.”

The Benefits of Fun

“And it’s very important to focus on fun so that we can fill up our tanks. What I was really excited to discover in my research was that fun doesn’t just feel good – it actually is good for us. It’s deeply good for us both mentally and physically – and it actually gives us the resilience and the energy we need to do everything else in our lives. But I think that that’s one of the misunderstandings and the misconceptions that get in the way of adults having fun. Plus we take ourselves too seriously. We lose the ability to be playful. We think we have to be perfect or perform all the time instead of just letting ourselves go a bit.”

On Attention 

“Being able to be fully present is absolutely essential for fun – and I would argue for having a well-lived life in general. When our attention is divided and we’re not fully present, then we are not actually experiencing our present experiences. We’re not going to remember those things. The biggest takeaway I had from How to Break Up with Your Phone was that our lives are what we pay attention to. For just that reason, if you’re not paying attention to something it might as well just not have happened and you can see that even at this moment right now you know I’m paying attention to my conversation with you right now. Whatever’s happening on the street outside or whatever else is happening and in this room like or even just feelings or smells or whatever, none of that exists because I’m not paying attention to it. So that really led me to become much more intentional about how to spend my own attention. When I realized that fun was something I should prioritize, and once I started to put my attention towards fun, I really started to notice very big differences in how I felt in my everyday life and how resilient and just happy I felt.”

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Podcast Episodes You May Like

Retire Happy – Dr. Catherine Sanderson

Design Your Life and Get Unstuck – Dave Evans

The Joy of Movement – Kelly McGonigal

Tiny Habits Can Lead to Big Changes – BJ Fogg

Smarter Tomorrow – Elizabeth Ricker

Learning is a Lifetime Sport – Tom Vanderbilt

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