In The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again, Catherine Price writes that: “Fun isn’t just a result of human thriving. It is a cause. It reminds us of who we used to be and who we want to be.”

Her quote caught my attention. How does fun cause human thriving?

“That’s something we get wrong about fun,” Price says. “We assume that it’s frivolous or a pleasant bonus to life, but it’s not essential. In fact, we often assume that it’s irresponsible; You can’t be a ‘serious’ person, who takes care of their responsibilities, and also prioritizes fun.”

She debunked this myth by sharing a story about Madeleine Albright from Jennifer Aaker, PhD, and Naomi Bagdonas’s book, Humor, Seriously. Albright was attending a conference as Secretary of State when she learned that she was to perform a skit with her Russian counterpart at a diplomats’ dinner. So, she spent the evening creating it and drinking vodka with the Russian delegation. They changed the lyrics of West Side Story to East-West Story. Rather than: “I just met a girl named Maria.” They wrote: “I just met a girl named Madeleine Albright.” The diplomats dressed up as members of the Jets (the gang from West Side Story) and performed together.

“I love that story because, at first glance, it may seem like it was a waste of time and taxpayer money,” she says. “But, Madeleine Albright said that it was experiences like that that helped her get to know her Russian counterpart. Even though they didn’t agree on everything, they had this very human relationship and worked together much more productively because they connected through this experience of fun.”

Price has devoted her career to helping people “scroll less and live more.” Her journey began with her seminal book, How to Break Up With Your Phone (the revised edition will be released in February), and continues with her Substack and podcast, How to Feel Alive.

In our conversation, she illustrates why fun is essential and how we can experience a greater sense of playfulness, connection, and flow in our lives and careers. We explore how to silence the inner critic that inhibits play, strengthen our relationships through humor, and adopt a decision-making framework that prioritizes fun.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Fast Company: You write that playfulness strengthens our relationships and that “when you’re playful with the same people, it can create bonds that persist even when you’re not actively playing.” In what ways does play deepen our relationships and what are the benefits of that? 

Catherine Price: You can understand how play and playfulness strengthen relationships by thinking about your own strongest relationships and asking yourself: Do they involve laughter? Laughter is a sign of playfulness.

In the continuum of how important playfulness is, I’m on the far end where playfulness is a core value. But, I think that’s true for most people. When people think it’s not important to them, in many cases, it’s a misunderstanding of what playfulness means. There’s an assumption that you have to do something like play a game or act like a child, which aren’t things I tap into. It’s more this sense of being lighthearted and authentic.

In terms of fostering connection, you can think of your own experiences: What experiences have made you feel closer to people? Sure, some deep, late-night conversations might spring to mind. But, you probably feel closer to colleagues after you’ve shared a laugh or an experience that wasn’t all serious because it shows our humanity.

Anytime someone lets down their guard and shows their authentic self, they’re being vulnerable, which is also interesting in terms of fun. There’s a vulnerability in it. When someone allows themselves to be vulnerable, it makes you feel like you can be vulnerable, too. Anytime people are vulnerable together, the connection is going to be strengthened.

Everyone going all in is a precondition for fun. Still, you make an important distinction as to what may be holding people back: “If someone is standing awkwardly on the sidelines, whether metaphorically or literally, it’s probably not because they don’t want to have fun. They’re just waiting for an invitation.” What are some ways we can invite each other in? And, if we’re afraid to go all in, how might we overcome that? 

This makes me think of a question I asked in the surveys I sent people when I was researching the book: Describe a fun person from your life and explain what makes them seem fun. My assumption, which I think is many people’s, is that people would describe extroverts—the class clowns or the lives of the party. That was true in some cases. But, it was interesting that a lot of people used descriptors that were more applicable, or certainly accessible, to introverts. They were things such as: They make everyone feel comfortable in their presence. They’re not necessarily telling the jokes, but they laugh along. They’re always up for trying something new. 

If you’re trying to figure out how you can join in more, take some of the pressure off yourself. You don’t need to be driving the fun. You can just support it. That’s a more accessible entry point for a lot of people. You can laugh along or say “Yes” to things. You can also monitor your own instincts because a lot of us instinctively say “No” to everything in our minds. We’ll find everything that’s wrong with this situation or shut ourselves down and be self-critical.

Perfectionism plays a big part in people’s inability to have fun. If my goal were to become a professional drummer or if I wasn’t able to laugh at myself, it wouldn’t be fun. I was telling my drum teacher yesterday that I’m doing the slow jam version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for people who don’t want the song to have a steady beat. But, I know that there were periods in my life where I would have been embarrassed if I wasn’t able to do things perfectly or I would have been so mean to myself. The first step is to notice that that’s your tendency. Then, the next step is to gently begin to explore ways that you might be kinder to yourself.

In terms of people who are “fun curious,” and this seems foreign, it’s important to recognize that you’re probably having more fun than you realize. You just haven’t labeled it as fun. You’ve been feeling this pressure for it to be the most fun ever or you have a stereotypical view of fun, like: You don’t like office happy hours. So, you’re not a fun person.

You’re not going to be on vacation or having the most fun you could ever imagine every day. That’s impossible. But, one of the things I love about defining fun as “playful, connected, flow” is that we have moments of playfulness, connection, or flow multiple times a day. You probably hit the bull’s-eye and have tiny moments of playful, connected, flow, more often than you realize, even in a passing interaction with a coworker or when I’m playing with my dog.

It can be helpful for people to start to notice these tiny moments and to label them as fun because if you don’t label things, you’re not going to remember and appreciate them. The analogy I like to use is the idea of collecting these little fun moments like you would string beads on a necklace. They’re small independently. But, when you look at them as a string, you have this entire string of memories that represent fun. You can start to recognize that these moments already exist. Then, that can give you ideas for how to create more of them in the future.

You suggest planning one fun booster shot per season and microdosing fun more regularly. I’d love for you to speak to this philosophy. First, in understanding how long an experience will affect us, then, in how you plan them. 

The booster shot, which is before COVID in terms of terminology, is the idea that there are certain experiences that are so much fun that their effects linger for a long time afterward. If you have a memory that’s powerful enough to make you smile years later, that was the equivalent of a booster shot for fun, because you’re still boosted from it.

You have some control over booster shots. If you put the work into identifying your Fun Magnets and figuring out what’s most likely to lead to fun for you, you can create situations that make it more likely for you to experience that higher level of fun, which can then lead to longer effects.

An example from a personal context would be: I love summer camps. I make a point to not just attend family or adult camps, but to organize one for my friends and their families as a way to give us all a ritualistic experience that can give us a booster shot of fun. For someone else, it could be a yearly vacation or, in a work context, a retreat or holiday party that people genuinely look forward to and talk about afterward.

You can also have what I call microdoses, which are little things that you can plan more easily, less expensively, and on a more regular schedule. They won’t lead to the most fun of your life, but you can still assume that they will give you a burst of energy that’s going to help make your everyday life feel more fun.

Each of us has, or hopefully can identify, things that would give them a little boost. Maybe it’s having coffee or a phone call with a friend regularly. In a workplace context, maybe it’s going to lunch with a colleague instead of eating your meals alone in front of your email or, if you’re doing remote work, making a point to meet up with people in person. If you have genuine fun with your colleagues at an offsite or having a meal, you may not have gotten much done during the experience itself. But, the sense of energy and connection that is created is going to carry over into your work.

You shared that fun can help us flourish by altering our decision-making process and personally evaluating new opportunities by asking: Does this feel fun? Will it generate playfulness, connection, or flow? How do you, and can we, apply that to our work? It seems like a radical professional question. 

Why did it seem radical?

Work and fun don’t seem like two words that go together.  

That’s an interesting observation. I totally agree with you, but it’s one that we should investigate and question. Why should work not be fun? We spend so much time working. It gets to the broader point that it’s important to proactively try to make our lives as meaningful and joyful as possible.

It can be helpful to ask ourselves when we are making work decisions, Will this lead to feelings of playfulness, connection, or flow?—because those are positive experiences. Even if they don’t all converge into the bull’s-eye of True Fun, the more playfulness we experience, the more connected we feel, and the more often we’re in flow, the more satisfying our lives are going to feel. I’m glad you reminded me because I could stand to use more myself.

More broadly, one of the reasons I like using those three states as goalposts is that fun is too vague. We wouldn’t necessarily think Is that going to be fun?, when we’re thinking about work. To me, it helps to have these more specific words as guiding stars, then, to sort the potential effects into buckets of the things I’m doing with my time.

For example, would I like to do a podcast? I would because I love having playful conversations with people. Obviously, a conversation is an opportunity to be connected. Then, if you’re paying attention, you’re going to be in flow. So, that’s a hard “Yes” for me.

It adds a variable beyond just money, because often what we turn to is: Is it going to be worth my time? Worth my time translates to: Am I going to get paid enough for it? It’s important to be paid for things because we do need to support ourselves. But, there’s this other dimension that we should also be paying attention to, which is: Will it be enjoyable? One way to determine if something will be enjoyable is to ask yourself: Will it produce playfulness, connection, or flow?

In the Fun Audit you ask, What did you love to do as a child?, which is an interesting question we can ask to deepen our relationships. What other questions can we ask ourselves and each other after reading this?  

The first ones that come to mind are: What energizes you? What delights you? If you could plan a perfect day off for yourself, what would you do, without any sense of responsibility? Don’t be afraid to be selfish.

Also, asking yourself: When are the times that you laugh the most? Laughter is a big one because if you’re truly laughing, you’re having fun.