Common cultural beliefs propose that introducing work as fun can make it more viable. Can this phenomenon transcend beyond kindergarten school environment into higher academics or even corporate culture? Is ‘fun’ all we need to increase workplace motivation and incentivize socio-political engagement?
One of the most well established ed-tech company’s catchphrase is ‘make learning fun’. You’ll find many learning channels that promise to provide a fun and interesting environment for your children so that they never get bored. Companies promise fun, excitement and joy to their potential employees. Eminent writer and lecturer Dale Carnegie says, ‘people rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing’. Chinese philosopher Confucius too says, ‘choose a job that you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life’.
But is ‘fun’ the answer to our growing disinterest in our work environment and our general disengagement with life? Would making something more fun, make it more engageable?
The dictionary definition of fun is ‘enjoyment, pleasure or entertainment’; something that amuses us and keeps our attention in exchange for pleasure. Fun may work well in preliminary school or domains of relatively low stake environments– but when it comes to workplace or vocation, the idea of fun is a risky business. Fun paints the picture of that perfect career where ‘every day is play day’ and where your interests and the nature of the work align just perfectly. Of course such a work does not exist– because work, by its very nature, cannot and is not obliged to cater to your intrinsic demands for enjoyment. We primarily work to get paid, we pay to have fun: the fact that we are the one getting paid is evident enough that what we are going to do in a workplace isn’t prioritized for our individual happiness. The notion of work being fun attracts a lot of people to a vocation that they have only seen the end product of. Being a doctor isn’t about saving lives, it’s about working amidst human blood and viscera and excrement, and trying to save someone’s cancer from killing themselves in a high pressure fluorescent lit surgery room. Being a filmmaker isn’t about making awesome, time bending Nolan-esque films– it’s about managing different departments, handling interpersonal conflicts, and letting your vision be known as clearly and effectively as possible. In such circumstances, fun and enjoyment are unrealistic notions.
The most detrimental belief is that fun is equated with the worth of an activity. If it’s not pleasurable for me, it’s not worth it
Fun is a personal feeling of pleasure. It is a short-lived enjoyable phase that can be stimulated from time to time, but cannot be sustained very easily. Sooner or later, the fun stops. More stimulation is needed to keep our interests. What does one do then? What about those situations where they were promised fun and adventure along their journey, and they reached the end and there is no more fun. Where is the fun we were promised? Fun, at best, is an invitation to try something out– it will not guarantee that one will stick with the venture for the rest of their lives. You may ask any artist if it’s fun to make art, and many of them would surely agree to it. But how many of them actually take it as a worthwhile engagement, even a vocational call? Does art keep being fun when it is taken up more than as a past-time activity or something to express yourself by? Amidst the infrequent moments of fun, isn’t there repetitive practice, occasional obscurity and mostly reflecting diligently and carefully on how one can improve upon their craft? Because the ugly fact is that the start is always fun, but the journey to the end product is not.
The most detrimental belief is that fun is equated with the worth of an activity. If it’s not pleasurable for me, it’s not worth it. The issue here is the assumption that worth can only be measured in terms of hedonistic stimulation. The risk here is that you end up raising an individual that abandons new endeavours when they start getting difficult ‘because it’s not fun any more’.
And beyond that, there’s a malignant underlying risk to these offers of a fun work culture. As entrepreneur and author, William Vanderbloemen, points out–
Most surveys I’ve read show that two out of three Americans hate their job. So it would be easy to think that building a “fun” culture is the remedy. When fun is a byproduct of a healthy culture, it can be great. A healthy culture is the glue that holds teams together, retains great employees, and lowers overall turnover. Low turnover usually helps the profit and loss. But that’s healthy workplaces where fun is a byproduct of health. I see too many managers making fun their main goal, and that can be dangerous.
Vanderbloemen in ‘why culture and fun are risky synonyms in the workplace’
Fun is suggested as an easy replacement of culture. And it can easily turn into a force for exploitation: an external solution to a variety of internal problems like a lack of direction in the workplace, meaningless work, hostile work environment, workplace sexism, overworking, etc. Fun can be conveniently stated as a solution to more insidious concerns, akin to slapping a band-aid on a gunshot wound.
The remedy for meaninglessness isn’t fun, and the conventional notion of seeking happiness and fun isn’t the best way to go about our lives
But more than that, there’s a certain juvenility to the word fun. It feels like being offered a carrot dangling at the edge of a stick. It feels patronizing when I am promised ‘fun’ instead of a healthy work environment, or growth or financial security. That there is this underlying assumption that my demands can’t possibly exceed that of a spoilt sex hungry teenager, and that my needs can’t possibly exceed that of being able to find the best video game in the app-store to kill time during some boring college seminar. It’s as if star shaped particoloured candies can remedy the deeper existential hunger of a generation that lives amidst economic and social turmoils that threaten global instability. One does not work for fun; one works for the work– fun doesn’t necessarily reside in work itself. A purposeful career is more than just about the ‘fun’ of it.
Psychologist Paul Bloom too points out in a podcast session with Vox (‘A Good Life is Painful’) that it is necessary to experience pain and suffering to live a fulfilling and meaningful life. We are not talking about sacrificing fun and pleasure, but to acknowledge the fact that these variables cannot and should not be the driving force for one to choose their career. A meaningful and worthy life is much more than just caring about happiness. Now, of-course, all this doesn’t mean that you should rack up as much suffering as possible. This essay by no means promotes suffering, nor does it wish to suggest that suffering is the only way of life: for it isn’t, although it’s definitely a part of it. I do not wish to justify any kind of abuse and exploitation that happens in cultures which force unnecessary pain onto their employees and shout at them to ‘buckle up’ and ‘get to work because that’s what they are supposed to do’. What I ask is to not look at any career or life prospect with the notion of extracting pleasure out of it, or to only see if it caters to your hedonistic demands of pleasure and engagement and happiness; or to only see if it ‘makes me cheerful’. The point is to understand the difference between suffering imposed on oneself and suffering chosen by oneself. Fun can probably tempt one to enter a field and try it out, but it is only through a moderately self forgetful sense of meaning that one can endure and find that deeper transcendental purpose that is not graspable by hedonistic means alone.
This essay in itself is an example of this idea. Writing essays and thought pieces are something I definitely derive satisfaction out of, but most of it is still work, and at times requires a hopeful drudgery to get through. I need to write the draft, research on the topic, learn more about what I wish to talk about, what I do not wish to propagate, edit out unnecessary parts, make a coherent argument and then put it forward, fixing the errors and mistakes till the end. It isn’t exactly fun to write this; trust me because if it was, it would have been frustrating for you to read all this. Because, as Ernest Hemingway puts it– easy reading is hard writing. But I wished to do it because I felt it needed to be said. And that if I can provide something valuable to you, to make you think differently than you thought before reading this, to make you think about something that you never considered worthy of thought before– then I would have fulfilled my purpose.
anshul kandpal 