The Happiness Coefficient: Fun Things on Fun Days

This weekend, my husband and I celebrated our 17-year anniversary. My husband surprised me with a weekend away to my favorite hotel on the beach. You would think this surprise was met with sheer joy and excitement. And eventually it was.

But at first, I gotta admit, I was taken off guard. The truth is, in my infinite lameness, I had planned to clean the house, put up Fall decorations and organize a closet or two.

“We do fun things are fun days, Sweetie,” my husband reminded me.

Indeed we do. Reminded of our family mantra, I quickly got on board with letting go of chores and embracing time to relax.

As an incredible bonus to our getaway, some great friends were able to join us. It is these friends who introduced us to the “Fun Things on Fun Days” life philosophy.

This work-life-balance dogma was a game changer for us, and if you’re overwhelmed with chores and responsibilities encroaching on your free time, it might be for you as well.

The gist of the approach is this: Do fun things on fun days and not fun things on not fun days.

There is some homework involved to fine tune this idea for you and your family. ?

First, define what are ‘fun’ and ‘unfun’ things to you. Because my husband and I are nerds who work in IT, we modeled our own set of fun and not fun things to understand if this approach would work for us. We started with a standard line graph, ranging from 0-10 and asked what made us happy? What were things we deemed fun? What were things we deemed unfun? What were things we knew we had to do regardless of their fun level? What values to do we give these things? Where do they rest on the chart?

Eventually, our line graph and napkin math morphed into a Gartner Magic Quadrant-style chart encapsulating the leaders, laggards, and niches, and in the center, the keystone to measure all activities against (for us): a hangover (super fun working your way towards it, very unfun on the flipside).

Next, decide which days of the week you deem as ‘fun days’ and which you deem as ‘not fun days’ so you can assign your tasks, obligations, and activities to their proper day(s).

For us, chores and errands were relegated to ‘not fun’ days which were determined to be Monday-Wednesday. Friday through Sunday were designated ‘fun’ days. Thursday was a toss-up; it could be fun or not fun depending on the circumstances (i.e., do we have Friday off work? Thursday is now fun.)

There are exceptions of course. Obligations that may be ‘not fun’ could indeed fall on a ‘fun’ day. (i.e., a funeral.) But this approach provides a structure to our free time and something much more important: relief.

Starring at a stack of laundry while trying to relax in front of the TV or going out to lunch while the weeds are literally choking out your gardenias can be tough. The nagging guilt of what you ‘should’ be doing instead of having fun can take away from said fun. And if it’s fun for you to weed your garden then that becomes an activity you put your full self into on a fun day!

So often we hear social influencers and mental health professionals tell us, practically beat it into our heads, that rest and play are essential to our well-being. We must rejuvenate, replenish, and reward ourselves for our hard work. Otherwise, we burn out.

Following the ‘fun things on fun days’ mantra gives us permission to not feel guilty about spending our free time any way we want. But it also means after work ends, some unfun chores begin, like yard work, errands, house cleaning, meal prepping, laundry, homework, etc. The idea of ending 8+ hours of work by jumping into a tedious home project or mopping the kitchen floor might seem like the literal last thing you want to do. A change in mindset regarding the value of our time helped subdue any added stress additional weekday activities might have caused.

A change in semantics can help, too. “I choose to accomplish the house cleaning on <unfun day> so I can enjoy <fun day> fully.”

This approach will not work for everyone and at times may seem to drag out projects. For example: need to build a fence in your backyard? We would work on it every Mon-Thursday evening to save our weekends for relaxing. This might mean the fence takes longer to build because we’re working on it in shorter spurts over a longer period rather than knocking it out over a few weekends.

Our theory is that weekends are precious things. Our time, in general, is a precious thing, and while life responsibilities cannot be avoided, we can relegate some activities and elevate others.

So, the next time you’re contemplating tackling a list of chores or packing a cooler for a day of fishing with your crew, ask yourself: “Is today a fun day?”

Stay well,

Erika