The Power of Fun by Catherine Price was the first book I read this year. I think it was a great one to get the new year started off. I was intrigued by the topic as I’ve never read or heard of a book about why it’s important to have fun. Here are some of the main points from the book that stood out to me!
Synopsis
The Power of Fun by Catherine Price is essentially a book about the science of fun — why fun is important, how to determine what true fun means to you, how to incorporate fun into your life as an adult, etc.
One of the main points this book makes is that fun shouldn’t just be an afterthought, or something that only applies to kids. Fun is essential for our health and well-being. Often times, the reason adults give for not having more fun is that they don’t have time. If we decrease “fake fun” (screen time), we would all probably have a little more room in our lives for true fun.
Obviously, what’s “fun” for one person won’t be fun for someone else. Therefore, it’s important to determine what fun looks like for you. From there you can come up with ways to incorporate that into your life. Price says you need to determine “fun magnets”, or the activities, people, and settings that generate fun for you. Then determine what characteristics these fun magnets have that make them fun for you. Here are some examples of what these characteristics might be: creativity, intellectual stimulation, games, challenges, spontaneity, group size, anonymity, community, teaching, thrill-seeking, physicality, nature, music, competition, novelty. From there you can figure out what types of things will actually be fun for you!
The author describes what she calls a “Fun Audit” (pictured below). The purpose of the Fun Audit is to help you determine what activities in your life have the most potential to be truly fun.
Thoughts
I feel like I got a lot out of this book. It gave me a reason to want to have more fun. It also gave me practical steps on how to determine what that might mean for me. I love a book that’s informative and applicable.
This author also wrote a book called “How to Break Up With your Phone.” You can tell the author is passionate about this topic; there is a lot of information about that in this book as well. I understand that having more fun requires spending less time on your phone, but it felt like too much time was spent talking about phones. It became sort of repetitive. Besides that I really enjoyed this book and I have already recommended it to a few people!
More Reviews
If you liked this review of The Power of Fun by Catherine Price, you can read more book reviews here.
You can check for a free copy of this book on Libby, or you can buy your own copy here.
