What Do You Do for Fun? (Challenge #76)

Once upon a time, as a kid in the 80s, I was a reader. Actually, that understates things. I was a Reader with a Capital R—to the point it now embarrasses me that it took until my late 20s to figure out I was meant to be a librarian. I read broadly—from fantasy to history and back. I read deeply—I could whip through doorstops like Watership Down or The Neverending Story in a day or two. Reading was my comfort in bad times and my joy in good times. It got to the point that when I got in trouble, I wouldn’t be grounded from TV or going out to play—but from books. Simply put, it was a major source of fun and imagination, and givn the stacks of books I had strewn around my bedroom, it was always in arm’s reach. 

But as adolescence gave way to real life, reading gradually faded into the background. The Internet came along in high school, and I was able to find more friends I clicked with. As I rose in college and then my career, weekends spent with fantasy epics and the latest historical fiction tomes gave way to Steven Covey and David Allen. The PhD was probably the nail in the coffin, as I found myself reading so much scholarship that I didn’t have brainpower to do much more than watch TV or Youtube during the few hours I wasn’t working or studying. And let’s just say the jump to leadership didn’t help matters.

Recently, I’ve been feeling the need to change things up. All work and no Play makes your leadership practice stale. I was starting to feel a bit more like I’m in a rut vs in the groove, as I put it in episode 71. And as I pondered and experimented with changing up my routine, I picked up a good fiction book for the first time in years. And after inhaling it in a day, I realized what my leadership life had been missing—FUN. 

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Welcome to the Kind Leadership Challenge, the podcast that empowers leaders to heal their organizations in ten minutes! I’m Dr. Sarah Clark, founder of the Kind Leadership Guild, where I use my PhD in Higher ed leadership and nearly 2 decades of experience in academic libraries to coach a community of educational and library leaders who are working to build a better world without burning out. 

In our unique and imperfect ways, kind leaders make tough decisions without becoming jerks. We create impactful and burnout-proof systems for our organizations. And we know that once we stop controlling and start collaborating, even the most ambitious vision can become effortless. Kind Leadership’s pretty simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. So if you’re up for a challenge, stick around as I teach you how to create a resilient, thriving legacy that will strengthen your community long after you’re gone.

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To be clear, I get it. we’ve all got a lot going on. You have your work ad a leader, yes, but you also have home commitments, family commitments, errands, chores, bills, a bit of a social life, and you’d like to get at least a little sleep in there too. There aren’t many cracks in our lives to fit in entertainment and hobbies. 

And yet, play is an important aspect of our lives, regardless of our age and responsibility level. It lets different parts of the brain engage while overused bits rest. It forces us to step back from things we may be paying too much attention to, so our subconscious can work on the issue in the background. And most of all, by focusing on something unrelated to your leadership challenge, you may accidentally have an insight that helps you see the world in a new way. 

I think of this kind of fun as falling into three buckets—restful fun, physical fun, and creative fun. Restful fun is pretty much what it sounds like, and it’s what I did this morning, as I have the day off work today. I slept in, ran one quick errand, then watched a movie, read a little bit, and kind of just messed around social media. (Threads is pretty interesting by the way, I’m on there as Kindleadershipguild but I’m keeping it pretty casual for now. Linkedin is still the better place for my leadership musings and discussions)

Physical fun, for me, is something where you physically change it up from what you do for work. In my case, that means getting out of the house and my daily routine, or getting some sort of exercise or adventure in. Today I’ll probably go downstairs after I record this to get my peloton workout in, and my husband and I are hoping to plan a trip to the shore next month, depending on his work schedule. 

As for creative fun, that old habit of fiction reading definitely counts—I’ve got a hundred pages or so of the Count of Monte Cristo to read this week and some discussion questions to ponder for the book club I just joined, and once the weather cools off, I may pick up the knitting needles again. And between you and me, The Kind Leadership Challenge sometimes falls into the category of creative fun too, as long as I’m not taking it too seriously. Especially when I get toward the end of writing an episode like this, and realize I’ve accidentally set a challenge I need to take on for myself, because I could use a litte more creativity in my life right now.

So here’s your challenge—what flavor of fun are you missing in your life—restful, physical, or creative? and how can you increase it? And if in doubt, what you probably need the most is rest. I’ve been leaning on that a lot myself this summer, after a pretty hectic spring at work and home. Just now that having fun isn’t selfish or lazy—it gives you the energy and perspective you need to be a better person and a better leader. And in any case, it’s a great way to be kind to yourself, which is sort of the whole point of this podcast. 

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Thanks as always for listening to the kind leadership challenge. Before you go, here’s a quick way you can spread the word of kind leadership. I’d like you to take a moment to think of one friend or colleague who could most benefit from this week’s challenge. Got their name in your head? Good. Open your app or head over to kindleadershipchallenge.com/76 and share this episode with them. Add a friendly note as well. Never doubt that day by day, you’re building a better world, even if you can't see it yet. So until next time, stay kind now.