Hello Everyone,
This quarter I had two great conversations. The first was with Stanford professor Dr. Jeffery Pfeffer. Dr. Pfeffer has written numerous bestsellers. In his latest book, “Dying for a Paycheck,” Dr. Pfeffer brings to light how modern work life is making us sick. This epidemic is a multifaceted problem, but one of the concepts we discuss is “social pollution,” which is the idea that the demands of modern work life are crowding out time for fun and play. As such, marriages are failing, parents are getting burnt out at alarming rates and people are reporting (more than ever before) that they are lonely.
The second interview is with Brad Wills, who is the former Chief Strategy Officer of MINDBODY. Brad recently walked away from his role at MINDBODY after helping them go public because a personal life event made him realize that his pace at work made it almost impossible to “truly savor the moment.” I talked to Brad about the bold decision to leave MINDBODY. He also shared his thoughts on business strategy and the latest on fitness and digital health trends.
So why should you or I believe fun is important? Because we are becoming increasingly aware that our marriages, friendships, mental health — in short, our lives — thrive when we make the space for fun.
Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In my interview with Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer, we discuss how the modern workplace is harming workers, which can be found here.
Brad Wills is the former Chief Strategy Officer of MINDBODY and was a key player in their successful IPO. My interview with Brad Wills touches on the topics of strategy, life design and digital health and can be found here.
Life Experience: Seeing all of the New 7 Wonders of the World is a personal life goal. This quarter, the family and I went to Chichén Itzá, checking one more Wonder off the list. Chichén Itzá is an amazing site to see and was surprisingly quite easy to navigate (even with two small children). If you go, I recommend the minor investment in a guided tour. The site is rich with history, and we learned a lot more from hiring a local guide than we would have otherwise. There is a lot more to the excursion than the Temple of Kukulcan (seen below).
Contribution: This quarter, I made several contributions. I donated to my nephew’s walkathon benefiting Walgrove Elementary School in Los Angeles. I made another donation to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. However, my favorite contribution this quarter was sponsoring an old Davis friend to complete a mile walking in high heels in the support of WEAVE (an organization that provides crisis intervention services) during the Walk a Mile in Her Shoes event.
I am humbled and grateful that the distribution for this newsletter has more than doubled since 2017. I guess we can all use more fun in our lives. Again, if there are any topics regarding the concept of fun that you would like to learn more about, please let me know (in the comments section below).
I would love to connect with you on social, so if you play there, please follow me by clicking the social icons on the right.
Yours in fun,
Mike Rucker, Ph.D.
