5 Simple Steps to Having More Fun at 50+

Don’t let being a grown-up stop you from feeling like a kid again

Michael Easter,

AARP

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Published October 18, 2024

A group of older adults having fun playing with water guns

The ability to have fun is a key driver of lifelong happiness, says Travis Oh, a professor at Yeshiva University and one of the few scientists in the country researching fun.

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The average American adult is $59,580 in debt, receives 121 emails a day, works 42 hours a week and has a 43 percent chance of being divorced by age 55.

These are the trenches of middle-aged life. And it isn’t necessarily fun down here. Which is why, as we emerge from our pressure cooker 50s and into a little bit of empty nester freedom, many of us struggle to remember what having fun — pure, prolonged fun — even feels like. One survey discovered that four out of five older adults wished they had more fun.

“In our research, when I asked participants about the most recent time they really had fun, a lot of the middle-aged and older group really had to think about it,” says Travis Oh, a professor at Yeshiva University and one of the few scientists in the country researching fun. “Eventually the participants would say, ‘The last time I really had fun was many years ago.’ ”

But what was all the work and hustle of your middle years for if you can’t leverage it to have a little fun? Oh’s research suggests that the ability to have fun is a key driver of lifelong happiness. And as you transition from middle to older age, you’re in the best position now to reclaim it. “Older people have more opportunities to have fun. It’s the middle-aged group I see struggling.”

But there’s a difference between, say, “stress-relieving activities” and real, true fun. Going to the gym or distracting yourself with a TV show can be relaxing. But, fun? Not exactly. To understand how to have more fun, we need to know what makes an experience fun in the first place.

Through his research, Oh has discovered three criteria an experience must meet to be considered true, unadulterated “fun.” “Fun is a positive experience characterized by liberation and hedonic engagement,” said Oh. “You experience the most fun if you are doing something engaging and pleasurable while feeling like you are temporarily released from duties or internal pressure.” And while the idea of operationalizing our enjoyment might seem to, well, sap all the joy out of it, these are important criteria to know.

Here are five steps to rediscovering what Oh might call positive, liberating hedonic engagement, but what the rest of us call fun.

Step One: Disconnect

With the rise of smartphones and 24/7 connectivity through email, text and calls (and Slack and Google Chat and Zoom and Twitter and … ), it’s harder than ever to remove yourself from the grind of responsibilities. The average American today spends 11 to 12 hours fixated on digital media. And even if you’re retired, that familiar “ding!” of your cellphone might be alerting you to an adult child in need, a friend asking a favor, or some other unexpected responsibility.

Constant connection to the cloud can easily rain on your fun parade, keeping you in the responsibility zone at all times. And this is tied to legit burnout.

How to disconnect

Schedule fun time, and keep it sacred. You could go for a long walk with a friend (who isn’t a work buddy or family member), play pickleball or dive into any other activity you consider fun.

The only rule: Keep your phone at home or in another room. If you need to take it for safety reasons, place it on airplane mode or temporarily turn off email notifications during your fun time.

Once or twice a year, you may want to dial this up a notch. Schedule a trip to a place your network doesn’t reach, like a cruise on the high seas, that faraway city you’ve been itching to see or a cabin deep in the woods. That week, completely removed from responsibilities, will be the time of your life — and wind in your sails that beats back burnout and rejuvenates you going forward. Oh points to the “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” campaign as a perfect example of this idea: You enter a different zone, and embrace a different life, for a long enough period to truly let go of what’s dragging you down back at home. Then, you leave that zone and reenter the real world.

Step Two: Find your flow

In the 1960s, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi noticed that artists could become completely engrossed in their work — their concerns, sense of time and even ego would fade. Their action and awareness would merge into one. It was a Zen-like, blissful state of creation.

He began researching this “flow state,” as he called it. Over his career, he interviewed thousands of high performers, ranging from Formula 1 drivers to chess players to surgeons. These people regularly told him that the moments they’d lapse into this coveted flow state were the most fun, happiest moments of their lives.

Finding flow requires practicing an activity that challenges you. It can’t be too hard or too easy (think Wednesday crossword, not Monday or Friday crossword). And it must have a clear goal that requires deep concentration (solve the puzzle).

How to find your flow

To lapse into flow — which is spontaneous but delightful — you must be completely focused and aware of what you’re doing and nothing else. Csikszentmihalyi wrote that flow has the “potential to make life more rich, intense, and meaningful; it is good because it increases the strengths and complexity of the self.”

Start by reigniting an old hobby or finding a new one. All sorts of hobbies can incite flow. But you’ll also reap some physical health benefits if your hobby requires a bit of movement, for example, woodworking, sculpting, dancing or a round of golf (especially if you walk the course). On vacation, consider playing new games or taking lessons in something you’ve never tried before, from bocce to scuba diving.

But even if your hobby isn’t physically active, you’ll still get a mental boost. Researchers in the U.K. discovered that having a hobby decreases your odds of depression by 30 percent.

Having fun with friends can make it a lot easier to head back into the complicated, uncertain world of everyday life.

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Step Three: Play by the rules

Daily life is a grind of attending to work obligations, balancing relationships, coping with kids and making dozens of daily decisions on everything from what to eat to what to plant in the garden.

It’s often overlooked, but one of the most challenging aspects of all these tasks and responsibilities is their ambiguity. We can never truly know if we’re doing a good job. Like, how do you know you’re saying the exact right thing to your spouse, or coaching your kids in the perfect way, or buying the absolute best present for a friend? You can’t know for sure!

And this can be somewhat painful and anxiety-inducing, explains University of Utah philosopher Thi Nguyen. Life doesn’t have rules, and it doesn’t have clear wins and losses. But there is a way to escape, at least temporarily, the awful ambiguity.

How to follow rules

When you play a game — whether it’s softball or tennis or Scrabble or poker — there is no ambiguity, Nguyen explains. There are clear rules; our moves result in measurable gains or consequences; and in the end, a victor emerges. That’s how games are different from real life.

When we play games, we enter into a small world removed from our everyday responsibilities. We take on voluntary obstacles just for the sake of overcoming them — but the upshot is that we get a moment in life where we know exactly how we’ve done. We win, or we lose, according to how well we’ve managed within the confining structure of the established rules. We’ve shunned real life’s ambiguity for a brief, bracing moment of clarity.

Find your own game world to escape into — and visit it frequently. This could be as simple as playing Wordle or doing Sudoku every morning. Or meeting a group of friends regularly for card or board games. Or sneaking in 18 holes of golf or a few quick pickleball matches before you head back into the complicated, uncertain world of everyday life.

Step Four: Work first, then release

You’ve probably told your kids, “You can’t have fun all the time.” The same is true for you, Oh says. Fun only really happens when it’s a release from responsibilities and the tougher, more challenging aspects of life.

“Whatever you consider fun is only fun when it’s a release,” Oh adds. He points to a phenomenon he sees in new retirees: They’ll spend the first couple weeks doing only what they consider fun. But the fun gets old quickly, so they’ll take on some responsibilities, like volunteer work or a part-time job or mentorship. This phenomenon of lost responsibilities may even be why retirement is associated with a higher risk of depression, according to a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

How to find your release

Yes, work can be a soul sucker. As can that role on the neighborhood housing board you picked up, and chores like mowing the lawn and scooping dog crap in the backyard. But they’re the cost of doing the business of fun.

“If you want to have fun, realize there are actually two sides of the coin,” Oh says. “You need obligations and responsibility and a meaningful life to have fun.” So lean into those responsibilities — because temporarily ditching them is the primary way to set yourself up for fun.

Step Five: Find your people

People who have deeper relationships are happier. That’s according to the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which tracked a group of 238 men for 80 years (and counting). Close relationships beat wealth, fame and privilege. Good relationships were a stronger predictor of happiness than social class, IQ or the random luck of good genes.

“People often note that social connectedness makes many situations more fun,” Oh says. But there’s a catch. Your friends and family have to be just as engaged in whatever you’re doing for fun as you are.

“It’s not just the mere presence of friends,” Oh notes. “Sometimes having friends along can make an experience less fun if they’re not as engaged with the activity as you.” So forcing your spouse to play poker won’t be as fun for you if he or she isn’t into it.

The upside is that your partner in fun need not be close to you. Having anyone engaged in a fun activity with you can make it more fun. “Even if it’s a complete stranger, being socially connected during the fun activity increases the hedonic engagement of an activity,” Oh says.

How to connect

You and your spouse or best friend may not always align on what you consider fun. You might enjoy watching your local pro team, while they might consider that a sentence to boredom. But that doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.

For example, “you could go to a bar and watch a sports game or play some game like pool with complete strangers,” said Oh. Adding a social element to what you like to do dials up the fun.

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