#268: The 3 tiers of enjoyable – by Haley Nahman

Today I’m welcoming an esteemed visitor author within the type of Molly Young! Maybe you’ve learn Molly’s work in locations just like the NY Times, New York magazine, or N+1. Perhaps you subscribe to her charming e-newsletter, The Life and Errors of Molly Young—I marvel at her put up concepts, like this list of available New York vanity license plates. Maybe you bought her irreverent being pregnant zine, Privacy, which I really helpful in 15 issues final July (she loves zines). Often once I learn Molly’s writing, I believe: No one might have written this however her. A uncommon high quality today.

Molly was one of many first folks I requested to get espresso with in 2019 once I was making ready to depart Man Repeller and go freelance. I’d all the time admired her work and shouldn’t have been stunned to search out she was extraordinarily candy and beneficiant, too. When the pandemic foiled my freelance plans, she was additionally the one who informed me to hitch Substack. And take a look at us now! Our toddlers have the identical puffer coat.

Today she’s carried out me (us) the consideration of breaking down the three tiers of enjoyable, which she didn’t invent however expands for us as a curious messenger. Years in the past, she talked about the tiers offhandedly someplace on the web, and it made such an impression on my brother that he nonetheless refers to it generally. Today she’s giving the subject its full due. Read on if you happen to, too, suppose “fun” is an excessively basic time period in want of some diversifying.

Don’t you’re keen on when people knowledge is ratified by science? It makes my coronary heart pitter-pitter when a medieval apply or indigenous customized is later “proven” to be efficient at treating fever or parasites or no matter. Not as a result of I’m a paragon of rationality however as a result of the congruence of instinct and peer-review demonstrates anew how wily and artistic people are, and have all the time been, in our makes an attempt to appease struggling.

If you’re studying this you’re in all probability struggling in a technique or one other. Aren’t all of us! In an optimistic temper you would possibly consider that struggling makes you wiser. In a pessimistic temper you would possibly suppose, merely: “I can’t go on.” Perhaps, like me, you toggle between the modes every day.

I’ve invaded Haley’s e-newsletter at this time to recommend a 3rd manner to consider struggling. Not as a substitute for the above binary, however as a devious addition. It was 2019 when my pal Lake informed me in regards to the “Tiers of Fun,” which emerged—from what I can inform—from outside journey / endurance sports activities tradition of the late twentieth century. The schema goes by many names— Levels of Fun, Types of Fun, the Fun Scale.

Here’s how Lake defined it to me:

Tier 1 is once you do one thing, and it’s enjoyable.
Tier 2 is once you do one thing, and it’s not enjoyable on the time, however it’s enjoyable on reflection.
Tier 3 is once you do one thing, and it’s not enjoyable on the time, nor on reflection—however it’s enjoyable or humorous to inform your mates about.

As with any casual taxonomy, the specifics range regionally. And whereas I’m not an avid birdwatcher (tier 1?) or triathlete (tier 3?), the utility of the system instantly struck me as transferable to any life-style.

Here’s how mine populates:

Tier 1: Bubble tub. Picnic.
Tier 2: Surfing in chilly water. Practicing piano. Snaking a clogged drain. Assembling furnishings.
Tier 3: Being dumped in an uncommon vogue. Expelling a tapeworm. Walking round in public with a recent interval stain on pants.

Mileages range, after all. One individual’s wacky anecdote is one other individual’s trauma. The very first thing I need to know once I meet somebody is: how do you populate your tiers? Are you extra petrified of bodily hardship or emotional humiliation? Do you worth novelty over consolation?

What is best to chuckle at on reflection? What is rarely humorous to you?

The efficacy of any people treatment (together with a psychological one) exists unbiased of any understanding about the way it works. That is the sweetness. And but it’s tempting to take a position about why the Tiers have been so useful to me, and maybe additionally to you, at laundering sure types of struggling into good or worthy experiences.

Take Tier 2. Many basic Tier 2 actions, it seems, map onto analysis about how our brains course of dopamine. Anna Lembke has written about the best way that forcing your physique to endure a tolerable spell of discomfort—power coaching, ice baths—can trick your mind into releasing compensatory dopamine rewards afterward.

Tier 3, in the meantime, brings to thoughts the basic Nora Ephron line that “Everything is copy.” Ephron was succinctly positing {that a} shitty expertise could be rendered helpful by the mere act of narrativizing it. We can even, why not, learn a tenet of Buddhism into Tier 3 experiences. To remodel ache into “a story” imposes a strategy of detachment, which alleviates struggling. Or so they are saying…

I’m being slightly reckless with language right here. There’s a chasm between an expertise that’s “not as acutely painful” and an expertise that’s “fun.” But I consider that is the place the appeal of the ToF system originates: its imprecision can also be its facility at narrowing the chasm right into a manageable—a leapable!—hole.

Finally, we shouldn’t overlook the social makes use of of the Tiers. How many holidays and first dates and honeymoons are ruined over flawed assumptions about another person’s taxonomy? Group actions—by which I imply something from “dinner with friends” to “being in a marriage”—would possibly turn into extra harmonious if we shared our silly little charts with one another and held animated discussions about which types of struggling are redemptive and which types irredeemably depressing.

Above all, we should set up with absolute certainty whether or not “surprise birthday party” counts as Tier 1 or Tier 3 enjoyable within the hearts of these we love most. So a lot relies upon upon that.

Thank you, Molly!!

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This week’s hyperlinks:

Last Friday’s 15 issues, together with my new formidable tote buy, a dish brush really helpful by an Artist, my go-to CCC cookie recipe, and extra.

The rec of the week was flight luxuries, from one of the best neck pillows to compression socks, which I’m personally exploring.

For Dear Danny on Wednesday, Danny and I answered 5 wild reader questions and at last weighed in on the age-gap relationship discourse. Frankly extra wanted to be stated!

Hope you’ve a pleasant Sunday,
Haley