A prerequisite for fun is that whatever tooling/technology you are using doesn't get in the way of what you want to be doing. Fun must flow—un-fun blockers are a no go.

For instance, I enjoy riding bicycles. But when I get flat tires, this is annoying. I often go run instead of bicycling so I don't have to deal with problem that comes up every now and then and ruins my fun. It is possible to restore fun by enjoying walking one's bike miles to get back home, but then this to is because presuming that your feet work. If you got a flat tire and then a sprained ankle, chances are you wouldn't be having much fun.

Technology and Fun

One of the reasons I think playing video games is more fun than office work for lots of people is that a game a nice self-contained environment (we'll assume it isn't buggy) with clearly defined goals.

Simple, easy to use things are more accessible fun. This is one reason I think many "gamification" approaches are successful. By simplifying the complex nature of some situation into a space with well-defined WIN/LOSE conditions, people are more likely to quickly achieve fun than if they had to meticulously design these sytems themselves (the managers/engineers who make these systems may have a lot of fun designing these systems too).

Some Examples from Programing/Coding

Coding websites are a popular way for people to practice writing computer code. Despite having fancy gaming PCs, high-end macbooks, etc., people everywhere are parking themselves in little browser tabs to sort items in arrays and run their programs on external/remote servers.

Some examples of these self-contained web-based environments,

• https://leetcode.com/
• https://codepen.io/
• A Tour of Go

I think that popularity of sites like these is due to easy accessibility and gamification systems that give people positive feedback. The "modern UIs" of these sites allow users to focus on one task (e.g. writing code) ignoring the many layers and layers of abstraction piled on top of each other to get there.

Personally, I haven't used these sites much at all, but I do enjoy setting up a minimalistic text editing environment using dinosaur software (e.g. emacs, bash). Doing data structure/algorithm problems is fun to me because I can stay in my little contained stripped down editor environment and not worry about importing this-and-that library.

Some Examples from Writing

Many bloggers choose to use some flavor of Markdown to do their work. It turns out that writing everything in plain text is often faster/easier to do than using a more "full-featured" word processor such as Microsoft Word. This is because you can focus on the words/content of what you are doing rather than get distracted/blocked by the many features of a word processor you will not use.

For people that write computer code of any sort, familiar editing tools may allow you to use your own keybindings and stuff to work much more seemlessly with text than using a word processor. It can almost feel like "telepathy", magically making words appear when you are a skilled typist in a comfy editor!

Tools to be mastered

Some programs are more useful than others. Having hundreds of different hard-to-use, unmemorable programs scattered throughout a computer will probably mean... using a computer isn't fun. Or, you might just ignore all those programs and just play a game. A full-screen game effectively allows you to ignore you messy desktop, dozens of unread browser tabs, etc., and focus on fun.

Realizing just which programs are useful to you and keeping those applications "well-maintained" is a good way to have fun using computers. It is more fun to go out on a bike ride if you know your bicycle has properly inflated tires, an oiled chain, working lights for the night, etc.

Similarly, when I sit down at the computer, I am happy knowing I am able to do a handful of things:

• Browsers for communications, reading, documentation, etc.
• Image editing software to produce content
  • Krita for digital painting
  • MS Paint for maximum fun
  • GIMP for generic image editing
• Environment to write computer code (mostly JavaScript) set up
• Blogging tools (emacs + bash, command line interaction to update to GitHub pages)

...and then many tools I intend to learn to use better eventually,

• Blender (3D modeling)
• Various programing languages
• Games, if I do get around to playing them

What is crucial is that all of these things are ready to be launched and used and that I know the steps to "get back into the flow of things".

Setting up for success

If there is some activity you should be doing, then it makes sense to set up your environment so that your technology will not get in the way when you are trying to that activity. Then, you can start having fun.

Sometimes, technology ruins fun by being too complicated. For these reasons, to get into a habit such as "doing some artwork everyday", it might be wise to ditch photoshop and instead use Paint (or an in-browser equivalent. You can revisit the fancier software when you know clearly why you need it.

Similarly, to begin doing something like exercising more it may be best to just start doing some easy to access exercise daily, e.g. walking while listening to some podcast. Soon enough, this will seem to easy (and perhaps not so "fun" as it is too relaxing) and you can scale up the intensity of whatever you are doing.

In any case, it pays to have fun:

• to enjoy life
• to have a sustainable lifestyle
• to spread joy to others
• [...]

Really, fun shouldn't need a justification. So more fun and equal/more productivity is better, all things considered. kk have fun.