How can one change what they consider "fun"?

Scott has some useful, if sobering, thoughts about this on his blog and I think I agree with him. He ends up positing that intrinsic motivation is more or less fixed and describes the whole process as a fascination lottery: there are certain things we find inherently interesting and motivating, and other things we could never really be interested in, even if we really really wanted to.

And my attempts to hack intrinsic motivation, which would be like a instant win condition for everything if I could achieve it, have been mostly unsuccessful and left me with severe doubt it is even possible. So I have pretty much given up on math.

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But the thing is, I couldn’t choose to be interested in sports any more than I could choose to be interested in math or a huge sports fan could choose to be interested in psychology or a gay person could choose to be interested in women. I mean, there’s probably some wiggle room, maybe if I put a lot of effort into finding the most interesting sports and learning everything about them I could appreciate them a little. But would I have comparative advantage over the kid who memorized the stats of every pitcher in both leagues when he was 8? Barring getting hit by some kinda cosmic rays or something, I don’t think that’ll everhappen.

That being said, it seems a little defeatist. Perhaps there's some way to really choose your fascinations...

The only thing that I've found to really change how fun something is for me is to do it with other people.

Video games are actually a great example of things that train you to consider them fun.

I mean, they start out fun - not too easy, not too hard, often social or competitive in nature, and the action-based games probably stimulate a lot of the reward circuits intended to reward physical play without the constraints of physical bodies and the nagging instinct to stop moving around and wasting energy which constantly screams at all animals...

...and then they pile on the conditioning with randomized rewards, a flow of novelty, illusions of accomplishment, accelerating returns on investment... a well designed video game (by somewhat Unfriendly definitions of "well designed") is such that the gamer's passion for the game only deepens the longer they have been playing it.

You can't beat videogames in terms of sheer dopamine hijacking and ability to induce flow - you have to beat it on a different plane. My advice is to consider the distinction between wanting and liking, and try to choose liking, try to focus on the real-ness of accomplishments of math (or whatever it is you really want to do), start and start noticing the rewards, accomplishments, and returns on investment in real life events, even if there is no in-game notification telling you to notice them. Mindfulness, gratitude, yada yada.

My final, most important advice is to start. Start doing math/target habit, and once you're into it you get more into it. The thing about video games is that there is no initial exertion of willpower involved in starting - other activities are often equally fun but harder to start. I mean this in both the immediate sense, like jumping into a pool of cold water before having fun swimming, and the long term sense - as you do more and more math your skill-set expands, you hit the flow state faster, and your reward system gets sensitized to math because it has been trained to anticipate frequent rewards from that area.

(There are quite a few people who think things like video games/internet/porn and other addicting things do some sort of actual harm by altering dopamine circuitry in some way, although I don't know if this is true. There's always the whole "reward yourself with M&Ms / nicotine" route, although I don't know if that's effective either because I suspect the inner lizard brain is too smart for that. My other advice has been written by others - find things to make it fun, like adding competition or something - no sense writing more on that.)

My advice would be to stop playing games could turkey and direct that time and focus into what you want to do.

I have one piece of advice: basic gamification.

Years ago, I wanted to write more. I was already occasionally, but I had lots of thought that I wanted to get out of my head so that I could systematize and so I could get the feedback of others's critique and get to higher levels of sophistication. I also wanted to become better writer.

I made log. It was a simple word document into which I entered everything that I wrote each week (I committed myself to writing something every week).

This was fairly effective. I got a hit of instant gratification every time I added something to my list and, over time, the log grew, and it was cool to look over all the the things I've written. Doing that was interesting because is showed what I was thinking about at various times and seeing how much I've already written is motivating (I guess because it reminds me that I'm the sort of person that writes?).

I've done somthing similar for the books I read. I keep a record of all the books I read in a year. It seems so silly, but just knowing that I get to list a book as finished motivates me to read more, even though of course, it's the actual reading is so much more interesting and worthwhile then the adding a book to a word document.

I've started experimenting with a daily point score. I've played with the formula, but basically, I have a list of daily trainings and I get a point for each one that I hit on a given day, I have a list of secondary skills for which I get a point for every half hour of work, and I get point for each of set of thirty pages I read. I want to maximize my score (and it provides a mostly objective measure of my productivity for when I'm experimenting with new routines). I think even just keeping spreadsheet in which you record the number of minutes you spend each day working on what ever matters to you, would help you get where you want to be.

I don't think this helps for accomplishing things that you just don't like doing, but in my experience, simple record keeping like this works wonders for the things that you do acctully like, when you' re doing them, and want to do more of from a global perspective, but that don't have the attraction to "pull you in" in the moment.

Try to build a map between something that has fun associations for you, and what you want to find fun. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has a famous opening paragraph comparing programming to conjuring spirits as a sorcerer.

I've done this lots of times. The solution was shear willpower.

I took the hard road. Sorry to not be of more help :(

Have you produced a list of examples (no matter how small) where how much you enjoyed an activity changed?

Veering into potentially dangerous advice: It may be easier to weaken an existing preference, than to construct a new one. If you feel one preference is overshadowing other (existing) preferences, then weakening the dominant preference may make the other preferences more likely to be expressed. The danger is that you weaken one preference, but other preferences don't up-regulate themselves as a result.

An example:

I felt that I was spending too much time reading low-quality news and link aggregation (so reddit and NYT style websites). In contrast to your example, I wouldn't say that I particularly enjoyed this over other activities; instead, I think these media sources were hijiacking some sort of ancestral instinct (e.g. few people actually like "click-bait" titles, but most people feel drawn to click anyway).

Using willpower worked a bit. What worked equally well was consciously criticizing the material I wanted to spend less time reading, noting that the information wasn't causing me to change my beliefs, and (more than I would like to admit) reading the low-quality comments and developing the feeling of "I don't want to be like these people". This didn't feel good, but after I was able to bring my activity to a more normal level, my preferences adjusted themselves such that I naturally wanted to do other things (and enjoyed them more) relative my earlier preferences.

I'm not sure if this is a good approach. Certainly, many people have reported that they have unintentionally destroyed their ability to enjoy something. For example, a bad work environment, stress, or insecurity can all destroy the enjoyment you take in your career.

I really doubt there's an easy way to do this, especially since the odds are stacked against you.

The real enemy are things that were designed to be fun and engaging: video games, fiction... There's very little chance that I'll be as engaged reading non-fiction (even fun non-fiction) as I am reading Worm or Snow Crash. Good non-fiction's first priority is to be informative. Engaging and fun are secondary.

Similarly, learning math is fun, but it doesn't have fun as its first priority. Being able to comprehend mathematics is the first priority, with fun being second. A lot of "have fun while learning math" video games parents force on their kids have this problem as well.

One thing that might work is going cold turkey on video games. Give them up now and vow to never play them again. (This is what I ended up doing with World of Warcraft.) I can't advice this route (unless a video game is taking over your life), because you'll just end up doing something else that's more fun than studying. It's hard (and probably impossible for most people) to avoid all things that were created to be fun and engaging.

One way to salvage your time playing video games is to fulfill goals you want by playing the game. When I play Guild Wars 2, for example, I only do it when I can lead a PvP team. This way I can improve my leadership abilities and learn how to better make good decisions with bad information. (Incidentally, if any LW members want to start an EU PvP team for the weekends, that would be pretty cool.)

For context, it might be interesting for you to check out a brief video of my research on how the Soviet government shaped its population's idea of fun, and also how the population pushed back against these efforts. I'd be glad to discuss this further as well, and give you further references on socialism, fun, shaping tastes and emotions, etc.

Before an area of interest becomes a passion it must be rewarding. Enjoyment may come intrinsically, e.g. just doing the research is the reward in itself. By the sound of it this new method of analysis you speak of does not provide the amount of intrinsic enjoyment required to pursue it without extrinsic reward. Enjoyment may also come extrinsically; by this I mean fame, glory, money and acclaim. It's the difference between a cyclist dedicating his life to the sport because he "loves riding his bike", or a cyclist dedicating his life to the sport because he believes pursuing his/her significant talent would be the best way to acquire money and thus support his/her family and meet his/her other life goals.

Acquiring mastery for a subject is near impossible if you do not gain enjoyment from it. Although you say this new method of analysis could prove useful, would the rewards from pursuing it be enough to dedicate the amount of time and energy required to see it through? Subconsciously you may have already had this debate and decided against it.

As you asked for our personal opinion, I will give you mine. Since this issue is causing you some distress, go cold turkey on the video games and dedicate perhaps a week to looking into this area of interest further. If you are still struggling for motivation, I suggest you reconsider pursuing this area of interest.

I have recently developed a passion for something that may reap significant financial rewards in the future. This passion happens to be for a topic I found particularly interesting as a child. Due to the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation this area of interest gives me I have since developed a passion for statistics, mathematics and research. The passion for these other topics would not have been there otherwise. I do not think of learning as a chore, I do not wish to play video games (I haven't played my Xbox in over a year), heck I even socialize less because of it. I am truly driven to acquire mastery of my area of interest and dedicate my life to learning more about it.

Video games are nicely described by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Schedules. I'd try make the disgusting part of the gaming, like the resources spent per utility achieved and the methods they are capturing my attention, the most sailent when i go over my decision three to do something.

Regarding "learning to want", it is a matter of constructing and applying a model of your motivation (like i did ↑, but subjectively tailored).

// hey wtf lw.c doesn't respect rfc1738

you quote feynman, then proceed to ignore the thing you quoted.

you're ignoring two options that fall right out of the quote:

1. get people to pay you to play videogames. if you're any good, IT'S EASY. if it's not easy, maybe you're not that good.
2. time box exploration for other things you might find interesting.

You need to be thoroughly convinced that what you want to do is the right thing to want. Then you just treat your other impulses like an irrational addiction that you must overcome.

If you get your mind right you should be able to go cold turkey.