# How can one change what they consider "fun"?

Most of this post is background and context, so I've included a tl;dr horizontal rule near the bottom where you can skip everything else if you so choose. :)

Here's a short anecdote of Feynman's:

> ... I invented some way of doing problems in physics, quantum electrodynamics, and made some diagrams that help to make the analysis. I was on a floor in a rooming house. I was in in my pyjamas, I'd been working on the floor in my pyjamas for many weeks, fooling around, but I got these funny diagrams after a while and I found they were useful. They helped me to find the equations easier, so I thought of the possibility that it might be useful for other people, and I thought it would really look funny, these funny diagrams I'm making, if they appear someday in the Physical Review, because they looked so odd to me. And I remember sitting there thinking how funny that would be if it ever happened, ha ha.
> 
> Well, it turned out in fact that they were useful and they do appear in the Physical Review, and I can now look at them and see other people making them and smile to myself, they do look funny to me as they did then, not as funny because I've seen so many of them. But I get the same kick out of it, that was a little fantasy when I was a kid…not a kid, I was a college professor already at Cornell. But the idea was that I was still playing, just like I have always been playing, and the secret of my happiness in life or the major part of it is to have discovered a way to entertain myself that other people consider important and they pay me to do. I do exactly what I want and I get paid. They might consider it serious, but the secret is I'm having a very good time.

There are things that I have fun doing, and there are things that I feel I have substantially _more_ fun doing. The things in the latter group are things I generally consider a waste of time. I will focus on one specifically, because it's by far the biggest offender, and what spurred this question. Video games.

I have a knack for video games. I've played them since I was very young. I can pick one up and just be _good_ at it right off the bat. Many of my fondest memories take place in various games played with friends or by myself and I can spend hours just reading about them. (Just recently, I started getting into fighting games technically; I plan to build my own joystick in a couple of weeks. I'm having a blast just doing the associated research.)

Usually, I'd rather play a good game than anything else. I find that the most fun I have is time spent mastering a game, learning its ins and outs, and eventually winning. I have great fun solving a good problem, or making a subtle, surprising connection—but it just doesn't do it for me like a game does.

But I _want_ to have as much fun doing something else. I admire mathematics and physics on a very deep level, and feel a profound sense of awe when I come into contact with new knowledge regarding these fields. The other day, I made a connection between pretty basic group theory and something we were learning about in quantum (nothing amazing; it's something well known to... not undergraduates) and that was awesome. But still, I think I would have preferred to play 50 rounds of Skullgirls and test out a new combo.

**TL;DR BAR**

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I want to have as much fun doing the things that I, on a deep level, want to do—as opposed to the things which I actually have more fun doing. I'm (obviously) not Feynman, but I want to play with ideas and structures and numbers like I do with video games. I want the same creativity to apply. The same fervor. The same _want_. It's not that it _isn't_ there; I am not just arbitrarily applying this want to mathematics. I can feel it's there—it's just overshadowed by what's already there for video games.

How does one go about switching something they find immensely fun, something they're even passionate about, with something else? I don't want to be as passionate about video games as I am. I'd rather feel this way about something... else. I'd rather be able to happily spend hours reading up on \[something\] instead of what type of button I'm going to use in my fantasy joystick, or the most effective way to cross-up your opponent.

What would you folks do? I consider this somewhat of a mind-hacking question.