Too Much Planning Kills The Fun

Your job is to plan the company Christmas party. Your are stressed and it’s a lot of work and detail, and now you don’t even want to go. Why? If you find yourself dreading something you planned weeks in advance, your planning might be the problem.

Researchers looked at 13 studies and found that the simple act of scheduling makes otherwise fun tasks feel more like work and decreases how much we enjoy them.

So why does scheduling make fun things seem like work? Study co-leader Gabbie Tonietto, Ph.D., explains that it's because scheduling, at its core, is about structuring time. Strict scheduling is therefore at odds with how people think about leisure and relaxation, which are associated with unconstrained freedom, and how people think about work, which is associated with many specific deadlines and time constraints. (Daily Mail)