Type 2 fun is the kind of experience that’s miserable while it’s happening but feels great once it’s over: the hike in sleet, the last miles of a marathon, the trip where everything went wrong. It’s the middle rung of an informal three-level scale that outdoor people use to sort good times from bad ones. The strange part, that suffering turns into a fond memory, isn’t just bravado. Psychologists have found that the mind tends to soften bad feelings and keep good ones as time passes.1Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. The Fading Affect Bias: Its History, Its Implications, and Its Future
The Three Types of Fun on the Fun Scale
The Fun Scale has three levels, and each one is defined by when the fun arrives.
- Type 1: enjoyable while you’re doing it, like a sunny ski day, a good meal or an easy bike ride.
- Type 2: hard, painful or scary at the time, but you’re glad you did it and tell the story happily afterward, like a summit push or an ultramarathon.
- Type 3: not fun at the time and not fun later. The only good part is that you survived, and the story is usually a warning.
The dividing line between Type 2 and Type 3 is how you feel later, not how bad it felt at the time. Two people can share the same rough day and file it differently, because the label depends on how each looks back on it. The verdict can shift as you retell the story or as the sting fades, which makes the scale better for talking about your own experience than for ranking activities. A Type 2 experience can also slide toward Type 3 if something goes badly wrong, such as an injury or a close call.
In practice, the easiest check is to ask whether you’d do it again, knowing what you know now. Another test is whether the story makes people laugh or wince. Type 3 stories tend to be told as lessons about what not to do. Type 3 often involves real danger, poor decisions or serious injury.
It’s also easy to misread. Type 2 fun isn’t the same as enjoying pain for its own sake, and it doesn’t promise that every hard thing will turn out worthwhile. But plenty of everyday things fit it, like moving house or training for a first 10K.
Where the Fun Scale Came From
Dr. Rainer Newberry, a geology professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, invented the Fun Scale while teaching a field geology class around 1985.2ridj-it. Ground Truth: Geology and the Origin of Type 2 Fun
In 1993, geologist and climber Peter Haeussler picked it up from Newberry while the two scrambled over rock on Admiralty Island in southeast Alaska.3ridj-it. Ground Truth: Geology and the Origin of Type 2 Fun Climber Kelly Cordes then heard it from Haeussler in 2001, while bushwhacking through Alaskan brush on the way to cold beers on Haeussler’s sailboat.4Kelly Cordes. The Fun Scale Cordes wrote about it and developed it into the scale most people know today.5Hiking Hound Adventures. The Fun Scale: Exploring 3 Types of Outdoor Adventure Runners, hikers and travellers now use it for any hard but rewarding experience.
Why Misery Turns Into a Good Memory
People tend to judge a painful experience by a blend of its worst moment and how it ended.6PubMed. Evaluations of pleasurable experiences: the peak-end rule In childbirth, memories of its pain lean toward the average of the worst pain and the final pain, while the length of labor barely changes how painful it’s remembered.7PubMed. In pain thou shalt bring forth children: the peak-and-end rule in recall of labor pain Mothers whose pain eased toward the end, with an epidural, remembered labor differently, which suggests how much the ending shapes the memory.8PubMed. In pain thou shalt bring forth children: the peak-and-end rule in recall of labor pain Duration gets little weight, so a long, steady slog can be remembered as less bad than a short day with one terrifying moment.
On a long hike, that often plays out in a familiar way. Hours of steady discomfort count for little. The single worst stretch, like a scary ridge, stands out. Ending at a viewpoint or campfire tends to lift the whole memory, while ending in a soaked, lost scramble back to the car can tip it toward Type 3.
Time does more of the work. The emotion attached to a memory usually weakens as the months pass, but it weakens more for negative events than positive ones.9Cognition & Emotion. On the emotions that accompany autobiographical memories: Dysphoria disrupts the fading affect bias Events that felt negative when they happened are also more likely to end up bringing back positive feelings than the reverse.10Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. The Fading Affect Bias: Its History, Its Implications, and Its Future The cold, the fear and the exhaustion fade while the pride and the views stay, which is the shape of Type 2 fun.
You can use this when you plan your own adventures. Build in a good ending: a meal, a hot shower, a celebration. Expect the trip to feel worse in the moment than it will later. And remember that a fond memory doesn’t mean the risks were small.
Why Hard Effort Makes the Reward Feel Bigger
When people feel in control of a task, putting in more effort tends to make them value the reward more.11PubMed. Does effort increase or decrease reward valuation? Considerations from cognitive dissonance theory Effort can also make a reward feel less worth it, especially when the effort feels imposed rather than chosen.12PubMed. Does effort increase or decrease reward valuation? Considerations from cognitive dissonance theory In one experiment, people who felt they had worked harder on a demanding task showed a stronger brain response to their reward.13PubMed Central. The Effect of Perceived Effort on Reward Valuation: Taking the Reward Positivity (RewP) to Dissonance Theory A summit you chose to climb can feel richer because of the struggle, not in spite of it.
Choice is what tips it. A tough hike you signed up for feels different from a forced march, even if the miles and weather are identical. When you feel in control, your mind can treat the effort as a price you chose to pay for something you wanted. The same misery imposed on you has no such explanation, so it’s more likely to feel like Type 3.
What Happens in Your Body During Hard Effort
Your body is doing some of this work too. During and after exertion, it releases substances including opioids, serotonin and endocannabinoids that can change how pain feels.14PubMed Central. The Endocannabinoid System and Physical Exercise Pain can feel less sharp than it would at rest, and some of these chemicals also lift mood, which helps explain the calm many people feel after a tough effort. This happens in the body, not just in the imagination.
Running raises blood levels of endocannabinoids, chemicals linked to the “runner’s high.”15PubMed. Exercise-induced euphoria and anxiolysis do not depend on endogenous opioids in humans That’s the pleasant, relaxed feeling some people get during or after long effort. It doesn’t happen to everyone on every run, so not feeling it isn’t a sign you’re doing something wrong, and it tends to follow sustained effort, not a few easy minutes. Regular exercise also changes the brain’s reward system so that even stressful events can trigger more reward-related activity.16PubMed. The role of dopamine in overcoming aversion with exercise
These chemicals ease pain but don’t erase it, and they won’t stop an injury from being an injury. Feeling good mid-effort can mask warning signs, so pay attention to your body.
Much of the stress in adventures comes from fear, not physical effort. On a high-ropes course challenge, fit and unfit people showed similar stress responses, suggesting the stress was mostly psychological.17PubMed. Plasma catecholamine and cardiovascular reactivity during an acute high ropes course event So the scary part of Type 2 fun, the exposure or uncertainty, can matter as much as the physical work.
Why Suffering Together Bonds People
People who went through painful tasks together felt more bonded than those who did painless versions of the same tasks.18Association for Psychological Science – APS. Shared Pain Brings People Together The pain itself seems to matter, not just being together, which helps explain why easy outings rarely produce the same closeness. Shared pain also made groups cooperate more with each other,19Association for Psychological Science – APS. Shared Pain Brings People Together and teams who shared painful tasks supported one another more.20PubMed Central. Shared Adversity Increases Team Creativity Through Fostering Supportive Interaction That makes the effect more than a warm feeling. It helps explain the camaraderie of soldiers and the inside jokes of a group that survived a terrible trip.21Association for Psychological Science – APS. Shared Pain Brings People Together
If you lead a group, choose challenges everyone can realistically finish. Make sure people chose to come and know what to expect. Pushing someone into misery can damage trust instead of building it.
Why Type 2 Fun Can Be Good for You
Thinking back over how you handled a stressful experience can strengthen resilience by showing you what coping skills you already have and where they fall short.22PubMed. How resilience is strengthened by exposure to stressors: the systematic self-reflection model of resilience strengthening Doing this thoughtfully, rather than just replaying the worst moments, is what turns a hard day into useful experience. After a rough trip, note what helped you keep going, such as a snack, a partner’s encouragement or a mental trick. Note what you’d pack or plan differently. Notice which fears turned out smaller than expected, because that’s evidence you can handle more than you thought.
People who find redemptive meaning in hardship and tell their life stories as stories of growth tend to enjoy better mental health and well-being.23CrossRef API / Current Directions in Psychological Science. Narrative Identity Type 2 stories can become part of how people see themselves as capable.
When Type 2 Fun Goes Too Far
Some people get hooked on hard exercise in a harmful way. Exercise dependence looks like an addiction, with people continuing to train despite clear harm.24PubMed Central. Personality Traits Associated with the Risk of Exercise Dependence in Ultraendurance Athletes: A Cross-Sectional Study Needing ever harder challenges while ignoring injuries, relationships or rest is a warning sign. Other signs: you feel anxious or guilty when you can’t train, you hide injuries to keep going, or the fun has disappeared even in hindsight.
A few habits keep Type 2 from turning into Type 3:
- Set a turnaround time before you start and stick to it, even when the summit looks close.
- Tell someone your plan and when you expect to be back, so help comes if you don’t return.
- Match the challenge to your skills, fitness and gear, rather than to what your friends are doing.
- Treat numbness, confusion or sharp pain as reasons to stop, not things to push through.