EDITOR’S NOTE: Matt is on vacation until at or around January 1, 2026. Until then we have guest posts. Today’s post is brought to you by irieriley at my favorite new blog, Chasing Cetacans. Special thanks for the post!
I’ve always been a fan of creative ways to explain open-ended concepts in a succinct way. One of the best examples of this is the fun scale. Born out of the mountain climbing community, the fun scale gives you a very simple way to categorize your experiences as a climber into three distinct buckets:
- Level 1 fun is true fun, that is fun when it’s happening
- Level 2 fun is fun only in retrospect, and is miserable when it’s happening
- Level 3 fun is not fun at all, even in retrospect
It’s easy to visualize how climbers fit certain peaks into these categories, but it works for plenty of things outside of mountaineering too. I’ve applied this framework to plenty of things in the churning/manufactured spend/travel world to help me make decisions for the future.
Here’s an example of the fun scale when evaluating a trip, courtesy of my “eventful” honeymoon in South Africa a few years ago:
- Level 1: Going on safari and seeing amazing wildlife, or wine tasting in Franschoek
- Level 2: Doing the great white shark cage dive in Hermanus and seeing great white sharks while consuming lots of vomit from the seasick people next to us in the cage
- Level 3: Hiking Table Mountain the one week a year the cable car is down for maintenance, leading my P2 to break her foot on the way down
So what is there to take away from placing these experiences into buckets? In my opinion, it makes it easier to understand what you want to do more of, what you can learn from, and what you want to avoid. On that honeymoon, I realized I wanted to travel more for wildlife, needed to look out for pale faces on seatmates on boat tours, and that I needed to listen to my P2 when she said to slow down.
It works just as well for manufactured spend (MS) and churning, too:
- Level 1: Knocking out giant points figures without getting off your couch
- Level 2: Grinding out street liquidation, or getting your money frozen for a KYC check
- Level 3: Getting rugged, shutdown, or the frozen money from level 2 requiring a trip to Lubbock.
And before you say “irieriley, this is all super obvious, I’d much rather it just be level 1 fun all the time” – those level 2 and level 3 experiences are necessary sometimes for growth. When it’s all fun and games, it’s great, but what are you going to do when the gravy train derails and you haven’t dealt with the adversity associated with those failed and semi-failed experiences?
If 2025 is any indication, churners and MSers are going to be experiencing a lot more level 2 and level 3 fun as part of the game compared to the good times we experienced the last couple of years. I’m not trying to sound like a doomer – I think there will be ample opportunity to have a successful 2026. But I do think it’s going to require a tad bit more creativity.
Those level 2 and level 3 experiences are exactly how you learn to navigate those tricky situations easier – you’ll know the things not to do at any bank, the signs of financial distress to look for at churning-adjacent companies, and be able to napkin math the VC numbers of the new fintech du jour.
Let’s all cross our fingers that we return to some semblance of a healthy dose of level 1 fun again soon, but it’s also prudent to be clear eyed about the more difficult times that lay ahead. And that ultimately, things like shutdowns might be more like level 2.5 fun. After all, the shutdown isn’t fun, but earning the trove of points and miles you earned to cause it is.
“I guess you never really know what sort of fun you’re getting yourself into once you leave the couch, which is fine, because it doesn’t always have to be “fun” to be fun.”
– irieriley
Pictured: A group of MSers expecting level 1 fun that found out the play died this am and now they’re stuck somewhere in level 2 and 3 limbo