A (3:57)

Yes, I, I hear you. Lots of people are like, does not compute. Right? And, and I get it, because so much of how we talk about work and fun is, I'm having fun right now. I better get back to work. Or don't have too much fun. The thought that fun and work could coexist, that actually fun is how you do great work, is in many ways a new concept and one that I'm trying to galvanize in workplaces. So sometimes I go back to the physics definition of work just to ground ourselves in what we're talking about, which is that work equals force times distance. That's it. It's just some effort that makes a difference. There's nothing in that equation about pain, about stress, about back to back meetings. And so when we think about what's fundamentally true about work and getting paid, paid work in particular, we don't get paid because work is painful and people wouldn't do it otherwise. We get paid because we create value. The pain is optional. If you think about a product or a service that you're buying, you're not buying it because, oh, somebody worked really hard on this. You're buying it because it improves your life in some way. And if the company and the people who created it were having a great time doing it, then all the better. Good for them.

B (5:27)

What you just said is so obviously true. And yet again, my brain just short circuited it again. You're absolutely right. People don't buy our products or our services because of the effort we put into it. They buy it because of what it's going to do for them. And yet we still correlate so often. Effort, activity, long hours, first in, last out. Like there is this sort of badge of honor around how hard we work. Yes. And basically you're asking us to let that go and think about this differently. Fair.

A (6:02)

Yeah. There are actually two mindsets about work. Two ends of the pendulum that I'm trying to push back against both of them. One of them is work is called work for a reason. Work is painful, it's drudgery, it's an exchange for a paycheck. And to think otherwise is to not live in reality. That, as I've just shared, I don't believe is true or necessary. The other end of the spectrum, do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. Follow your passion, your dreams, your calling. I also don't think that is helpful to us. For one, it's a really high bar, one that makes a lot of people feel very bad about themselves. Oh, I'm not having fun at work. What am I doing wrong? I'm wasting my life. Secondly, even if you do feel that way about your work, which sometimes some people do, and that's. That is amazing for them, it's also a recipe for burnout. Because now if my work is my calling, why am I spending my time on anything else?

B (7:05)

Right?

A (7:05)

So I'm proposing really a third way to consider that maybe work is simply a nice way to spend our time on the planet. It's a nice way to get together and create products, services, experiences that make other people's lives a little bit better on the planet, that maybe it's plenty to have a career full of just really pretty decent good days at work with people that we enjoyed. And maybe that's actually a really beautiful version of orcs.

B (7:45)

Bri, I feel like you just articulated an internal conflict that I've had the bulk of my working life, which is this idea that if you do your purpose and your work is your calling, then. And I have that a little bit, I love the work that I do. I do think this is part of my calling, but not at the sacrifice of other things or other priorities. And so I've struggled with that. And then the flip side is I've had times where I took work Far too seriously. And it was all about productivity. And basically I feel like I've swung the pendulum on both sides. And your third way, your third option is a nice, healthy middle ground for a lot of us, maybe not everybody, but for a lot of us. And I am again loving this concept. I also will point out something that has always kind of bothered me or is bothering me recently is this idea that all the advantages that we have now with technology, with AI, with all the things that create efficiencies for us, why would we need to work at the same level, at the same amount of hours as we did 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago? I can never understand that. And yet we still are in this space and a lot of culture of grind and grit and all of that, like how do these things not. It doesn't line up. Am I making any sense?

A (9:09)

You are making total sense. And this is something I think about constantly when it comes to AI in particular, because when we do have these leaps of technology, we there, there's a fork in the road where one way leads to some kind of utopia and one leads to more of a dystopia. The utopia version is, you're right, there's a burnout epidemic, everyone's tired and overworked and oh my God, wouldn't it be just magical if a technology could come along to magically make us 50% more productive and, and then voila, here come the robots. And you would think and is possible actually if you, if organizations were to make this decision, if you use those efficiency gains in order to reduce the workload on employees. This is the advent of the four day work week or simply just not the six day work week. Right, that's, that's possible. Unfortunately, there's also a dystopian version where we're looking at mass unemployment because now organizations are getting squeezed and trying to, to improve their bottom line and replace entry level talent. So anyway, that's at like the 50,000 foot level where we have to think about how are we by we, you know, like how are governments essentially incentivizing organizations in order to prioritize people. But even at an individual level, I think humans, I'm speaking broadly, I'll speak for myself. Even I, when I find myself more productive, my brain first goes to oh, what else can I take on? What else can I do? It's very hard for me to take the win of oh, I've now become more efficient for X, Y and Z. And simply put that towards naps.

B (11:11)

Right.

A (11:12)

But that's part of why I wrote a book about it. You write the book you most need to read about. How do you One of the chapters is titled how do you get good at life? Not just good at work. In other words, how can we invest some of our productivity savings into getting good at crossword puzzles or becoming. Getting a promotion in our hobby or becoming an A plus sleeper or partner or whatever that may be? It's hard in a culture where we are first and foremost praised for our productivity and our economic output. But I think it's important, and one of the things I feel passionately about is that we stand up for the value of our unproductive time. That we actually assert confidence in the value of our own enjoyment and pleasure and fun because that has value because we say so. It's not going to have value because it's going to show up on some P and L. It has value because I say my jigsaw puzzles. That's valuable time for me. And I think that's up to us to assert.

B (12:23)

Okay, a few thoughts in no particular order. First, I can completely relate. I sometimes catch myself wondering if I can be taking my time off more productively. Like, I'm like, I know. Isn't that ridiculous?

A (12:37)

I know.

B (12:37)

Is there a more productive way for me to be taking this day off? It's wild. And I think there's an element of. I don't know if any of us really know what we would do with extra time that we create. And so it's this default to try to fill it. And sometimes we fill it in really unproductive ways, like extra time on social media or something like that. Like, this is not what we would say. If somebody asked, what would you do with an extra five hours a week? I can't imagine anyone would consciously say I would spend more time on social media is we default to it because we don't know what to do with it because we're not thinking ahead on it. And you said something that triggered the thought of, you know, I feel like there's this sort of misconception that we are different people in our lives than we are at work or that we leave ourselves behind when we show up to work. And I just have to believe from personal experience and anecdotally it would. It's like when my life is better, I show up to work better. And when my work is more fun or more engaging or more. Even more productive, but like, in the best ways, not in the I have so much shit to do ways, it makes my life Better. And I don't know. There's something to this that is really speaking to my soul, but I have to ask the question because I know. Well, I'm. I would be asking it. But, yeah, Devil's advocate, the purpose of most businesses is, is predominantly profitability. Right. Or else we would just do nonprofits or volunteer. How do you argue for or defend against the people who say, well, profit, bottom line, is the priority, so why should I care about people having fun?

A (14:25)

Yeah. So certainly there are some systems that companies have opted into where that they've. That's what they've signed up for. Right. Like a board member has a fiduciary responsibility. You're publicly traded. That's what you signed up for. So in some contexts, that's more of an uphill battle. Although I've worked with many publicly traded companies for privately held companies, they're the ones that I think are more interesting because they're not held to those same standards. For a company where there's an owner and that owner gets to decide how much are we going to. How much profits are we going to extract? Then I think there's an opportunity for an argument, which is an existential argument. It's, to be honest, like, I'm really tired of making the business case for employee engagement because that's where all the consultants and HR leaders go immediately. And I get it. I've been there so many times. It's like, well, care about your people because engagement drives productivity. Because did you know that when your employees have friends at work, that improves retention, profitability, safety, and all those things. But it's like, oh my God, like, when have we stopped being humans? And so my go to is to simply talk to those leaders, to those executives, as human beings who also want to enjoy their days on the planet, who also feel stress about keeping a business afloat. To say, yes, you have a responsibility for a financially healthy business and to serve your customers. But also it is a heavy weight to consume human days, which is what you are doing as a business. You are acquiring human days, and you're in charge. You are the steward of how those are used. Now, sometimes when I'm pulling out all the stops, I will tell the story of two, two team members who have passed away in my time as a leader. Both from cancer, both incredibly beautiful humans. And when I look back on the time where I was their team leader, the last thing I am thinking about is whether I extracted full value from them. The last thing that's an offensive thought to even cross my because of course they did their jobs. They were good at their jobs. I'm thinking about, did they laugh on those days because they ran out of Mondays? Mondays are not a renewable resource. Was I a good steward of the few Mondays that I was responsible for how they spent those? Did I make them feel supported, appreciated, valued? That's what's on my mind. And then the logical leap that we need to make, that leaders need to make, is that all employees are going to run out of Mondays, including yourself. And so what does it mean to extract value from people such that you're making a profit? For what? Don't you want to retire and look back on your career knowing that you not only served customers, but you also created decent jobs with happy people who most days enjoyed their days? So that's where I go real dark for a topic about fun. And then the, the bonus is that yes, of course, employee engagement drives product productivity and profitability. Like that I don't worry about anymore because that is so true. The research is out there. It's going to take care of your business if you take care of your people.

B (18:06)

Well, first, I'm really twisted because going dark is actually fun for me. So thank you. And I think there is an element too of. Yeah, retention is costly and people will stay at places where they feel appreciated and valued and are having fun. And I know, well, I believe, Bre, that you're not suggesting that we should be having fun at all times in our work days or even at all times in our life. We're talking about moments of fun, experiences of fun, and when it's happening, not the automatic default of oh, I gotta get, get back to work. As opposed to seeing it as part of. Is that a fair statement or am I off track?

A (18:47)

Yeah, so, absolutely. So I would say two things. One, doing really high quality, impactful work is fun. Like that, that is, that's the cake, right? Not the, the sprinkles on top. When we are sharing our creativity with the world. When. Even if, you know, if you're a middle level marketing manager, you're not maybe changing the world, but you come up with a really badass marketing copy campaign and you're like, yeah, that's good. And you can tell your other fellow marketing manager like, look what I came up with. And they're like, oh my God, that's really. Like even, even just those small moments, those are fun. It's actually fun to use our skills. It's fun to grow our skills. It's fun to work alongside other people. It's fun to see our workout in the world. When that marketing manager sees that ad copy on a subway, they're like, oh my God, I did. So the fun is actually in the work. It's not the accoutrement. It's not the happy hour, right? And so there's nothing at odds with having fun and doing great work. In fact, like I often tell the story of Kati Carico, who's the MRNA researcher whose work led to the development of the COVID vaccines. And there's a great story about how her husband would always say to her when she was heading off to work, he'd say, you're not going to work, you're going to have fun. And and she saved the world in many ways, right? Like her having fun, her enjoyment in the work itself was what made it brilliant. It wasn't a distraction from it.

B (20:33)

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A (21:29)

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B (22:08)

ABC okay, again, all of this is resonating with me and my personal example is this. Like, these conversations are so much fun for me. I get to do this for a living right and it's only a 30 minute component of the work that goes into something like this. Like the prep, the minutiae that, like that part might not be as fun. This part is fun. The flip side though is as I said in the intro, what we're hearing about mostly is stress, overwhelm, burnout, pure hatred, whatever you want to call it. Right? And you say in the book that busyness and all of these things are killing brilliant work. Talk to us about that and why fun and brilliance are connected and why this is important to bring back into the workplace.

A (22:58)

Yes. So the fun and the brilliance, the, you know, these 30 minute conversations, that's where the good stuff is. I first want to say though, to your other point, chapter one in the book is titled Most Work, Most Days should be fun. So just a head nod to not all work in all days should will be fun. There's a great Norwegian saying in response to the question how are you? Which is up and not crying. And sometimes, you know you're having a bad day at work, you have to do all the editing, whatever. One day there's no podcast in sight and you're like, you know what? I'm up and not crying. And that is plenty. So a big reality check to not all work is going to be brilliant and fun, and that's totally normal. And then to your question on brilliant work and getting rid of the busyness and the conformity that surrounds us, this is the great Venn diagram intersection of where individual fun and business impact are laying circly on top of each other. In my Venn diagram, brilliant work is good because it drives impact and value. But also it's one of the coolest parts of being a human that we can come up with ideas, essentially say to our colleagues, like, we're big kids, hey, do you want to do my idea with me? And like, let's try it, let's put it out into the world. The things that get in the way of that, unfortunately are some of the strongest tenants of what we think of as professionalism. So busyness is one the 30 minute back to back meetings we have all day. Microsoft Report on the Infinite Workday reported that people are interrupted every two minutes from a meeting, a message or an email. This is not how our brains work. There's a reason we get our best ideas in the shower when we are away from all of that. So the culture of busyness is actually not bad for coordination and execution and we need some of that. There's a reason why we're so busy Typing all day long because large scale execution sometimes requires it. But brilliant work requires spaciousness, requires us to block hours or even a day or more on our calendar to simply think. And then further, there's the notion of conformity. You look around modern workplaces, especially I'll call it the financial industry, and you see the. The ties and the blazers and the pumps, and it all looks very much the same. All the presentations look the same, the reports look the same. And brilliance does not grow out of a soil of conformity that we need to allow ourselves to be quirky, different, bold, a little bit unreasonable, a little bit delusional. And all of those things are often felt to be unprofessional. So if workplaces and individuals want to do their most brilliant work, they have to do the two things that will feel quite unnatural, which is spend some time not being productive in the sense that we think of I'm typing, I'm making, and also being a little bit weird. But if organizations can create space for those things or we can create space for ourselves, then we are doing better work.

B (26:28)

Again, completely resonating. You talk about do nothing days right in the book, and I love this as a strategy for brilliance, for better work. Yeah. I do find that I have my best ideas in the shower or when I'm on a walk, or when I'm not in front of a computer or not in a meeting strategizing. Like, those things have their place. But in the absence of nothing hours or nothing days, I don't think I would move very far forward. It would be more tactical than like, big idea. And I want to talk about this idea of being professional. And there's a lot of data. Again, my lean is on the podcast side, but one of the things we're learning is traditional news as an example, is getting a lot less engagement because people are tired of the polished and the everything is done. Going to YouTube for news because they're looking for the weird, they're looking for the authentic, they're looking for the unpolished, they're looking for the unprofessional. And I don't mean unprofessional like in the rude or not good war worker.

A (27:37)

Yeah.

B (27:38)

Or showing up naked or anything like that. I just, I'm talking about not so cookie cutter, not so expected, not so perfect.

A (27:47)

Yeah.

B (27:48)

It is really interesting. Now, how do we do that in cultures that expect that? Like, how do we push against that envelope if, you know, it's not embraced or coming from the top down?

A (28:01)

Yeah. So my best strategy there Is exposure therapy just like you would if you had a fear of snakes, right? You look at a picture of a snake, then you look at a snake in a box, and then you get a little closer to the snake.

B (28:14)

My editor is deathly afraid of snakes. You just freaked her out. I love it. Keep going.

A (28:21)

Oh, my gosh. Maybe I should mess up this part. So she has to edit this part about snakes for 20 minutes. Anyway, my apologies.

B (28:27)

She's already horrified.

A (28:30)

I picked the right example. Yeah, but the same thing is true for what we're afraid of in the workplace. And what I find is breaking a small norm of professionalism. Rarely does anything bad happen. So, for example, if anyone is listening to this and not watching this, you wouldn't know, but I have wet hair. And I have wet hair because I exercised this morning. I came home, I had to get my daughter out of the apartment because she was gonna be way too loud for me to record a podcast. I showered and I jumped on. And the truth is, I'm just as smart with my hair wet or dry. And I have just decided for myself, the rest of the world can deal with me having wet hair. It's going to be fine. And you know what? I haven't ever gotten fired for it. No podcast has ever told me, we're not going to air this. And so it's one small way that I assert that I am human, that my exercise was important. And also, when I have frequently shown up with wet hair in with a team or in a consulting environment, I find it gives other people the permission to do the same. It's a one small, subversive act. Now, if wet hair doesn't feel good, you can pick your thing, right? You can choose a fun font on your presentation. You can wear a quirky sock. You can experiment with one swear word in a meeting and see. See what happens.

B (30:00)

I've experimented with that one A.

A (30:05)

Anyway, keep going.

B (30:06)

Also, real quick, Bri, I want to point out, for those people who are just listening, you are also, you have pictures behind you that are all of your life. And I think what a beautiful reminder that you are a human and you have a life outside of what you just do for a living. I haven't seen anything like that so far. I. I think we all tend to lean towards backgrounds, you know, that are very, again, I put in air quotes, professional. So that is another great example.

A (30:33)

Thanks. Yeah, I mean, my publicist and others were def. They gave me all the standard advice, and it's all very good and understandable. Have a clean Background, nothing distracting. And I thought when I was setting up my desk, I was like, well, I've got this wall. I like the light here. And yeah, the fact that you can see my grandpa hugging my daughter behind me, like, it makes me happy. And it also, I think is an act of, I hope, of just sharing myself. This is me fully with wet hair and pictures behind me. So what I find is that when we are that person in the workplace where we try one small subversive act of humanity, not only is it empowering for us because usually nothing really bad happens. No one's going to be like, I need to talk to you about your socks. They're far too fun, right? And then also you, when you give people the permission, you become what I call a give no shits role model. It's. It's becoming that person. And I know I've had these people in my life. Maybe you and others have as well, where a person who just gives seven fewer fucks than everyone else. And I look at them and I think, I want to be like that. That person feels free and confident and empowered and. And I think, especially as a woman, I feel like when I've grown up with the message that you're supposed to be presentable and palatable and professional. My very first teaching mentor, who swore all the time I looked at her and I was like, I want to be you when I grow up. And it wasn't just the profanity, it was the confidence. And so I think that's what we can do for ourselves and for others is to experiment with a little bit of mischief.

B (32:21)

Yes, mischief. What a good word. I. I don't know why this popped in my head, but every time I see the expression age gracefully, I'm like, no, age with mischief. Like, I. My research is on the topic of confidence. And one of the things that I find really interesting is women's confidence increases as they age, whereas men's dips in their 60s. And I think it's because men's confidence is often tied to what they do for a living. And when they retire, there is this sort of like, who am I? Whereas I think women, as they get older, this, like, freeing feeling of less fucks to give and not giving so much credence to other people's opinions and letting go of the shoulds and the supposed tos and the, you know, also a little bit of people pay a lot less attention to how we look the older we get. There's just a lot of things in there. But I love this idea of aging mischievously and mischief as part of a way to express ourselves. So thank you. Thank you for using that word. Okay, I have to ask this one last question because my background is in an industry where delayed gratification is literally built into it. And we normally think of delayed gratification as a good thing, but you make a case against it in the book. Talk to us about that.

A (33:38)

Yes. So I get the normal argument, right. Don't eat the. Save the cookies for later. You'll thank yourself. Sleep now, exercise now. You'll thank yourself. Save now. Right. It's all good. But when we think about work, in what we are delaying the gratification of when we work so much and so hard, we're not delaying the gratification of some hedonistic pleasure like cookies. We're often delaying the gratification of time with our friends and family. Like, sorry, honey, I can't. I can't help you with your homework right now. I have to finish this thing. We're delaying the gratification of our health and feeling good. I can't exercise this morning.

B (34:27)

I can't.

A (34:27)

Like, even though I know it's gonna make me feel good, I need to get this thing done. We're delaying the gratification of just, frankly, our enjoyment of life.

B (34:36)

Right.

A (34:36)

Like, I can't. I don't have time to go out to the Botanic Gardens, which is my happy place, or go out to lunch with a friend, because I'm working. Right. And so when we think about delayed gratification in the context of overworking, it's not that, oh, I'll enjoy myself when I'm retired. It's that right now, if you are overworking, you are under living. You are actually postponing the most beautiful parts of your life. And I. I've been an overworker. I still am sometimes. And yet it fires me up because I don't want any system to make us feel like our health, our relationships and our pleasure are expendable and delayable because they are not.

B (35:28)

Right?

A (35:28)

Right. You have to take joy now, or you can't schedule joy for later. Right. And no one's going to give you joy. You have to take it. No one's going to give you time for a nap. You take the time for a nap. And so I say this as someone who's not always good at this, but also strives to always be better, to have confidence in taking the pleasure, the love, the joy now, because I know that delaying it is a recipe for delaying my own happiness.

B (36:03)

Yeah. Well, I can tell you I was a poster child for this in my 20s. I mean, the proving myself, I had no life. It was all at the sacrifice of life and joy and fun and all of that. And I lost an entire decade of my life. Now I'm very happy with my life as it is today. And it wasn't necessary to create the life that I have today. I don't regret much in my life, but that particular time was, was not healthy. And as you said earlier, a reminder that our Mondays aren't guaranteed. None of our, you know, I'll have fun when I retire. Well, okay, that's not guaranteed. What is guaranteed is the day that we're in right now. And this idea that we're sacrificing our life for work can be haunting. So anyway, Bri, thank you for writing the book, for championing this, championing this cause for you, the listener. The book again is called Today was Fun. And you can go to briegroff.com to get more information about Bri and her work and her sub stack and all that. We're going to put the links and all of that in show notes, but it's B R E E Groff G R O F F dot com. Thank you for being our guest today. I'm very much appreciate it.

A (37:21)

Oh, thank you for having me. I had a lot of Fun in this 30 minutes and hope you did too and so appreciate you having me.

B (37:29)

It was my pleasure. All right friend, here's where I land. Work doesn't have to be miserable to be meaningful. Hard doesn't automatically equal valuable. And fun isn't a distraction from real work. It can be the very thing that makes the work better. We've been conditioned to expect stress, overwhelm and burnout as if they're the cost of doing business. But what if that's not the price of success? What if it's the barrier to it? If we're spending most of our waking hours at work, then we should expect some joy, some passion, some fun. Anything less and we're wasting a huge part of our lives. It's time we rewrite the rules and the job descriptions to include some fun at work. Because claiming joy where we've been told that it doesn't belong, well, that is woman's work.

A (38:25)

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