Harry Gordon Selfridge, founder of the British department store Selfridges, had a motto: ‘There’s No Fun Like Work!’. This phrase is printed on a notebook I once got as a present from my family, and I always wondered if, when applied to me, it meant that I love and enjoy working or that I’m a bit of a pill who cannot enjoy the things that really make life worth living. The jury’s still out on that.
I’ve thought about this a lot this past summer (happy autumn, everyone! It’s officially here) due to a coincidental shopping experience in Greece. My spouse and I we’re driving around the breath-taking mountains of Crete. We stopped for lunch to wait out the thick fog spreading across the mountain tops, and across the tavern was the most adorable-looking shop with colourful objects all across the yard. I insisted that I get to take a closer look at the whimsical objects. On touch, they were surprisingly light. A man came over, quizzed us if we knew what the statues were made of, and revealed that they were a type of pumpkin, dried up. He ushered us into the workshop where his father, a Greek man in his mid-seventies, offered us the customary ouzo, drank it with us, and showed us around. Shelves upon shelves of beautiful pumpkins, painted as mushrooms like the one I got as a souvenir, or as long-necked swans, or as a myriad of flowers. He grows the pumpkins himself in his own garden, owning the entire process from sourcing his material to painting and selling the artwork.
As he wrapped my mushroom, I asked him how long it takes him to finish one. He smiled, raised his right hand, and slammed it on his wrist. “When you enjoy what you do, you don’t look at the time.”
I keep the statue on my desk at home. Whenever I look at it, I’m reminded of the Greek artisan’s attitude towards life and work, and also of Mr. Selfridge’s quote and how that applies to me. Am I doing something that’s fun? Do I lose myself in what I do, do I lose track of time?
I googled “can you have fun at work” and got interesting first-page results. What I intended with the question was “is it humanly possible to enjoy yourself at work”, but the results came back with a more policy-oriented set of answers, including articles on whether ‘allowing’ employees to have fun at work is good for productivity.
That’s an interesting result. At a glance, all the articles on the first page of the search results say yes to having fun at work because it makes employees happier and thus more productive. I looked at a few suggestions on how to make work more fun, and found this article by Workvivo a good starting point. The article suggests five easy ways to make work more fun: celebrate more; make time for games; enjoy joking together; a change of scenery; and putting on some music. Of these, the first one is the easiest to implement and so often not done. When was the last time you celebrated an achievement at work? Or anything at all? I remember the first time I realized that there was no milestone celebrations. I was working in a big project, and the team had just gotten a big piece done that had been worked on for months. Not one of the leaders shared their thanks; not one of them told us to take off earlier that Friday, to recharge after hard work. I remember feeling my own productivity drop for the next few working days, thinking that no matter how good a job I did, it would still just be another task done. That wasn’t a great feeling. I found it particularly ironic given that one of the company’s core values was to celebrate successes – maybe the term ‘success’ should have been clarified there.
Celebrating or just simply noticing the efforts of people around you is important. The other four tips are all great, although gamification isn’t that important to me personally (frankly, I find an over-gamification of mandatory training courses annoying, especially when poorly made). But when I first saw the list, I was dismissive. It’s not enough to play music at the office if the work sucks! And this is true: no isolated tweak will change that level of dissatisfaction at work. But to have a fun atmosphere at work, individual pieces need to be in place. You need to know your colleagues well enough to know what you can chat about, how much quiet focus time everyone needs, and what type of humour fits the crowd. Your surroundings also impact your mood which is why there’s plenty of research into office spaces and why so many modern offices have colourful sofas and armchairs, arranged in different clusters for both the group workers and lone wolves, and why there’s more focus on greenery and lightning.
I don’t know if the Greek artist is always happy and in a zone when working. But I can guess that he mostly is, based on the sheer volume of the statues and paintings in his shop, and the variety. It’s hard to imagine someone growing plants, drying them and finally painting intricate, different patterns on them without them liking it. So I started to look at the process and tried to identify what helps him not look at the time while he’s at work. Is it that he does everything by himself, from start to finish, having total control of the whole process? No delays caused by anyone else. Is it that he works with nature, planting the vegetables himself and nurturing their growth? Is it the creativity of each statue and painting, whether a new creation or the hundredth go at the same design, honing his skill? Is it working side-by-side with his son, sharing his skill and hoping it will outlast him? Or is it something as simple as, I just like it?
Not everything is always fun. Not every task at work is fun. But that’s not what ‘having fun at work’ means to me. If you generally enjoy work, even the more tedious tasks are easy (easier) to deal with. I think back to when I’ve said ‘I had a good day at work.’ Those days I’ve either chatted at length with my colleagues, gotten a lot done, and/or learnt something new. Those three parts, coworkers, meaning, and growth, make up fun at work for me. What about you?
Sidetracked 