How to make your work more enjoyable

Hello, please let it work. I’m Bethan Staton, an assistant research and career editor at FT standing at Isabel this week.

We are on track for the holiday season in the UK. I’ll be going to a small festival in Wales this weekend, but I’ll spend most of the next few months. But don’t leave me. London is the best when it’s warm, and being in the office means moving forward and working hard on some important projects.

But do we really need to wait for the summer to enjoy our work? I don’t think so. In this week’s newsletter, we’ve been thinking about ways to make everyday fun even more fun. Please read the details. And if you have any recommendations on how to inject pleasure into a 9-5, contact bethan.staton@ft.com.

When does your job not work?

Did you spend the last time at the end of your work day and thought it was fun?

That’s not a trick question. Workplace fun is becoming a buzzword with the involvement of its relatives, bringing your whole and employee experience. I often read about it as a way to increase productivity or attract staff. But what if the fun is central to how the workplace is run as its own end, rather than serving another goal?

This doesn’t seem so ridiculous when you think creatively about what fun means. And that could mean a lot. I’ve never really been a fan of ping pong or weird days, but I think the job is fun. It’s easy in journalism (what is more fun than finding things and writing about them!) But I’d like to agree that people from all kinds of occupations (nurses, software engineers, accountants, restaurant workers) enjoy their work and often enjoy it.

Another person who agrees with this is Brie Groff. When I spoke to her last week, she described things like foosballs and happy hour as “fun icing.” It’s great to add to your actual “work cake.”

Cakes are important. What you do all day, output, your team, and how you interact with them. You can put delicious icing on a bad cake, but it will still taste the bad taste (or people lick the icing).

Groff doesn’t think this should be difficult. “There’s nothing fundamentally painful about creating value,” she says. That includes using our skills, building things, learning, and getting feedback. It is the personality, procedures and pressures that we bring unnecessary things to stop our work from being fun. “There’s this notion that you have to show up in a certain way,” she says. “Wearing a blazer, using jargon, and making presentations look very impressive, but that’s about muting our vibrancy as a creative being.”

It is Groff’s mission to return some of that vibrancy and create an environment where we can enjoy ourselves. She suggests that leaders can do this by teasing themselves. They’re either dressing more casually or joking with their team. For example, instead of cleaning up the design department, presenting a rough sketch at a meeting shows that “they can become human here.” In the simplest terms, Groff raises one very simple question. “Are you a good hang at work? Are you having fun?”

I’m instinctively careful with this kind of approach and wondering if they’re still not cakes, but ice for work. We don’t enjoy our work because we are often inadequately paid. We serve a purpose that we disagree with in our hierarchy that deny our autonomy and conditions of punishment.

But I think there is something important to put joy at the heart of our working lives. Groff, a former physics teacher, defines his work as “force x distance.” This is another way to say “effort to make a difference.” Good work should make a positive difference, but it should also involve fun, rewarding and well-supported efforts. And if we’re not having a good time, what’s the point?

Groff proposes a thought experiment. “You have a successful business with good revenue. Everyone is miserable. I don’t call it a good business. I don’t know if that business should exist.” While we really enjoy our work, she suggests that it is nothing more than a “change in a paradigm.” We say, “We’re just extracting from each other and we can move from situations where our employees are willing to provide value.”

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One more thing. . .

The allegations about the situation surrounding Salt Pass were one of the hottest topics of conversation in the newsroom this week. The accusations of misrepresentation come shortly after the reenactment of one of the most well-known literary fibers of recent memory. Frey’s new novel has received some awful reviews, but I enjoy revisiting the story of rising fame and descending to infamy when considering the salt path.