If you need to “have fun” at work, you probably don’t love it

Image by paolo via flickr.

This post is part of a series exploring what it really means to love our work. Make sure to check out the table of contents for other posts in the series.

Having fun at work is an art that we all should try to master because, well, having fun is great by its own merit. It’s an obvious way of increasing our overall happiness and health.

Having fun at work also makes us more productive. The better our sense of humor and that of our colleagues, the better able to handle stress and more creative we’ll become.

Working in any of these seriously cool workplaces will not only be more fun, but will surely enhance our performance. There is some evidence according to which even the pastime of surfing the web at work, so dreaded by employers, can actually increase productivity.

Smiling more often, taking breaks, and doing things differently, can have a positive impact on our ability to have fun at work, and become better at it.

But we should never confuse the concept of cleverly using fun for productivity, and thinking that having fun at work is the same as loving our work.

I’m sure that stand-up comedians must have much more “fun” at work than opera singers, if we measure that for the overall lightness, laughter, flexibility, relaxation and improvisation that impregnates the atmosphere of their performances.

But if we would ask both kinds of artists why they love what they do, they would both tell us that it’s mostly about two things.

The first would be that their work allows them to achieve a state of flow.

The second, and most important, is the sense of meaning they derive from their work, which in both cases would be quite similar, and common to almost all forms of art: self-expression, giving an aesthetically rewarding experience to their audiences, delivering an important sociopolitical message, etc.

As Jay Sankey puts it in his Zen and the Art of Stand-up Commedy, “In this suspicious and often ‘edited for television’ world, the challenging comments of the stand-up comic make him a type of outspoken philosopher, an anarchist dreamer, even a kind of social hero.”

In my next post we will elaborate on the crucial importance of meaning for work to truly contribute to our happiness, and the ways in which the idea of meaning relates to flow.

Tagged as: Happiness, Love, Non-conformism, Personal development, Strenghts, Work