diy

101 Ways to Create Humor at Work

By on September 24, 2009 in How-To Humor

With all of the benefits to having humor in the workplace, every office could stand to have a little more fun.  But how do you incorporate humor into the corporate world?  It’s easier than you might think.

From individual activities such as reading office jokes, to team-building games using improv, to community-wide fun at work through a Talent Show, here are 101 ways to get you started to a happier, healthier, more creative and productive office:

personal-healthPersonal Health

Break up the workday with some physical activity, laughter, or even meditation to help reduce stress, improve blood flow and even burn calories.

1. Relax and Recharge: Spend 15 minutes a day relaxing and recharging at recess.
2. Walk around: Start a walking group at work; map out a route through the office that has you walking for at least 10 minutes.
3. Be Hularious: Hold a hula hoop contest.
4. Sleep: Take a nap at work.
5. Breathe: Take 10 deep breaths every hour.
6. Smell the Roses: Take a break to take in your surroundings.
7. Bust a Move: Dance in the elevator.
8. Bust a Move Together: Better yet, have a 3pm dance party.
9. Eat and Be Merry: Have a “laugh lunch” and watch clips from The Office.
10. Take a Break: Install software like InstantBoss to make sure you take regular breaks throughout the day.

motivationMotivation

Kick things into higher gear with some motivational tweaks to your every day work and see your productivity shoot through the roof.

11. Be Inspired: Start off each day by watching an inspirational video.
12. Lock-in Inspiration: Create easy-to-remember, hard-to-hack, inspirational passwords.
13. Pump It Up: Get energized for the day by listening to some of your favorite songs on your commute to work.
14. Rock It Out: Create a playlist of fast paced rock music or equivalent; listen to it while doing less than exciting work.
15. Listen Closely: Listen to classical music when you are required to concentrate on one task.
16. Address Yourself: Write a letter to yourself highlighting where you want to be in 3, 6, 12 months and include a silly joke.
17. Motivate: Get a motivational poster.
18. Laugh-tivate: Get a de-motivational poster.
19. Picture the Good Stuff: Get a digital picture frame and fill it with pictures of your friends and family.
20. Provide Some Background: Change your desktop background to something motivational.
21. Lead with Quotes: Include leadership quotes in your email signature.

funFun

Bring out your inner-child to break the monotony with good old fashioned fun.

22. Take Aim: Post up a dart board; have a tournament.
23. Build Some Fun: Make a pen bow and arrow.
24. Slink Around: Get a slinky; play with it quietly while talking on the phone.
25. Think Outside the Cube: Learn to solve a Rubik’s cube; share it with others.
26. Score a Touchdown: Play paper football while waiting for a meeting to start.
27. Hit the Deck: Create a personalized deck of cards for your work; play “Go Fish” with them.
28. Tell the Future: Build a “Paper Fortune Teller” using work lingo.
29. Master the Paper Arts: Learn to make an origami crane; make one while you are on a conference call.
30. Fly Around: Make paper airplanes with some of your cubicle mates; see whose can fly the farthest.
31. Look at Things Differently: Get a Magic Eye book for your cubicle; share it with people when they come by.
32. Share Some XOXO’s: Play tic tac toe with a co-worker.
33. Eavesdrop: Read Overheard In the Office; add your own entry.
34. Get Type-Cast: Play a game and get better at typing.
35. Give a Makeover: Give your boss an online makeover, even if your boss is a man.

networkingNetworking

Enhance your career and have fun by extending and strengthening your network.

36. Dine Together: Go to lunch with someone new each day for a week.
37. Tweet Something: Stay connected with co-workers or friends through microblogging.
38. Be a Freshmaker: Find a mentor; give him/her Mentos for mentoring.
39. Write That Down: Start a blog/newsletter at work on a topic you have passion for.
40. Play Halloween: Set out a bowl of candy at your cube; allow people to have a piece only after they tell you a story or make you laugh.
41. Be a Storyteller: Pick a story from your weekend to share with others.
42. Read the Not News: Find a story on Fark.com to share at your work lunch or happy hour.
43. Say Thank You: Send a thank you note for something someone did at least once a week.

team-buildingTeam-Building

Improve your team’s communication and listening skills to make the whole greater than the sum of it’s parts.

44. Improvise: Play improv games as a team.
45. Mix It Up: Create work appropriate nicknames for people on your team using anagrams.
46. Be a Pirate: Figure out everyone’s Pirate name on your team.
47. Get Animated: Create Simpson’s avatars for all of your team members.
48. Become Royalty: Find out which Disney Princess you are; watch one of the movies.
49. Author-ize: Work with co-workers to write a book about your workplace.
50. Find a Pin-Up: Make a themed calendar full of pictures of people from your department.
51. Map and Match: Gather trivia about the people in your team; send out a mapping and matching quiz and see who can correctly guess all of the matches.
52. Be Happy for 60 Minutes: Organize a happy hour with your co-workers.
53. Picture This: Photoshop pictures of your team onto a picture of super heroes or celebrities.
54. Get Hip to Facebook: Create a Facebook group for people at your work. Use it to connect socially.
55. Be Diverse: Play Diversity Bingo at your next team gathering.
56. Do Some Branding: Create a logo and theme music for one of your projects; use it whenever you do status updates or send out emails.
57. Decorate: Make thematic “door decs” for the people on your team.
58. Have a Team Name: Name your row of cubicles something indicative of the people or work done there; encourage others to do the same.
59. Praise Others: Send a co-worker anonymous praise.
60. Recognize: Send out a quarterly recognition email recognizing accomplishments of fellow employees and sharing some humor.

meetingMeetings

Survive the drain of meetings by incorporating some humor into the mix.

61. Play a Song: Learn “Mary Had A Little Lamb” on touch tone phones; play it while waiting for a phone conference to start.
62. Share What You Know: Present a tip/trick like the old “The More You Know” commercials.
63. Learn the Language: If you work internationally, learn a few words and phrases of a language of one of your co-workers; surprise them with it in your next meeting.
64. Pass Notes: Pass a note in a meeting like you did in grade school; make it semi-work related.
65. Lie: Play two truths and a lie during introductions at your next meeting.
66. Give Back: Use your next leadership team meeting to volunteer somewhere in your community.
67. Unleash Your Inner Village Person: Perform YMCA at your next community meeting.
68. Have a Ball: Get a stress ball; toss it back and forth when talking in meetings.
69. Take Note: Take meeting minutes; include fun/interesting/random thoughts you have while in the meeting.

trainingTraining

Improve engagement and retention with a little variety and uniqueness in your training materials.

70. Metaphor-ize: Explain your next training using an unlikely metaphor, such as why project management is like getting married.
71. Turn Lemons into Lemonade: Set up a lemonade stand; give out lemonade and teach patrons about your service or project.
72. Get Poetic: Write a poem describing the benefits of what your organization works on.
73. Be a Conductor: Warm up the crowd at your next presentation by conducting a symphony of syllables to pronounce your subject.
74. Act Now: Act out a skit in your next presentation to demonstrate a point.
75. Fill in the Blanks: Start your next meeting with a work related Mad Lib.
76. Simon Says Play: Play Simon Says at your next training session.
77. Embed Meaning: Be like Alfred Hitchock and find a way to work in a picture of yourself or your kids into every presentation; be creative about it.
78. Be Magical: Learn a simple magic trick and use it in your next meeting or presentation.
79. Equate: Come up with your own Albert Einstein equation.
80. Tell a Joke: Include an intentionally silly joke in your next speech. Tie it back to the topic somehow.

communityCommunity-Building

Build a stronger community and improve relationships in the entire office with some laid-back, entertaining, office humor.

81. Eat, Greet, Meet: Start a lunch bunch.
82. Play Your Heart Out: Bring in the game Rock Band and have a “concert.”
83. Post a Bulletin: Put a bulletin board in a common area; take turns with your co-workers posting different topics on the board.
84. Get Cartoony: Start a cartoon board, post some funny cartoons.
85. Showcase Your Kids: Create a “look at what my kid made” mural for employees to share their kids’ creations.
86. Prove You’ve Got Talent: Hold a planned talent show.
87. Make It Up: Hold an improvised talent show.
88. Get Lucky: Organize a pot luck lunch with people in your office.
89. Be Gross: Hold a “grossest foods” dessert party.
90. Piece It Together: Put out a jigsaw puzzle in the breakroom for people to work on during a break.
91. Attract the Opposite: Buy refrigerator poetry magnets for the lunchroom.
92. Read and Discuss: Start a business (or fiction) book club at work.
93. Exchange: Organize a book or DVD exchange between co-workers.

miscellaneousMiscellaneous

Be creative, be humorous, be funny, be random, be happy through a smorgasbord of office fun.

94. Smile: That’s it, just Smile.
95. Live and Laugh: Try to laugh 100 times in a day; it doesn’t matter at what.
96. Ask Questions: Include an off-the-wall question in your next survey, such as “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?”
97. Get Sketchy: Create a video sketch.
98. Know What’s Going On: Schedule 30 minutes on your calendar every week to read about what’s happening in your industry.
99. Say the Word: Check out Merriam-Webster’s word of the day; see if you can naturally work it into a conversation.
100. Have F.U.N.: Name your next project something that has a silly hidden acronym.
101. Be Original: Brainstorm your own unique way of bringing humor to work.

Got your own way to create humor at work? Share it in the comments.

{ 15 comments }

Easy to Remember, Hard to Hack, Inspirational Passwords

By on March 3, 2009 in Learn with Humor

Every 60 days or so, I go through the pain-staking process of changing my passwords at work.  Between the various applications, websites, and logins I use, I tend to have to change 10+ passwords every time one of them expires (I like to keep all of mine synced up).

But ever since I started changing how I make my passwords, I now kind of like the process.  Changing passwords is a chance for me to refresh, and a new opportunity for my fingers to learn a new pattern.  If you want to create easy to remember, hard to hack, inspirational passwords, try out the following tips.

Speak Geek

Everyone suggests you use a combination of letters and numbers, but how do you still make it easy enough for you to remember?  Speak in 1337 (or leet or computer geek-talk for those of you still not sure what I’m talking about).  1337 (pronounced “leet”) is the “art” of using numbers instead of letters – 1 = L, 3 = E, 7 = T, etc. (e.g. DREW = DR3W).

By using numbers in place of certain letters, you can still have an easy to remember password, but one that won’t show up in any dictionary.  Though I don’t recommend it, even the word “password” becomes a strong password using geek talk: P@$$w0rd.

Use Acronyms

We use them every day, you might as well use them for your passwords.  Take a sentence and use the first letter of each word to make your password.  “Jack And Jill Ran Up The Hill” = JaJrupth. Now whenever you need to remember the letters of the password, just repeat the sentence in your head.

Even better, combine the first two tips and make a really tough password to crack, but easy to remember: “That Drew Guy Is Too Funny, For Sure” = TDgi2f4s.

Inspire Yourself

Using the idea of picking letters from a sentence, why not pick an inspirational quotes, or something that makes you laugh?  You enter your password 10, 20, 50+? times a day.  If you use an acronym, you’ll find yourself saying the whole sentence in your head each time you enter it–you might as well make it something that inspires you or makes you laugh.

For example, “Why Is 6 Afraid of 7?” = Wi6ao7b789 (the answer, btw, is because 7 8 (ate) 9).

Bonus Diversity

If you want to have different passwords for different sites (definitely smart for personal accounts), but still not go insane, you can apply this rule from Lifehacker.com–create a base password using the above method and then add on a piece of the name of application you are logging into.

A basic example for say your Amazon account could be P@$$AMA.

{ Be the first to comment }

Obtain Clarity Through Equation

By on February 26, 2009 in How-To Humor

Part of what made Einstein so smart was his ability to explain the complex in a simple way. After all, it was Einstein who quipped “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” He was able to distill part of his Theory of Relativity into the simple equation E=MC2.

Einstein’s Equation for Success

One of my favorite Albert Einstein quotes is his equation for success in life: “If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x y is play and z is keeping your mouth shut.”

The next time you’re trying to explain something complex, take an equation from Einstein and adapt it to your needs. For example:

  • If A is Project Management, the A = w + x + y + z, where w is scope control, x is risk management, y is budgeting, and z is critical planning.
  • If A is the song Splish Splash, then A = x + y + z, where x is splish, y is splash, and z is taking a bath.
  • If A is understanding algebra, then A = x + y + z, where x is x, y is y, and z is z.

The equation doesn’t have to perfect, the idea is to just be unique and memorable so that people can have an easier time remembering whatever it is you are explaining, even if it is just the song “Splish Splash.”

{ Be the first to comment }

How to Have a More Productive Day

By on February 24, 2009 in Learn with Humor

Do you ever have a day where you are just running on all cylinders, you move from one task to another, accomplishing more in a day than some people do in a week? Do you ever have a day where you’ve run out of gas, it seems you get nothing done, and despite your desire for it to have been a productive day, you have nothing to account for during the time you were awake?

What’s the difference between those two days? How do you have more of the former and less of the latter?

Motivators and Demotivators

The difference often lies in small, seemingly inconsequential events or activities, triggers that either motivate or demotivate you to work on what you should be working on.

For example, if I receive praise at the office for a project I’m working on, something as simple as “Drew, great work so far on the X project”, I’m more motivated to work harder on that project–I want to keep up the good work and continue it through to completion. On the flip side, if I talk at the water cooler with someone who has a negative attitude towards their work or a project we’re on, I sometimes find it incredibly difficult to get back into what I need to get done.

That’s because these events and activities have a mental and emotional effect on me.  The praise lifts my spirits and re-enforces that what I’ve been doing is appreciated.  Hearing cynicism doesn’t necessarily make me dislike the project, it just doesn’t put me in a mood to work.  Both of these events might take approximately the same amount of time (depending on how long the person talks), but they leave me in completely different mental states.  By pinpointing these events and understanding their effects, we can start to find ways to control our entire day.

The Right Motivators for the Right Projects

Everyone has multiple things on their plate, multiple roles they must play on a daily and weekly basis. I am a project manager/entrepreneur/stand-up comedian/improviser/blogger/writer, and those are just my “job” roles. You can also throw in son, brother, friend, apartment owner and many more.  Given all of these responsibilities, it’s important to be able to stay focused on the task at hand–I can’t be revved up to clean my apartment while I’m at work, and I shouldn’t be ready to create a project plan right before I’m about to go on stage.

That’s why it’s important to understand that not all motivators are equal, and not all are appropriate for your different roles. In fact what motivates you in one area will often demotivate you in another.  If I work on stand-up ideas on the subway on my way to work, when I get to the office, I want to continue writing jokes instead of prepping for a board meeting.

Instead, I should be using my time on the subway doing something that will motivate me in the office, so I can hit the ground running. I’ve found that reading business books, looking at my upcoming work tasks, and just mentally reviewing the current status of some of my work projects allows me to be ready to work once I get settled in my cube.

Identifying Your Motivators and Demotivators

Getting back to the original question, the difference between your productive and non-productive days is often the difference between whether you had the right motivators helping you throughout the day.

In order to start increasing your number of productive days, you have to purposefully do things that will motivate you for the appropriate task at hand, and consciously avoid the things that will demotivate you. Luckily, finding these triggers is as easy as observing your behaviors.

Think back to the last time you had a great day. How did it start? What was the first thing you did in the morning? Throughout the day, how did you recharge? What did you do before each of your big tasks? What was missing, what didn’t you do?  Now, think back to a day where you felt sluggish and got very little done.  How did it start? What was the first thing you did in the morning? What other things did you do and not do throughout the day?

Ask yourself these same questions for each of your roles. Think of the last time you had a really productive day at the office, or in taking care of the kids.  Based on these answers, you can start to identify your triggers.  Write them down and think about what role they motivate you for.

To help you get started, here’s a list of some of my motivators and demotivators, with their role in parenthesis.  Keep in mind that a trigger can be as big as waking up early or as small as listening to a certain song.

Motivators

  • An energizing work out (Multiple).
  • Waking up early (Multiple).
  • Listening to upbeat music (Multiple).
  • Reading a business book (Work).
  • Reviewing promotion criteria (Work).
  • Looking at Google Analytics (Blog).
  • Watching stand-up promo video (Stand-up).

Demotivators

  • Hitting snooze (Multiple).
  • Aimlessly browsing websites (Multiple).
  • Watching TV (Multiple).
  • Taking too long of a lunch (Work).
  • Checking personal email (Work).
  • Writer’s block (Blog).
  • Performing for a small audience (Stand-up).

Building Consistency

With this list in your arsenal, you can now increase the liklihood of having a great day.  Whenever you’re stalling on a project, return to your list and find one of your triggers for your current role.  Over time, as you use the same triggers, they’ll become even more powerful conditioners, essentially becoming a Pavlovian bell that mentally hypes you up.  To build a wildly productive day, you can string these motivators throughout, all-the-while avoiding demotivating triggers.

As more people embrace the “slash effect,” as coined in One Person, Multiple Careers, rarely will you go through an entire day where you only have to work on one of your roles.  It’s more likely that you’ll move in between your various roles throughout the day, sometimes coming and going between four or five of them.  Your motivators can serve as very important transition tasks when you go from one role to another, maintaining your momentum from the previous project.  This is especially true if that transitioning task is simple.

Let’s say that one of your motivators for cleaning up at home is listening to “Splish Splash” by Bobby Darin (I don’t know, it could happen).  After a long day of productive work, you may not be in the mood to clean up.  So rather than throw out any intention of cleaning up, or trying to force yourself to work through that pile of dishes, you just start splishin’ and a-splashin.  After a few minutes with Mr. Darin, you’ll be more inclined to tackle what awaits you in the sink.

Motivators in Action

To bring the concept home, let’s take a look at how a productive day for me might go:

I know that if I hit snooze in the morning, I’ll have a slacker mentality in the back of my head for the rest of the day.  But, if I wake up early and exercise, I’m more likely to want to continue to be productive in my other roles.  So I wake up early, workout, and then on the subway to work, read a business book to mentally prepare for the corporate world.

After a few hours of work, I take a break to re-charge.  I walk around and talk to people or go back to the business book.  Once I have some more energy, I jump back into the appropriate mindset for my projects.

This continues throughout the day until it’s time for me to leave for my next role as a stand-up comedian.  On my way to the comedy club, I now have to go from Corporate Drew to Comedian Drew, so I listen to a few songs to hype me up, review my set-list, and smile more.  I have a great set, see the other comedians, and then head home.

If I was done for the night, then I’d do whatever I wanted to rewind.  Since there’s always something to be done, and I still have some energy, I spend my walk home brainstorming ideas for some sketches I have to write later in the week.  When I get home, I’m now in the right mindset to start writing some of them out.  I finish up with the sketches and, since it’s nearing my bedtime, I spend some time on important tasks that are sometimes demotivating, such as checking my personal email or catching up on some TV shows.

You can see that throughout the course of a single day, you might use ten or twenty triggers to motivate you for the task at hand.  Equally important, you might consciously avoid ten or twenty triggers that demotivate you.  In the end, you’ll have a number of items checked off on your to-do list, and you’ll have the answer the question–what’s the difference between the productive and unproductive days.

{ 2 comments }

Nicknames: A Simple Team-Building Idea

February 19, 2009

A simple thing you can do to foster a sense of team-building at work is to name the section of your office something indicative of the people that make up that group of cubicles. Not only do you have the opportunity to be creative, but you give you and your peers a common identity by [...]

Read the full article →

Use Bulletin Boards to Build a Community

February 12, 2009

One of the great things about office humor is that it doesn’t need to be anything super involved–something as simple as a work bulletin board can do wonders for building a sense of humor in the office. When I was a Resident Advisor in college, we were required to post a new topic to bulletin [...]

Read the full article →

How to Take Advantage of Microblogging

February 10, 2009

Over the past couple of weeks, a tool/service called Yammer has been picking up traction where I work.  Yammer is basically a corporate version of Twitter–it allows for “walled” microblogging or, to put it more simply, the ability to post short notes that only people with your company’s email address can see. (Side Note: If [...]

Read the full article →

How to Improve Your Boss’ Sense of Humor

February 8, 2009

Want to incorporate more office humor but don’t think your boss has a sense of humor? Wouldn’t it be great if you could develop his sense of humor and as a result make the workplace more fun?  Well you can, to some extent.  But before we talk about how you can improve someone else’s humor [...]

Read the full article →

5 Tips for Better One-on-One Meetings

February 3, 2009

Regardless of your feelings towards networking, it is a crucial part of being successful in any business–corporate, comedy, or otherwise.  And the key to great networks is individual relationships, often built through “One-on-Ones” or “join-ups.” Building a Network One of the smartest things I ever did when I was an intern at a Fortune 50 [...]

Read the full article →

Warm-up Your Audience by Conducting a Symphony

January 29, 2009

One of the easiest ways to get an audience engaged and energized at the beginning of a presentation is to conduct a symphony.  Simply put, you use the separate sections of the audience saying different syllables that, when combined, sound out the title of your presentation. Here’s what you do: Step 1: Tell the Audience [...]

Read the full article →