I'm normally a fairly pragmatic guy. I like to see evidence of things before I believe them. I'm still a journalist at heart, after all.
But there are some things I believe so deeply that no presentation of evidence one way or the other could ever sway me. Things like how big of an impact being a musician has had on how I think about things outside of music. Or how healthy it is to do solo trips every once in a while. Or how Mars' recent decision to swap the brown M&Ms stilettos heels for shorter heels actually gives her a certain girl-next-door quality that makes her even more seductive than before. Things like that.
One of those things is the value of being silly at work. The ROI of making jokes in the office.
I have no evidence for this. I have never done this study. I have no data.
But I am confident that every minute I spend working on a good joke gets two minutes in extra productivity out of those who laugh.
It seems like nearly every day I end up having some conversation with myself along the lines of, "I have so much I need to get done. Should I really be spending three minutes typing up a clearly ludicrous reply to this email and screenshooting it just to get a quick laugh out of a coworker?"
And the answer is yes. Almost always yes. It's worth it. It will be three minutes I'm never getting back. But I'm a firm believer that people do much better work and get more work done when they're smiling, and if writing a fake email response accomplishes that, then I'm going to type away.
I'm not doing it for my own enjoyment. I'm doing it to help the company. Yeah.
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