A creative challenge: Mix 80s songs and deserts.

I got an email from Julie Dunbar at ABC-CLIO who wrote:

I’ve been inspired by your ideas for the past few months about bringing happiness into the workplace. Last week I discovered something that really brought joy into my office and I wanted to share it with you.

On the office whiteboard we wrote a theme–Day 1 was Literature and Food; Day 2 was Movies and Food; and Day 3 (Valentine’s Day) was 1980s Love Songs and Desserts (we like food).

Underneath the theme we wrote a few examples. Day 1: (Literature and Food) Tequila Mockingbird, Mansfield Pork, The Loin the Witch and the Wardrobe. Day 2: (Movies and Food) Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kidney Bean, Citizen Candy Kane, Silence of the Lambchops. Day 3: (80s songs and desserts) I Just Called to Say I Love Tiramisu, When Dove Bars Cry, and Why Can’t Pie be You.

By the end of each day, the white board was filled! By day 3, when I walked into the office, coworkers were already standing around the whiteboard and asked me, “Can we start?” One of them thanked me for bringing creativity in the office place!

Here are the full whiteboards for the other two themes:

But it doesn’t stop there. ABC-CLIO are spread over 2 offices and some people work from home. As Julie wrote in a follow-up email:

We all work together every day via phone and email, but we don’t actually know or have fun with one another. I thought it would be fun if we challenged the other colleagues outside of our Colorado office to this game – might help with building connection.

So we did this week and it was a success. The California office has already told me they will be counter-challenging us soon!

Here’s the email challenge:

This is a simple little thing you can do to introduce some fun in a workplace or between different locations of the same workplace. Could it work in your organization?

Also, what would be your contributions in the categories above? I have “Girls Just Wanna Have Flan” and “Field of Cream Puffs” :o)

If you’re wondering how the heck to pronounce “arbejdsglaede” (the Scandinavian word for happiness at work) you’re not alone:

Yeah, Danish is a horrible language.

Get the right pronunciation (and find out what arbejdsglaede means) at www.whattheheckisarbejdsglaede.com.

Sometimes the simplest things work the best, and this week’s happiness tips is one of the simplest we know:

Before you leave work, make a list of 3 things that made you happy at work today. It can be big things or small things, that doesn’t matter, just list 3 things that you enjoyed about work today.

It could be things like:

• We closed a big sale with a new client, that felt great
• A co-worker told me how much he appreciates working with me
• I had a great time at lunch with my team – everyone was laughing

We  suggest making this list daily for a week and then switching to doing it only every Friday, where you list 3 things that made you happy that week. A study showed that making the list weekly rather than daily actually works better – possibly because you don’t tire of it as quickly.

This is one practice that seems almost too simple to work, but one study showed that if you do this for two weeks, you will be measurably happier for 3 months afterwards.

The reason why this works so well is probably that it helps us to actually remember the good things that happen to us during the work day. Normally our brains are subject to the phenomenon called negativity bias which means that we’re better at remembering bad experiences. If you’ve had 10 good experiences at work and one bad one, there’s a good chance that you’ll go home thinking about that one bad experience, which will make the day feel bad, though it was actually mostly a good day.

Pro tip: You can also apply the same tip at home. I’d just finished doing a  speech for a client once, when a lady came up from the audience. She told me that she’d attended a speech of mine a few years earlier and that she’d implemented this tip with her family. Every evening around the dinner table, every person (herself, her husband and the two kids) have to list three things that made them happy that day. At first they found it to be a little weird, but now it’s something they all look forward to and she told me that her kids collect good experiences throughout the day that they can tell about at dinner.

Our brand new stop-motion animated video about happiness at work just passed 5,000 views. You can watch it at here AND sign up to get a weekly email with our best happiness tips.

What The Heck Is Arbejdsglaede!?

UPDATE: And 24 hours later we’re at 6,500 views. Woohoooooo :o)

UPDATEx2: And we’ve now passed 8,500!!!

UPDATEx3: 10,000!!!!!!!!!

I was interviewed for this Forbes article on how to use negative feedback at work to your advantage which I think turned out really well.

Basically, negative feedback is no fun but we need to know what we do well AND what we can do better. Unfortunately, very few workplaces have a good feedback culture.

What do you do when you’re criticised at work? Have any tips to share? Write a comment!