"Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm." -Samuel Taylor Coleridge
If you work at a job from the age of 18, for 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, by the time you reach 65, you will have spent 97,464 hours of your life on the job. That is a very long time to trudge through the day counting the minutes until it's over. Here is the truth, whether you are the newest hire, the most senior employee, an assistant, a manager or even the president, most of us, though we may love our work and find it very rewarding, prefer time for ourselves, our families, our friends, leisure, hobbies and more.
Work may never be as fun as a vacation, a Lions game, Sunday dinner with the family or Poker night with friends but we can still approach our time at work with enthusiasm and a desire to make the time we spend on the job as pleasant and fun as possible.
So, how do you make work fun?
BUILD REAL-ATIONSHIPS
We spend a lot of time with the people we work with. If we work on getting to know each other from a place of mutual respect, if we build relationships where we look forward to seeing one another, coming to work can be just another day spent with friends working hard.
As individuals, we are all so different in so many ways. But aren't we also the same in the most important ways? Most of us are just trying to get it right, this thing we call life. We try to care for our families, raise children and grandchildren, be a good spouse, parent, friend and neighbor. It can be connecting to notice the ways in which we are alike rather than focusing on our differences.
ADD FUN-SPIRITED COMPETITION
Pay attention after a football game and you will see the handshaking, back-patting and genuine friendliness between a bunch of big guys that were minutes before knocking each other down. These guys may have given it all they got on the field but they enjoyed the challenge the game offers and the respect each other for helping to raise their own game.
Friendly, fun-spirited competition can get you excited about "upping your own game" and creating a feeling of being part of a team. What things can you do to bring a little friendly competition to your day?
Leave a Reply