If you think you're naturally funny, you probably already add humor to your own workday. But even if you're less convinced of your comedic talents, you can rely on others. Here are some tips to help you find more humor at work. They're especially useful after performance reviews.
- Read procedure manuals
Are these guys kidding? If we actually tried to run the company this way, we'd be out of business before you could say, "Use the process, Luke."
- Keep an audio recording player handy or listen on the Web
- Get a player and a pair of headphones, and bring some humorous recordings to work. Take a humor break now and then with Tom Lehrer, Elayne Boosler, or Garrison Keillor. They'll help you keep corporate policy — and workplace politics — in perspective.
- Read humor on the Web
- Almost everything on the Web is funny, if you tilt it just right. But some sites actually try to be funny. Examples: News of the Weird, HumorLinks and the US House of Representatives. Uh, maybe not the House of Representatives. If you can't do this at work, print pages at home and read them whenever you need to.
- Keep a book ready
- The human adult
needs 12 good
laughs a day - Get a book of humor — short jokes, funny stories, or inane observations — and pick it up now and then for a few laughs. Twelve good laughs is a minimum daily adult requirement.
- Capture gems from the air
- Almost daily, someone in your life says something truly hilarious — sometimes intentionally. Intentional or not, write it down, with enough context so you'll understand it months from now. Once a year, read your collection from beginning to end, when no one is looking.
- Post humor on the wall outside your door
- As people pass, they'll stop to read your postings and laugh. With some exceptions, their laughter is much better than normal hallway noise.
- Subscribe to an email humor list
- There are lots of these, both formal and informal. Sometimes the informal ones — the networks of friends of friends — are the funniest. It's funny what some people find funny.
- Get a cartoon-a-day desk calendar
- Every morning make a little ritual of tearing off yesterday's cartoon and reading today's. Save the really good ones. Post the bad ones outside someone else's door.
- Throw away your boring coffee mug
- Get one that's really ridiculous, with a cartoon character sculpted on it — maybe Wiley Coyote or Bullwinkle J. Moose. Take it with you to the really important teleconferences.
These tips can help you most when you're least likely to remember them. Even if you do remember, reaching for a laugh when you're feeling angry or low can be difficult. But if you can remember, and if you can muster the will, the payoff from laughter is the best there is — happiness. Top
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Want more portable humor? Load up your MP3 player with Stephen Colbert, Tom Lehrer, Elayne Boosler, or Garrison Keillor. Pick up a new MP3 player from Amazon.com.
Here are some amusing Web sites, including a few from the February 11, 2001 issue of The Wall Street Journal. Some of these play sound, so prepare accordingly:
- Villa de Loon A funny blog. Tiber lost his job and moved back in with his rich, eccentric family, only to find that the "eccentric" part remains but the "rich" may be going.
- The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
- The Worst Metaphors Ever Written By High School Students Really.
- The Colbert Report
- Saturday Night Live
- Resumania Excerpts from real-life resumes. Visit their Hall of Fame.
- The Onion, a satire of the news. 18 and over.
- The Dead People Server A database of interesting celebrities who are long dead or newly dead. They even have an RSS feed (for those who are waiting for someone specific to die, I guess).
- DMOZ.org directory of humor sites. Humor of all kinds from Advice to Wordplay.
- GirlComic.net A collection of pieces from female funny people.
- Yahoo's links to political humor sites
- Pocho.com Satire, news y chat for the Spanglish generation.
- The Obscure Store and reading room
- Harry Shearer Humor from the host and creator of Le Show and the voice of Principal Skinner.
- BitOfFun.com Humor at work, and other places.
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Related articles
More articles on Emotions at Work:
Marking Grief
- Grief is usually a private matter, but for many, September Eleventh is different because our grief can
be centered in the workplace. On September Eleventh, give yourself permission to do what you need for
yourself, and give others permission to do what they need for themselves. Here are some choices.
Decision Making and the Straw Man
- In project work, we often make decisions with incomplete information. Sometimes we narrow the options
to a few, examine their strengths and risks, and make a choice. In our deliberations, some advocates
use a technique called the Straw Man fallacy. It threatens the soundness of the decision, and its use
is very common.
A Guide for the Humor-Impaired
- Humor can lift our spirits and defuse tense situations. If you're already skilled in humor, and you
want advice from an expert, I can't help you. But if you're humor-impaired and you just want to know
the basics, I probably can't help you either. Or maybe I can...
Social Safety Margins
- As our personal workloads increase, we endure more stress and more time pressure. Inevitably, we have
less time for the social niceties that protect us from accidentally hurting each other's feelings. When
are we most at risk of incidental harm, and what can we do about it?
The Focusing Illusion in Organizations
- The judgments we make at work, like the judgments we make elsewhere in life, are subject to human fallibility
in the form of cognitive biases. One of these is the Focusing Illusion. Here are some examples to watch for.
See also Emotions at Work and Emotions at Work for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming April 30: On Planning in Plan-Hostile Environments: II
- When we finally execute plans, we encounter obstacles. So we find workarounds or adjust the plans. But there are times when nothing we try gets us back on track. When this happens for nearly every plan, we might be working in a plan-hostile environment. Available here and by RSS on April 30.
And on May 7: Subject Matter Bullying
- Most workplace bullying tactics have analogs in the schoolyard — isolation, physical attacks, name-calling, and rumor-mongering are common examples. Subject matter bullying might be an exception, because it requires expertise in a sophisticated knowledge domain. And that's where trouble begins. Available here and by RSS on May 7.
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