May 15, 2002	Volume 2, Issue 20
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I Think, Therefore I Laugh

by Rick Brenner

Humor is fun — that's why they call it "funny." If you add humor to your own work environment, you'll reduce your level of stress, increase your creativity, and drive your enemies nuts.

f 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 a tape, CD or MP3 player handy or listen on the Web

Get a player and a pair of headphones, and bring some humorous tapes, CDs or MP3s 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    Next Issue

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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More articles on Emotions at Work:

Celebrate!

When you celebrate — even minor successes — you change your outlook, you energize yourself, and you create new ways to achieve more successes. Too often we let others define what we will celebrate. Actually, we're in complete command of what we celebrate. When we take charge of our celebrations, we make life a lot more fun.

Avoid Typing Under the Influence

When we communicate, we can't control how other people interpret our communications. Accidental offense is inevitable, and email is especially likely to produce examples of this problem. What can we do as members of electronic communities when trouble erupts?

Down So Low the Only Place to Go Is Up

The past few years have been hard. Some of us have lost hope. What do you do when you're down so low the only place to go is up?

Feedback Fumbles

"Would you like some feedback on that?" Uh-oh, you think, absolutely not. But if you're like many of us, your response is something like, "Sure, I'd be very interested in your thoughts." Why is giving and receiving feedback so difficult?

Are You Micromanaging Yourself?

Feeling distrusted and undervalued, we often attribute the problem to the behavior of others — to the micromanager who might be mistreating us. We tend not to examine our own contributions to the difficulty. Are you micromanaging yourself?

See also Emotions at Work for more related articles.

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Public seminars

The Race to the South Pole: Ten Lessons for Project Managers

On 14 December 1911, four men led by Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. Thirty-five days later, Robert F. Scott and four others followed. Amundsen had won the race to the pole. Amundsen's party returned to base on 26 January 1912. Scott's party perished. As historical drama, why this happened is interesting enough, but to project managers, the story is fascinating. Lessons abound. Read more about this program. Here are some upcoming dates for this program:

• Download to
  your calendarAppleton, Wisconsin: September 13, Monthly Meeting, Northeast Wisconsin Chapter of the Project Management Institute.
   
• Download to
  your calendarWeston, Wisconsin: September 14, Monthly Meeting, Northeast Wisconsin Chapter of the Project Management Institute.
   
• Download to
  your calendarCrowne Plaza Hotel, Cromwell, CT: September 15, Monthly Meeting, Southern New England Chapter of the Project Management Institute. Register now.
   
• Download to
  your calendarFort Wayne, IN: September 22, Monthly Meeting, Northeast Indiana Chapter of the Project Management Institute. Register now.
   
• Download to
  your calendarOverland Park Convention Center, 6000 College Blvd., Overland Park, KS 66211: October 4, Professional Development Day, Kansas City Chapter of the Project Management Institute. Register now.
   
• Download to
  your calendarMITRE, in Bedford, MA: February 15, 2011, Monthly Meeting, Boston SPIN.
   

Organizational Politics for People Who Hate Politics

Have you ever felt powerless to implement an important new idea? Have you ever been "blind-sided" at a meeting? Have you ever lost two good employees because you could find no way to keep them from attacking each other? These are some of the issues of organizational politics. Many of us have become enmeshed in them from time to time, but we've also known some people who seem to be able to engage and prosper. How is that done? We'll inventory the challenges of organizational politics, and provide tools for anticipating and addressing them. The focus of this program is practical — attendees learn concrete techniques for dealing with the problems that arise in workplace politics, while keeping their integrity intact. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

• Download to
  your calendarOverland Park Convention Center, 6000 College Blvd., Overland Park, KS 66211: October 5, Professional Development Day, Kansas City Chapter of the Project Management Institute. Register now.
   

Managing Virtual Teams for Real Results

Managing global or dispersed teams is challenging — miscommunications, misunderstandings, and interpersonal conflict all thrive in the typical environment of the distributed team. And they're even more common in global teams, because of time-zone offsets and language and cultural differences. We'll inventory the challenges distributed and global teams face, and provide tools for anticipating and addressing them. The focus of this program is practical — attendees will learn concrete techniques for preventing and dealing with the problems that accompany global and distributed teams. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

• Download to
  your calendarPortland World Trade Center: October 18, Conference, Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference.
   

Person-to-Person Communications: Models and Applications

When we talk, listen, send or read emails, read or write memos, or when we leave or listen to voice mail messages, we're communicating person-to-person. And whenever we communicate person-to-person, we risk being misunderstood, offending others, feeling hurt, and being confused. There are so many ways for things to go wrong that we could never learn how to fix all the problems. A more effective approach avoids problems altogether, or at least minimizes their occurrence. In this very interactive program we'll explain — and show you how to use — a model of inter-personal communications that can help you stay out of the ditch. We'll place particular emphasis on a very tricky situation — saying no to power. In those moments of intense involvement, when we're most likely to slip, you'll have a new tool to use to keep things constructive. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

• Download to
  your calendarPortland World Trade Center: October 19, Conference, Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference.
   

Person-to-Person Communication for Project Managers

When we talk, listen, send or read emails, read or write memos, or when we leave or listen to voice mail messages, we're communicating person-to-person. And whenever we communicate person-to-person, we risk being misunderstood, offending others, feeling hurt, and being confused. There are so many ways for things to go wrong that we could never learn how to fix all the problems. A more effective approach avoids problems altogether, or at least minimizes their occurrence. In this very interactive program you'll learn a model of inter-personal communications that can help you stay out of the ditch. In those moments of intense involvement, when we're most likely to slip, you'll have a new tool to use to keep things constructive. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

• Download to
  your calendarMarist College, 3399 North Road, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601: October 22, Professional Development Day, Hudson Valley Chapter of the Project Management Institute.
   

The Race to the South Pole: Lessons in Risk Management for Leaders

On 14 December 1911, four men led by Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. Thirty-five days later, Robert F. Scott and four others followed. Amundsen had won the race to the pole. Amundsen's party returned to base on 26 January 1912. Scott's party perished. As historical drama, why this happened is interesting enough. But to organizational leaders and project managers, the story is fascinating. We'll use the history of this event to explore lessons in risk management and its application to organizational efforts. A fascinating and refreshing look at risk management from the vantage point of history. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

• Download to
  your calendarWherever you are: it's a teleseminar: February 2, 2011, Teleseminar, Computer Aid, Inc. (CAI).
   

The Organizational Politics of Risk Management

Organizational politics presents a risk not often accounted for by risk models. It creates one of the many components of risk management risk — the risk that the risk management process itself is inadequate. Political considerations can lead to risk products that seem acceptable but which are fatally flawed; or worse, the risk products are plainly unserviceable, but everyone chooses not to acknowledge the problem. In this program we'll examine how organizational politics influences risk management, and discuss several measures for mitigating its effects. Read more about this program. Here's an upcoming date for this program:

• Download to
  your calendarWherever you are: it's a teleseminar: September 1, 2011, Teleseminar, Computer Aid, Inc. (CAI).