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Dear HR and Management folks. I want to prove to you that humor in the workplace is not something that you should fear. Far from being something that should be cause for worry, humor properly used and enjoyed, taps into basic human needs to share and bond with those they’re close to—and yes, these means co-workers to. Take advantage of this, use it to create a better work environment, and I’ll bet advantages follow. If you want to learn how to do this from a professional, please reach out to me ;-) When I tell people that I study humor, have a consultancy focusing on humor in business, sales, corporations, etc. the first response I get is, “that’s cool and we need more humor at work.” I say "Great!" And then I ask them to bring me in. Then my conversational partner gets immediately conservative and says, "Well, it's not that cool." What they're worried about is that humor isn't serious, goofing off isn't a deliverable driven activity. And we pay people to deliver! But that's the problem with the modern workplace. There's very little room for anything but delivery and that that leads to terribly high levels of disengagement. What I suggest is that they try something different. Try some new development activities with your workforce. Who doesn’t love humor? Who wouldn’t love to know more about humor? But shortly the manager or human resources person gets cautious. S/he thinks, “Wait a second. Isn’t inviting more humor, more goofing off, just going to land me a whole lot more work? Sure, the jokes start out harmless enough, but soon I’ll see a stack of complaints that will keep me busy for months.” To answer the question fairly, I’ll say this. To focus on solely the negative of humor is to misunderstand what humor largely does. Most humor isn't offensive. It's playful, enjoyable. We need that at work. We’ve all been around jokes that offend, perhaps we’ve even told them, but those are not typical. We’ve also been around jokes that are endearing and draw us closer to one another and that is more of what humor does. So don't throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to humor. How many of you have noticed that workspaces where there is some humor, frivolity, and even the occasional gripe, is a more attractive place than the cubicle farm where no one interacts beyond the level of work? Show me a good working team and I'll show you one where humor is present. Show me a bad work environment and I'll show you a pleace bereft of humor and laughter. Don’t turn away from this basic need to share mirth. Embrace it! How does humor, laughter, and mirth tap into our desire to bond? Two examples will suffice. Think of the sound of an infant’s laugh. Is there any laugh purer, more inviting than when a baby gets to giggling? It draws you in and keeps you engaged. When you walk into a room and people are laughing, it’s hard not to laugh along with them and you may not even know what’s funny. Laughter and smiles are important. As the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song says, “If you smile at me I will understand, 'cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language.” (Wooden Ships). Imagine we had just met. If you thought I was funny, this probably would make you more likely to want to hang out with me more in the future. People admire and appreciate a sense of humor. Not having a sense of humor is deemed more “unattractive” than other personality flaws such as being irritable. Why then would we not want to encourage more humor in the workplace? If humor, as has been suggested, has health benefits, then we’d be doing our employees a solid in bringing more humor into the workplace. Humor isn’t always the cure for all problems. Humor can cover over, marginalize, or simply mock. In addition to knowing why and when humor works, we can become more aware of the sort of humor that divides. Sometimes the question we should be asking ourselves isn’t whether or not I am offended, it’s more that we should try to understand whether or not we should be offended. Even if I find a joke distasteful, does that mean I should be angry at the teller? If it was sincerely a joke and nothing more, I say no. We can be angry at a person for finding the subject worthy of being joked about, but not the joke. We too often focus on the immediate reaction than trying to suss out what is really at issue. And in those cases where the offense is real, we need to be strong enough to apologize, accept those apologies, and forgive. Humor won’t solve all our problems, but it’s increase will make those problems easier to solve. When you and I laugh together, the rest is easy.

When tragedy strikes us, whether it come on suddenly like a tornado, or is more insidious and wide spread like the current pandemic, one of the ways that we cope with it is through humor. We instinctively know how much a laug shared with friends or even strangers helps us persist. Sometimes we see the best in humanity covered in a laugh. Regardless of how hard we may be working, how worried we may be, or how worn out we become, there are wonderful moments of humor that help us get through the difficult times; the humor that allows us to see and be reminded of what we share-how our shared love of laughing together, in the face of tragedy, is a powerful thing. Sharing e humor that shakes us from the grim reality when we see our belongings covered in muck, dripping and oozing heaven knows what, and no longer what we need or want them to be. Humor in those moments remind us that no matter what the tragedy, the important things, the people with whom we share our nights and days, our ability to laugh at even the most difficult of situations cannot be washed away by hurricane, or eroded through a pandemic. Below are some wonderful pictures of folks dealing with hurricane damage a few years ago. One of the things that interests me so much about these photos is the fact that it’s humor we turn to in these horrible times. The simple explanation is that there isn’t much we can do about this calamity. We can be brought down by it, run away, or ignore the problem, or we can face the problem head on. Humor helps with the latter. After we’ve seen the situation and taken it in as best we can, and we realize there’s nothing left to do but begin the long process of recovery, that’s when humor kicks in. I've already seen humor popping up and so have you. From the fun people have in Zoom meetings with new backgrounds, and the memes all about helping us with masks and PPE, there's lots of humor. I've seen some folks "prank" a person in a regular Zoom meeting by having all but that one person where a funny mask. That's great. I encourage you to look for ways to bring levity to you day to day. It will be helpful and make us more resilient and more willing to tackle the obstacles ahead.

I figured with a new webdesign and new web domain, that April 1st, the day of Fools, would be a good day to write the first blog post. Plus I get to mark something off my to-do list. Hey, two birds, one virtual stone. But as it happens, there is a new week out there with its own hashtag #laughatworkweek or #laughatwork. And if our friend E.E. Cummings is to be believed, if we don't laugh for a whole day, it truly is a wasted day. One of the reasons it's so important to laugh is that it's restorative. It just feels good most of the time. Have you ever simply laughed so hard in part because how hard the rest of the day or week has been? I have. Sometimes it's all we have left. But I hope your job hasn't pushed you to that, or at least does not do so on a regular basis. Another reason laughter at work is so important is that we're often laughing with our friends and co-workers and these shared moments of mirth and levity are important to making the day go well. Maybe we share a joke before plunging into the long to-do list or we're having a much needed respite from that to-do list that, much like the Hydra, when you cross off one thing, two more appear. If you can laugh at that, then, you're probably adjusted as well as can be expected. So do your best to find some ways to laugh at work this week. Maybe even laugh at your work too. I'd love to hear about some of your best stories bout workplace humor and laughter.

While many students across the country were suffering through graduationesque ceremonies, ceremonies that were not what anyone would really have hoped for, Senator Ben Sasse was doing the commencement address for his former high school. First off, good on him for working that in. As a senator his speaking docket is overfull. But in all honesty, his address was an unmitigated train wreck. I tend to take anything that "blows up" on social media with a grain of salt. I have jumped to conclusions based on an initial reaction as many of us have and that is usually not helpful. But after watching only two minutes of the speech, anyone can see this is a mess. And for a humor apologist like myself, his office's response that he was "just joking" is one of the worst responses to give. It helps further make people hesitant to use humor. Humor can be used well and we all know how nice it is to have it present in a speech even in formal ceremonies. But this is a roadmap of what not to do. I will be offering a deeper dive on this after I develop a way to code the humor used in the speech, but let's begin with some obvious issues. The staging is a bit odd. He's presented in a white shirt, red tie loose at the collar, and a few days' growth of facial hair. Overall he looks unkempt. It's almost like he had a late couple days at the office and just kind of rolled out and started a speech. Now with that COVID-life all around, perhaps he should be forgiven, but I think with the content of the speech, the way it's filled with ridicule and making fun, you just get the sense that he's ranting a bit more than a little. And that's one of the key things to note, he spends much of his time ridiculing. He doesn't talk about the grander themes he has open to him. Anyone can see that within the first two minutes of his speech he has making fun of the graduates in that they're probably wearing sweats, psychologists for not really doing any "real" job than protecting the hurt feelings of people, his own father for being a gym teacher, parents of kids who started out teaching at home and then have given up and become gym teachers, and the Chinese, blaming them for the pandemic. One of the rules you hear so often mentioned on the proper ways to use humor when your not a comic and not an insult comic, which Sasse is neither, is that you want to avoid ridiculing people. Let's not forget that this is a graduation speech. Casual jokes about the difficulties we all go through in high school are fine. He could have even related a story about his trials and tribulations as a high schooler, but he doesn't. Sasse seems to think that his very subtle "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" sort of approach will help the audience get "he's only joking." The problem is there's just so much time spent poking fun at some group or person. With that much ridicule, that early and often in a speech where the typical bits are about achievement, resilience, and grit, are expected, Sasse is picking on anyone and everyone that could possibly be in his audience. Make fun of teachers? Check. Make fun of graduates? Check. Make fun of parents? Check. Make fun of a foreign country? Check. The only person he hasn't made fun of, and one person who if had been targeted might have gotten him some points with the audience, is himself. If you're handing out the dozens, it might help to include yourself in the target pool. I have certainly been critical of Senator Sasse and his performance deserves criticism. His inability to come out and simply apologize is not helping either. But here's the thing that we should all, myself included, take into consideration. This was one gaffe: a large one and with today's internet and outrage culture, people are excoriating him. That's a bridge too far. I don't know much of his politics or his policies. I know only that he's a Republican. Maybe he'd actually had some bad days. This COVID-Life ain't easy. If it's a bad day and an attempt at humor that just went horribly awry, stand up, sincerely apologize, and try to do better. It's all we can and should reasonably ask. But one lesson we should all take away from this, is that unless you are an insult comic, leave the ridicule behind. Make some jokes about the absurdity of the situation that causes us to have to distance, and it is absurd, but then marvel at how our technology, so often maligned for the social distance it can contribute to, is helping us celebrate our achievements. Poke some fun at yourself; know that you, in this situation lack the up close and personal cues we often use to judge an audience. A good speech with humor and levity can be given on Zoom. This one just happens to be full of examples on what not to do.

Humor make it better. I can say this with very little doubt. It makes work better. Relationships, family time, vacation, stress, pain, are all substantially improved when there's humor in the mix. But it it's one of those things that people, especially in business, avoid or dismiss. The more I read, the more I work with folks, the more I am convinced this is wrong. Humor needs to be part of our plan to improve, to make things better. This is something that we all want. We'd like to be more effective in our jobs, more engaged with those around us, and take more enjoyment from all walks of our lives. Humor really is the thing that can help us do that. There is plenty of evidence for humor's effects. I've spoken at conferences and to professionals across the country about it. If it's so obvious why humor is important, if it's so very helpful, why isn't it more prominent in our leadership development? Why aren't there more folks like me doing this sort of work? Truth be told, I have no idea. I thought when I started this business that the idea was just a slam dunk. But clearly it has taken more than I thought to grow this business. Since I am still a new business making my way, I am reaching out to you readers. What sorts of things can I do to get my message out there in an effective way? What sorts of materials would help you to be convinced that the services I offer are needed? Anything you can offer is appreciated. I thank you in advance. Starting a business isn't easy, but it's a great challenge and I believe so strongly in the power of humor, that I am not willing to give up on it.

The next morning I made my way to the nearest Urgent Care, which also happens to be my primary care office. Nice! The roads were pretty empty and as I pulled in, there were only two cars in the lot. Maybe they were closed. Thankfully, they were open. My quest to remove my freeloading piece of a tree-bone was nearing its end! When I walked in the lady at the desk asked “What brings you in?” If you have never paid attention to the opening dialogue when you visit an urgent care, let me explain. First you’re asked why you’re visiting the office. Don’t worry, in case you’ve forgotten, you’ll be asked a minimum of three more times. I know this because I had to come up with three different ways to politely say “I had a splinter in my ass.” The first response: “I had a splinter in my backside.” God bless that lady, she didn’t even blink. She just took my info, brought me to the back room, and had me fill out paperwork. At no point was I asked to write out my reason for a visit. The nurse on duty came and asked me why I was there. I told her I had picked up a splinter in my bottom as I was stretching after a run. Nary a blink or smile— this nurse was a rock. She took my vitals. As we waited to see if I had a fever, we conversed about my splinter and had a few laughs. After a few moments, the physician’s assistant made his way into the room. He recognized me and remembered I was the guy that studied humor and worked with medical professionals. He asked why I was there. I reiterated the issue with my badonka-donk and he cracked a slight smile. He asked to examine the area in question so I got up on the table, graciously dropped my shorts, hucked my leg up, and tried to give him a proper view. I was trying to balance my leg in the air, and he realized that he could extend the table eave out. Relief! I was thankful he didn’t put me up in stirrups. As a way to relieve the stress, I was noting the numerous oddities involved with me trying to solve the very practical problem of “What is the best way to hold my leg and ass so that this guy could get the best and most helpful view?” I was doing ok, keeping it together, until he said, after his initial examination, “There are indications of the presence of a foreign body in the affected are.” What a medically beautiful way to say “Looks like you got something stuck in your hind parts.” Hippocrates would be proud. He then told me he needed to get the extraction instruments—a needle and a pair of tweezers, but at least his came in a cool single use plastic container. Thankfully for me, his needling was far less painful than my wife’s I owe it to his better eyesight, the better lighting, and he is a trained professional. I didn’t ask him how many foreign objects he’d removed from other people’s tuchuses before. He had suggested that he could do a local anesthetic, but explained that that required a needle and would cause the same amount of pain as the actual extraction without the pain reliever. I may have said I had been drinking, so it wouldn’t matter, but I just told him my butt was in his hands and to go as nicely as he could. The procedure took a few minutes and he did successfully extract a 4-6 mm splinter, so I wasn’t complaining. But yes, it was awkward. As I left I told everyone that they were allowed to make a total of three jokes about the splinter-in-the-butt-guy. After that I had better get a nickel for each joke. But more than that, I am going to be interviewing the gentleman who fixed me up. It’s a perfect example of how you can use humor to deal with embarrassing situations. Butt rest assured everyone, my heiney is finey.

Humorous Interviews In last week’s post I wrote about a time when I was asked to tell a joke in an interview. And to repeat, that’s not an interviewing tactic I would suggest. Imagine going into an interview and when the standard, “Tell us a little bit about yourself” question starts things off, you respond, “Sure, I’d love to. But first let me tell you this joke I heard.” The initial reactions would not be funny ha-ha, but the bad, funny-strange. Your panel would be confused, trying to figure out why you would do such a thing, and by the time they got past that initial confusion, they’d have missed the punchline, and your interview would be effectively over. Unless of course this was an interview for a comedian, then by all means, use your best material. There are any number of things we do in an interview but mostly we tell a story about who we are, what we can or will do, and why we should be hired. Humor is an excellent way to help embellish your story, if the humor is used to help people remember an important point about you, or demonstrate some ability you have. Humor helps people remember things better, so if you want to be remembered, find some subtle ways to use humor to increase your memorability. Don’t think you should be remembered solely as the funny person, but rather as witty and clever. Also, if they fondly remember your interview, great. There are plenty of typical things and questions to expect in any interview. One that always tripped me up as I interviewed, is “Why do you want this job?” For whatever reason I tended to forget this one. Even though I’d research and be prepared, that one caught me flat-footed. But there are plenty of other questions—have a look here. Since you know some forms of these questions are likely to come, you can find fun and clever ways to answer them. People are looking not just for someone who will do a particular job well, but also someone with whom they will work. We enjoy people who are witty and fun(ny). If you can demonstrate those qualities with some small bits of humor you will not only be answering the questions, you will look good in how you answer them. Humor and wit also belie a level of intelligence. Working with other smart people is also a benefit. So take time to be clever, not overly clever, but witty. One time in an interview, I had a cell phone that I had muted all the noises save one-text notifications. I rarely ever got texts, and sure enough right in the middle of the interview I got a loud notification. The panel was noticeably annoyed and I responded that I was sorry because I hadn’t figured out how to mute that notification as it was a new phone. Every one of them, smiled and nodded in agreement. My little self-deprecatory jibe at myself removed what could have been a meaningful faux pas, and their smiles indicated that I was ok. I will follow up this blog with another on some more specifics, but remember humor is not to be avoided in interviews. That assumption is fueled by the erroneous assumption that work and laughter or humor are opposites. This is just false. Humor can be used well. And next week I’ll give a couple more examples.

In a recent Zoom meeting I was reminded of something really important to conversation and interpretation: The Principle of Charity. This principle is often put forward as a way to help us when we encounter a person’s view that seems wildly bad. As a philosophy professor I tend to bring this up when students read Descartes’ Meditation I in my intro classes. Briefly, Descartes argues that he can’t trust his senses because they have deceived him. No person has ever read this and been convinced that since my senses have been off in the past, I shouldn’t trust them now. They will sarcastically, but correctly point out that they don’t then walk into on-coming traffic after reading the Meditation. But I often ask them to hold off on their incredulity and maybe ask why Descartes is doing what he is doing? What’s the point in making such an outrageous and gloriously false statement? He’s a bright guy, he knows what’s up. He’s got to have a point. Usually these rhetorical questions, oh and the fact that I am the professor doesn’t hurt, get them to stand back a bit and try and figure out what’s going on. This is pretty much the Principle of Charity in action. Instead of immediately disagreeing, or finding a place to critique the ideas or arguments presented, try to view the position as charitably as you can. View it and understand it in the best light possible. Not only will you have a better understanding of the approach, you may be able to argue against in a better way. Maybe this whole approach relying on Principles and Charity isn’t for you. It does sound pretty academic or too philosophical. Another way to practice charity with people and ideas, is to play the “Yes and?” game. Often in my classes my students are quick to hear another’s view and then say “Yeah, but!” and then an objection follows. The idea is barely formed and people are attacking it. Criticism is good, but perhaps not always should it be our default. I encourage and sometimes force them to play “Yes and.” Take the idea or view and expand on it: add to it. You may be surprised. This game often has the practical benefit of slowing everyone down and making them engage in a more meaningful way. Instead of just going with the initial thoughts, which may be on point, this asks them to partner up with the person, work with them to more fully, more adequately, explore the idea. It may be that the idea just needed some further development. What was once seen as critically flawed may be more worthy than first thought. How does all this apply to humor? Being charitable may help us avoid the rush to offense and anger that often happens when jokes or humor is misunderstood. What would it mean if it was true that the person was only joking? If I was simply trying to lighten the mood with a joke or a quip am I that bad? People have lost careers for a bad joke. Perhaps instead of being righteously angry, it’s a chance for us to have a conversation about why you believe that humor on the particular topic is never appropriate. Maybe if I am quick to offense at certain jokes and I stop before I express that anger to the joker, I might change my approach and address my worry about the use of humor about this topic. There are a number of ways we can misunderstand each other and the principle of charity won’t solve them all, but it’s a helpful tool we can use in our day to day communications. Further, as so much of our current communication is mediated via electronic media, such a charity might be doubly important. Instead of getting mad a failed joke because Zoom locked up as the punchline was delivered, I could ignore the confusion and ask for the joke to get told again. As a would-be humorist I may need to allow for the audience to catch up with me, or be even more explicit in my method of conveying that I am being funny. Emoji’s to the rescue. Communication is difficult even in the best of times. Words that I have spent hours editing and working through for just the right meaning still fail. It happens. With so much else going on and with so many other issues that we face, having charity as one of our approaches is likely to make our communications all the better.

The classical pianist/humorist Victor Borge once said “the shortest distance between two people is a smile.” Authenticity has become an important aspect of leadership, sales, branding. Kind of like leadership, it's everywhere. If people get the sense that a person is inauthentic, is hiding something, or is otherwise dishonest, they will find that person a less effective leader. The same is true of a brand. Once this begins, the leadership quickly erodes into an ineffective morass and little movement for good occurs. If our Borge quote is any indication, then being seen as having a sense of humor is one way to quickly establish a good rapport with people. But it does this for a couple of reasons. One, it’s hard to fake what we find funny and as a result it’s a window into our personality. While we might not always agree that a certain thing is funny, we do tend to like it when people demonstrate having a sense of humor. Think of all the jokes making fun of Mark Zuckerberg and his overly robotic personality. Fun, emotions, and the like are foreign to him. Thus he’s harder to relate to. We’re never sure what if anything he laughs at. Thus, it’s harder for him to seem authentic. It’s not as if humor and laughter is all that hard. You just need to feel comfortable in expressing your humor. You don’t need to always be funny, or open and close with humor, but, as a leader, you need to be able to use it when you can. Find ways to show what you find funny. If there was something that happened in the workplace, or something in the news, play that up. Identify it, you don’t need to be doing comedy, but rather demonstrating that you’re the sort of person that enjoys humor, that has a sense of humor. When you show that, the people you lead, your team, the people of your organization will begin to feel better and closer to you. And as research shows, when individuals in an organization feel closer to their leadership they are more engaged and feel better about their jobs. Not only are there instrumental benefits, it also makes the work more enjoyable for not only you as the leader, but those around you as well.

Anyone and everyone has deliverables. School doesn’t call the assignments or grades deliverables, but they surely are. Ask any college student if they stress about deadlines. They surely do. I have deliverables in my job. I have to update my social media and try and post regular blogs as well as do all the other things an entrepreneur needs to create market space. And largely I don’t complain. But many of us feel the weight of these deliverables and more often it's subtle and slow growing. They increase anxiety and distress. They can become anchors that prevent us from enjoying our work: from being creative. That’s why I am here to invite everyone to take a break from deliverables. Skip the action plan, or the post-meeting review. Take a break from your To-Do Lists, or its mutant relative the bullet journal. It’s not as if the deliverables won’t be there. Those to-do list aren’t going anywhere. But when our organizational lives become all about deliverables, then something is deeply wrong. And I think we can agree that something is amiss. The downside of deliverables may not be exactly clear. I mean their existence does help us focus and without them, some of the committee work that I am a part of, would not get done. I bullet journal and like it. But too often anymore, our entire life centers around and is driven by deliverables. Have I got that report ready to go? Are the kids’ schedules ready? Are they ready for school? Are they doing their homework? (Yes, I am a parent if you can't tell.) Have I got my tax documents aligned? Is that long-term project alive and well and proceeding to pace? Do I have the dish ready for the next party? Are there dishes still in the sink? And there is plenty of money being made on helping us do more and deliver more. If that’s the case, if that’s how you’re feeling, then you need a day off from deliverables. Preferably a couple and not just the weekend. But there’s a simple antidote to all this. There’s a way you can play your way around those deliverables: humor. Surely the answer doesn’t surprise you. This is a blog from a person who is a bona fide humor apologist. And it’s not that I love humor because I was the class clown. I was. But what I learned from being a clown is that humor provides moments of levity, of non-deliverable aimed activity that makes those deliverables feel less stressful. Humor, laughter, mirth, and play all work together to help us see that there is more to life than our work goals. But they also make reaching those goals more enjoyable. And who can gripe about that?! Our work is there to help us survive and thrive and to bring meaning to our lives. I love talking to people about humor. I love teaching philosophy. I also love crossing off the last item on the To-Do List. But without moments of levity and laughter, all the attendant acts that go along with my job (I’m looking at you grading), become heavier. If you’re dropping that last deliverable without some feeling of accomplishment, and you’re more feeling relief with a worry as to what’s to come, then you need some humor and laughs. There are ways to fold humor into your life in more effective ways, I’ve posted on some them before. So before you get to writing “find some humor” on that to-do list, go out and find some laughs—enjoy some humor. You’ll like the way you laugh. I guarantee it. So what are some of the easy things you can do to improve your levity quotient? One thing you could do is instead of writing that to-do list, you could write a “have-done” list. It’s nice to look back on what you’ve done and remind yourself just how far you’ve come. Keep some googly eyes handy and some other sort of “decoration” you can use that you find funny. But most important, set it as a to-do list item, to find some humor in the day. Use the tools of your deliverable oppressor against them and see what that gets you.

I don't know about you but 2020 is one of the weirdest years I've experienced and we're only halfway through. Life feels disjointed. With many of us spending more time at home, it feels strange to have all of our life in one place, work, school, fun, family, boredom, laughs, and lest we forget laundry Even in a pandemic, laundry is always there for us. It's like everything is there all the time and then none of the time. We used to complain about work and our workplaces, and now many of us long to go back. Humans! Am I right? One of the more interesting things about the pandemic for me has been the humor. Almost as soon as people started sheltering in, the jokes started coming out. The now all too common not wearing pants while in virtual meetings, or the silly comments "accidentally" shared to the whole group, or the fact that our children were not, in fact, joys to teach were out in force. These jokes became staples early on. While they are perhaps a touch overused, they're not bad. It's us joking about the new existence we found and how we were or were not coping. Truth is, I don't know how my family is coping, but I shudder to try and compare it to others. I wish I was exercising more and getting up earlier. But I ain't: so much the worse for the waistline. This sort of humor is probably fairly typical. We make fun of and joke about the newness of things, how it interrupts our lives. These jokes and memes are ways of laughing at the silliness we see and maintaining some sense of humor, some sense of fun. But slowly, the humor began to change. The length of the social distancing time is growing and in the US we sadly are seeing an overall increase in the numbers of COVID-19 cases. Our sense of when this will end has changed. The internet has made it easy to get confused and angry. So anxiety has arisen. But humor has remained. The humor has changed in certain ways. It's a little darker, and little more cynical. It's clearly becoming more of a gallows humor feel out there. Neither carefree humor nor the gallows humor is better than the other. They are just reflecting certain preoccupations. A favorite researcher I know once said about jokes, "Blaming a joke for a social condition is about as helpful as smashing a thermostat for telling you the temperature of the room." For me, I find both forms of humor good. When we can joke and laugh about stuff, even the darkest of topics, it helps the self shake off the restrictions those things put into our lives. It's an act of the self rebelling against the world. Would I choose a world free of the pandemic? Absolutely. But since that's not the world we have, I am happier knowing there are those out there that can joke about it--that I can joke and make laughs. That I can share those jokes and laughs with others, if only virtually. It helps me get through these days.

One of the ideas I constantly tell people to play with is finding incongruities or play around with the day to day things in their lives. One of the easiest ways to start is to find something that makes pretty regular appearances in your life. Perhaps it’s the TPIP Report made famous by the movie Office Space, or maybe it’s something else. I once had a job that used bubble sheets for reporting hours. I don’t know your workday routines so what that thing might be is lost on me, but one thing that I know very well is the To-Do List. Ever since I worked in the kitchen back in Dudley’s Restaurant in Lexington, KY, the To-Do List has been an ever present work companion. It’s gone through various iterations over time. I even tried foregoing it for a while. Total disaster. I’ve tried notebooks, digital lists, asking Google to make a list, etc. The most reliable for me has been writing stuff down. Typing them in an app has never had the same effect. But recently I have adopted the bullet journal method of list making. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this mutant, chock-full-o-steroids form of the To-Do List, but it’s impressive. Like anything else, there is no shortage of variations and notebooks, pens and other accoutrements for this muscular approach to sheer personal production. While I have found the bullet journal helpful, I am not over the top with it. So what does humor have to do with To=Do Lists? They’re not particularly funny. As I was thinking about my new mutation, umm, I mean approach to getting things done I put the idea of a To Do List together with the idea of gratitude. Gratitude lists, while great, aren’t nearly as popular as the To Do List. The idea behind gratitude is to remind us of the good things that have happened to us or that we’ve experienced. I recommend it if you haven’t tried it. It does bring a smile to my face, reminds me to appreciate the people in my life, and helps me feel more connected. In this time of the COVID-Life connectedness is important. So what did I come up with? As I was thinking about gratitudes, getting things done with my bullet journal by my side, (I get to cross off a thing in writing this post too--bonus), I was sort of poking fun at the lists that I have. There are a few. I have my woodshop list, my work list, my chores list. As I was laughing (in my head) at the ridiculousness of it all, and sort of making fun of myself for my dedication, I was struck with the idea of the “Ta-Da” List or perhaps the “To-Done” List. It’s a sort of celebration of all those things we get done or marked off those lists. It’s a practice of self-gratitude I guess. But the fun of it, the play, the use of incongruity, was my taking the old showman’s trick of announcing “Ta-Da” and riffing on it to create a new list. The irony of a new list isn’t lost on me. Instead of writing a list of all that I need to do—a list that will never end—I present myself with a list of the things that I did accomplish. It feels good to look back on a week or a month or even a day and see what I’ve done. Instead of seeing the hills ahead, I look at the road behind me and all that I’ve done. It’s nice. Not every day is filled with the fully completed list, or with monumental accomplishments, but reminding myself of what I’ve done, applauding the Ta-Da is a good motivator. Whatever you want to call your accomplishment list, Ta-Da or To-Done, it’s a good practice. And those names came from me playing and making fun in a lighthearted way the notion of a To Do List. It’s been a nice addition to my routine. I don’t do it all the time, but I do use it. If I was a manager perhaps instead of asking for a list of things accomplished, I’d ask for the Ta-Da list. I’d like those who work with me to think of their work in this celebratory way. It will help us to feel some joy in the accomplishments and remind us that we’re not defined by what we’re going to do. We’re defined by what we’ve done and the way in which we’ve done it. Take a moment, take a lot of moments, and Ta-Da your achievements.