Why is it so bloody important to have fun at work?

Joyful, fun, dynamic culture, positive attitude, creative….

We use a number of words to describe the core and culture at Narrative, but having fun at work might be the most important of all cultural ingredients we are adding to this culinary masterpiece of ours.

“Imagination is intelligence having fun” – A. Einstein

Some figures

8 hours a day give 40 hours a week, which sums up to about 165 hours per month, which sums up to 2 080 hours per year which give 76 960 work hours in a lifetime. Are you getting the point yet? Despite the amount of laughter’s you spread out during your workday, you’d guess liking the environment you are in for 76 960 hours of a lifetime enriches even the happiest person’s life.

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The power of laughter

As soon as we hear, receive or share laughters chemical reactions start within our bodies. But laughing ourselves start the strongest reactions.

  • The blood pressure decreases, resulting in a lower risk to develop cardiovascular diseases, and the effect is just as big as with targeted medicines!
  • The immune system immediately grows stronger
  • By laughing 15 minutes per day we also affects out metabolism comparable to loosing 1 kg of weight per year
  • It counteracts with stress by decreasing cortisol and adrenaline levels
  • It is an excellent pain relief (try to laugh when hitting your toe in the door post and you’ll see)

In Swedish we say “ett gott skratt förlänger livet”, in English the same expression goes “laughter is the best medicine”. Well…

The power of thriving at work

Thriving in the environment you are working in is connected to having fun and being contempt with the situation. According to Arne Naess (1998), ones thriving can be calculated in a simple formula

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Well-being= Glow * Glow/Physical distress + Anguish

Or even simpler; as long as there is glow and you really like what you are doing, you can dig in to boring and challenging tasks without it affecting your thriving at work.

It is also proven that humor is out of essence for a company’s outcome and show strong correlation with result.In other words, having fun at work and using humor at work could be direct keys to success. I guess you have got the point by now?

Mark Twain gets the final word in this fun blog post: “Whatever you do, make sure you have fun doing it”

//Louise