Ep #71: How to Have More Fun at Work

Episode 71, How to Have More Fun at Work. 

Welcome to Clinicians Creating Impact, a show for physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists looking to take the next step in their careers and make a real difference in the lives of their clients. If you’re looking to improve the lives of neurodiverse children and families with neurological-based challenges, grow your own business, or simply show up to help clients, this is the show for you. 

I’m Heather Branscombe, Therapist, Certified Coach, Clinical Director, and Owner of Abilities Neurological Rehabilitation. I have over 25 years of experience in both the public and private sectors, and I’m here to help you become the therapist you want to be, supporting people to work towards their dreams and live their best lives. You ready to dive in? Let’s go.

Hi there, friend. How’s it going? This week I have been really excited and happy because I’ve actually started some golf lessons with my oldest son. This is the time of year that we can actually play golf outside, and so it’s fun to do this new thing. So, to be perfectly honest, no, I don’t golf. I never really have golfed. I haven’t even had an interest, but we had this really fun experience playing top golf over Christmas in Arizona this year with my family. And that experience made me curious to see if I’d actually like the real thing. 

So my oldest son and I, again, my oldest son is 24, he’s really like an adult. But we are taking five lessons together as part of this larger group and I’m really excited to start something new. I think it’s going to be so much fun, so far so good. And I am all about adding more fun into my life. How about you? Are you into adding more fun into your life, especially into your work? 

I really actually honestly ask you that because not everybody sees having fun at work as a priority or even a necessity. But generally I do like to have fun at work. And as I was mentioning before, my oldest son is 24 and truthfully all my kids are in their 20s now. 

But if you were to ask my middle son who spent the most time around me, about work and my work, what I did for work, he liked to say that I laughed a lot, I talked a lot and I went out for lunch a lot. And I’ve always thought that was so funny, that I have repeated that several times. And the way I like to frame that is that’s actually not a bad gig if you can get it. 

Clearly, that’s not entirely what my job entails, but it shows that for me having fun is a priority at work. And while not everything at work, including my work, is naturally fun, I’m looking at you, chart notes and documentation. But when I can add fun or make things fun, I’ve always wanted to do that. 

So if you’re like me, then this episode is for you. I hope that by the end of this episode you have some concrete things to think about and to do to add more fun at work. 

Before we talk about fun at work, I know many of you already know this, and you might also know this, but this podcast is a passion project of mine because I really do want all clinicians the ability to use this kind of tool set as a way to magnify their impact, even if they’ve never worked either alongside us or with us at Abilities. I consider myself so lucky to be able to do this kind of work and to share this as part of my work week. 

This is part of my fun at work. And you can help me make this more meaningful by helping to spread the message. Let’s make work as a clinician more fun for everyone by helping a fellow clinician out, shall we? You can do that in a couple of ways. First, as you follow, rate, and review this podcast wherever you listen to this episode, that helps to feed the algorithm so when a clinician is searching for something like this, a podcast like this, like this one specifically will come up for them. 

Secondly, if you could share this podcast, or better yet a favorite episode, with a colleague, that would be even more amazing. If you’ve heard this before and you’ve maybe meant to do it before but you haven’t done it yet, it’s okay. Let this be the sign. Today is the day. Think about who might want to have more fun at work and then you can help other clinicians just by sharing this kind of podcast and this episode. 

If however, this is your first episode, first, welcome. Thank you so much for listening. And hopefully as you listen you can decide who of your clinical friends would love to hear more of this kind of information to help them at work. As I say, thank you in advance, as always, for your action here. And with that, let’s get back to the episode. 

First, before we talk about what we can do or not do to make things more fun at work, I just want to point out that there is a thought error that our brains do all the time, including my own, about what creates a feeling. Even the feeling of fun. Our brain likes to think that it’s the circumstances in our lives that create a feeling, when the truth is that our thoughts are what usually drive our feelings, especially when it comes to intentionally creating a feeling like fun. 

If you want to learn more about the science behind that, you can listen to episode two, The Model and Why It Matters as a Therapist, and episode four, What We Believe as Therapists and Why It’s a Problem. And even if you’re not a therapist, that will definitely apply to you. 

If we use the model of how we actually create feelings, we know that it’s actually the thought about our situation or about our circumstances that creates the feeling. And so here’s an example that relates to fun. One thing that I have loved is when I worked at my local Children’s Hospital way back in the day, we had what we called a Willy Wonka drawer. And as I was thinking about this, I wonder if they have that same drawer today. If you work at BC Children’s Hospital, I’d love to hear about that. Reach out to me, would you? 

The way that this Willy Wonka drawer worked is that as clinicians we all contributed to this drawer of treats so that if we ever felt like we needed a little pick-me-up we had this drawer to help us. Now, I really loved it, I thought it was a great way to just generally increase morale at work. And I did it, it felt really fun to me. It felt so fun that I actually brought that concept to several subsequent places that I worked at after that hospital. And to this day, most clinics at Abilities have a snack cupboard where we use part of our Abilities budget to get the snacks that feel like fun to them. 

Now, if you thought that this kind of food thing is distracting, and especially if you’re trying to eat in a certain way, I could certainly see why that wouldn’t feel like fun to you. So notice how your thoughts about food and having food and snacks in the workplace affect the feeling of fun, no matter what the situation is. 

So to apply that, the first thing you can do to create more fun at work is to ask yourself, what do I need to believe to feel more fun at work? I love that question for so many different reasons. And I love it because of the varied and personal answers that can come from that. And most of them will have some kind of flavor of some kind of empowerment and choice that you have. 

And what you could notice if you keep asking that question to you over time is that the answers will probably change over time as well. So for me now, creating more fun at work is an overall process. It’s me consciously creating the work that I want to do as I grow the company that I’m leading. And that feels both fun and important to me. 

And so now I really just, instead of, I know my role is actually really fun because I’ve created that as the clinical director and CEO, I have the privilege to be able to do that. Now I’m really working on creating fun in the day to day. And a lot of my time I’m actually working from home, so I guess the snack cupboard is always there. But it’s really more than a Willy Wonka snack cupboard for me now. 

Ultimately, you need to decide that first, you deserve to have fun at work. And second, that fun is within your power to create. No matter what the position or structure of where you work right now, there is often a space to create that feeling with your thoughts. 

Now, I love Viktor Frankl, and I know he has a lot of famous quotes that follow this theme, but the one that really speaks to me, especially around fun, is the quote, “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” I love that quote because it speaks to the opportunity to change ourselves by choosing to change our thoughts. 

So once you believe that you both deserve and have the power to create more fun at work, then we get to be super creative. It can start by asking and answering the question for yourself, what could create more fun at work for you? Remember, fun is subjective, so you get to decide what fun could look like for you. 

One tactic that I’ve currently been using and loving, so you feel free to borrow it, is that you can use the question to ask yourself, how can I make this task better? So for myself, that also means how can I make this task more fun because again, for me, fun equals better. 

So when I do need to do a certain amount of computer work, fun fact, charting and documentation has not left my work, it has just changed in its shape and how I do it. The way that I do computer work is I listen to a fun playlist. I also change my position, like literally sometimes I do my work standing up, sometimes I do it sitting down. 

I have a fun little, it’s not like a sit-fit cushion, but it’s kind of like a tea stand stool. So I have different positions to change throughout the day to make things more fun. When I was working with clients I would also think about activities that were both fun for myself and the clients because for me, being creative is actually really fun. 

I find it fun to connect with others as well, and I wonder if you do as well. And if you do, I try and find and be curious about those that I work with. That feels really fun to me. It feels more fun to go beyond that superficial level and really connect deeply with those that I work with. It feels fun to me to be in community with those that I work with. And if that feels the same for you, you can think about how you want to enhance your work community in a fun way. 

Fun feels like aligning my work with the natural rhythms whenever possible. And if that feels like fun for you, you could think about what a fun way you can change how you work to better align with your natural rhythms. 

If you want to do a deep dive on this, I would suggest episode 38 of this podcast, which is Time Well Spent: Designing Your Clinical Schedule for Success as another resource for you to help you to create more fun. 

If you felt like work could be more fun, a final question to ask yourself is how would you show up at work differently? What would you do differently? And what would you not do differently? It’s a fun question to just ponder or to even journal about. You can think about all of this as just a big fun experiment. Try the things that your mind comes up with and see what fun actually feels like and what doesn’t feel like fun. 

Being mindful about creating more fun at work is an important step, probably the most important step towards creating exactly what you want in the way that you want it at work. So give it a try and let me know how it goes. Yes, like everybody else, of course I’m busy. But I’m never too busy to connect with you. You can always feel free to email me at Heather@abilitiesrehabilitation.com. 

With that, I hope you have an amazing and fun rest to your week, and I will talk to you next week. Take care. 

If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to worry about missing an episode, you can follow the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you haven’t already, I would really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review to let me know what you think and to help others find Clinicians Creating Impact. 

It doesn’t have to be a five-star rating, although I sure hope you love the show. I’d really want your honest feedback so I can create an awesome podcast that provides tons of value. To learn more about me and the work that I do, visit my website at www.abilitiesrehabilitation.com/clinicianscorner to download your free Getting it All Done at Work process and to see what I’m up to. Thanks so much.

Thanks for joining me this week on the Clinicians Creating Impact podcast. Want to learn more about the work I’m doing with Abilities Rehabilitation? Head on over to abilitiesrehabilitation.com. See you next week.