Oooh the articles you can find about maximizing efficiency—about being the most outputy machine you can be.1 But might I interest you instead in three whimsical ways to be the most joyful human you can be? Who needs token-maxing when joy-maxing is on offer!
Fair warning, these tips are not at all efficient. They will “waste” your time! But delight never comes from the prudent, the functional. It comes from the thing that doesn’t have to be there, but, blissfully, is. In other words:
Delight is at once never necessary, and also, the most necessary.
Make yourself a Hobby Board. A Hobby Board is there to remind you that you have interests and skills and joys beyond work + laundry. It’s a rebuttal to the notion that leisure is luxurious and not, in fact, a human need. I like separating it into “learn a lot” (things I enjoy getting good at), “play a lot” (things I don’t give two shits if I’m good at, they’re just fun), and “backlog” (things I’m excited to try but haven’t yet).
I really like modeling hobbies for Arden—that there’s so much cool stuff to explore! Also helps me win arguments when she says “I’m bored…” 😉 Add an umbrella to your beverage. I like to do this literally. You can also “add an umbrella” metaphorically: Add a joke to your OOO message; use an old school bookmark; put whipped cream on your bowl of granola and fruit. An umbrella is “a little something extra that serves no purpose but to delight.”
Brad often adds an umbrella when he makes me coffee <3 Give someone a cookie. It sounds so stupid. But sometimes delight really is that simple: PEOPLE LIKE COOKIES. Forty years ago a Hilton DoubleTree exec was enjoying a tasty one when he decided they needed to give every guest a free cookie. Can you even imagine the meeting where he proposed this?! Today DoubleTree serves more than 20 million cookies a year. In 2019 the signature cookie became the first food baked in space aboard the International Space Station. Sure, the Hilton cookie was a strong marketing and business decision, but EVEN BETTER is that guy gets to go through life knowing what an A+ joy-maxer he is. Of course, you can “give a cookie” metaphorically too! What totally unnecessary delight can you offer a customer, client, or colleague? You can even upsell a cookie! We have a shared printer in our apartment building and after printing a form I needed, they tried to upsell me a Foldable Turtle ( ! ) and a Summer Bucket List. I admit I didn’t take them up on their $0.25 offers, but I sure enjoyed the whimsy!
I hope you enjoy eking a little more delight out of the day to day. And if anyone tries to tell you your delight-filled ideas aren’t realistic, well you tell them right back:
Do you think that’s what the Hilton exec said to his colleagues when they questioned his cookie idea?! 😉
100% human-made em dash. I refuse to cede it to the robots!
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