The Real ROI of Having Fun at Work with Bree Groff

About This Episode 

In this episode of The Future of Work® Podcast, workplace culture expert and author Bree Groff joins us to challenge outdated ideas about what work is — and what it could be. Drawing from her book Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously), Bree shares insights from decades of guiding Fortune 500 leaders through meaningful transformation.  

We explore why fun at work isn’t a perk — it’s essential. From the science of engagement to the impact of cozy teams, Bree offers a human-centered blueprint for reshaping our relationship with work, leadership, and each other. 

About Bree Groff

Bree Groff is a workplace culture expert and author of Today Was Fun: A Book About Work (Seriously). She has spent her career guiding C-suite leaders at companies such as Microsoft, Google, Pfizer, Calvin Klein, and Hilton through periods of complex change. She is a Senior Advisor to the global consultancy SYPartners, previously served as the CEO of NOBL Collective, and she holds an MS in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern University. Bree lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.

What You’ll Learn 

• Why fun at work is a strategic imperative — not just a feel-good bonus. 
• How leaders can create “cozy teams” that thrive in both in-person and remote settings. 
• What “do nothing” days reveal about productivity and burnout. 
• How to find meaning in work — even without a grand sense of purpose. 
• Why “living for the weekend” is a warning sign for workplace health. 
• The subtle link between joy and creative output in fast-paced industries. 
• What makes introverts, extroverts, and “otroverts” all crave human connection at work. 
• How vulnerability from leadership sets the stage for psychological safety and trust. 

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Transcript

Bree Groff

[ 00:00:00 ]As humans, as employees, we are spending five-sevenths of our lives each week at work. I would hope that the leaders respect and understand the gravity of consuming human days.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:00:15 ] Bree, welcome. Thank you so much for being with us here on the Future of Work podcast. How are you?

Bree Groff

[ 00:00:20 ] I’m great. Thank you for having me.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:00:22 ] It’s a pleasure. And I’ve been looking forward to this episode because we’re here to talk about your book and mainly about…

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:00:31 ] The dynamics that happen at work, specifically if work is fun or not, should it be fun or not? Who’s allowing work to be fun or not? And I’m going to dive into my first question: why do you think or why should companies— Even the most profitable ones, Fortune 500 companies— care if their employees are having fun at work? Why? Why should that care?

Bree Groff

[ 00:01:01 ] Yeah. Well, first, there’s the business case, which I will admit is my least favorite case. But there is one.

Bree Groff

[ 00:01:13 ] We know statistics like employees that are engaged create companies that are 17% more productive, 21% more profitable.

Bree Gr

[ 00:01:23 ] We also know this instinctually as well. When we are having fun and engaged at work, we want to be there. We want to be contributing. We’re giving our goodwill and our talents. So there’s the case to be made, there’s the employee engagement case to be made that you need your people rested and high performing.

Bree Groff

[ 00:01:43 ] But that’s not my favorite argument. My favorite argument, and I think the most powerful one, is the existential argument that, as humans, as employees, we are spending five sevenths of our lives each week at work.

Bree Groff

[ 00:02:00 ] And that is far too much to consider only the input to a paycheck, only the input to a company’s bottom line. And conversely, when we think from a leadership perspective, I would hope that the leaders respect and understand the gravity of consuming human days. Which is essentially what businesses do, right? What we used to call HR, human resources, as if like you’ve got your steel, you’ve got your cotton, or whatever else you use to make your goods, and you’ve got your human resources as well. So if you are consuming human days, I should hope that leaders take that seriously enough such that they care about the quality of those days. Because when that care isn’t there, when people aren’t having fun, what we’re doing is we’re wishing our way through the week. We’re saying, ‘Oh, is it only Wednesday?’

Bree Groff

[ 00:03:01 ] When can it be Friday? Oh my God, it’s Friday, finally.

Bree Groff

[ 00:03:05 ] And when we wish our way through the work week, what we’re really doing is wishing our way through our lives. And so that’s not good for individuals. It’s not good for productivity or creativity or impact. It’s not good for a bottom line. And it shouldn’t be good for leaders either. So I’m hoping to spread that message that our days are worth more.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:03:27 ] No, and I totally think you’re right. I mean, I think there’s a lot happening right now in between hybrid work. Is the four-day work week going to happen? Yes or no. But I think everyone is sort of stuck on that.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:03:44 ] on that that you mentioned everyone’s living for the weekend we’re just wishing and hoping that it becomes friday all of a sudden where we get to to live our lives for 48 hours if if even that because on You know, the Sunday scaries creep up and you don’t really have two full days.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:04:05 ] But I mean, I don’t think that a lot of people at the end of the day can actually sigh and say, today was fun. And what does that really mean?

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:04:21 ] How can someone end their day and actually say to themselves, today was fun? What do you hope readers of your book take away from that title?

Bree Groff

[ 00:04:37 ] You hit the nail on the head in terms of what the goal is. The goal is, look, not all days. Some days are terrible. Some days are stressful. But most days of our lives, and therefore most days that we’re working, we should be able to curl up in bed and say, ‘Today was fun.’ How to make that true? I might have written a book about this, so there’s a lot more to say, but in short, the good thing about joy and fun at work is that you you don’t have to get all of your joy from the same place. You can actually sort of diversify the places where you’re finding joy at work. So there’s a whole chapter on camaraderie. You can think of the show, The Office, which many people have seen. There’s no purpose or meaning there. It’s an office comedy set in a paper sales industry. It’s immensely boring.

Bree Groff

[ 00:05:34 ] offense to anyone listening who is in paper sales currently but as a rebuttal to the notion that our work has to be purposeful and deeply meaningful to have joy i just i don’t think that’s true because maybe You like the people. Maybe the relationships mean the most. Like maybe you’re just having fun at work because you’re spending your days with people you like. That’s one way. Now, maybe you hate the people and there’s no meaning. It’s like, well, what do I do then? Well, maybe you’re learning some skills and actually learning skills is really fun. Growing our skills, showing off our skills, or maybe there’s no skills to be learned at all. You feel like I’ve been in this industry forever. Maybe you’re mentoring someone and that gives you joy. Maybe doing the work itself, the process of the work. So I could go on and on, but the point is there’s so many different ways to find satisfaction, fulfillment, fun at work.

Bree Groff

[ 00:06:35 ] Now, a lot of times people really, really want me to define fun and I really resist it.

Bree Groff

[ 00:06:41 ] I’m self-reflecting on why that’s true, but I think it’s because I want people to understand for themselves the diversity of what fun can feel like. Sometimes fun is… Sitting in a quiet room by yourself, having a really interesting idea, sometimes—sure— it’s like laughing at a table with colleagues and making paper airplanes, or you know, any number of different things. What I’m hoping is to at least start elevating the conversation, opening the question of whether work should be fun most days. Well, then, how can we start making it so? Which is a much different orientation than work is called work for a reason. Work is supposed to be drudgery. Why would I even try to make it fun? That’s not the point of work.

Bree Groff

[ 00:07:32 ] But my rebuttal would be: we don’t get paid because work is painful and people wouldn’t do it. We get paid because we create value. The pain is optional. So if we want to have fun while we work, that is 100% on the table for us.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:07:49 ] That rings true. And I guess what I would ask is, is it more up to the worker? Let’s see, how can I phrase this? Who is responsible?

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:08:00 ] for creating a fun environment in the workplace? Is it from the top down? Is it from the bottom up? Or is it a mix of both? Because I think right now it’s…

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:08:18 ] There’s a lot of, I’ve been reading a lot about this. There’s a lot of mediocre leadership, they’re calling it, going around.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:08:27 ] And I believe there’s a lot of people that are, like you mentioned, in a situation where their work doesn’t bring them joy.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:08:37 ] They’re literally sitting either in an office or at work waiting from nine to happen to five.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:08:44 ] Is it up to one to make it a fun work environment or should one expect that leadership brings that to the table? What are your thoughts on that? And to add a little more spice into that, is it easier to have fun, would you say, in an office setting or in a remote setting?

Bree Groff

[ 00:09:05 ] Oh my gosh. Such a good question.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:09:07 ] Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes. This is a hard one.

Bree Groff

[ 00:09:09 ] First one. So there’s, the way I think about it, there is an ideal answer and there’s a backup answer.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:09:17 ] Okay.

Bree Groff

[ 00:09:18 ] Or an ideal solution and a backup solution rather.

Bree Groff

[ 00:09:22 ] The ideal solution is that leaders are responsible for creating conditions and culture and a context in which people are having fun. That is the ideal solution because there’s no getting around the fact that power exists in organizations. The people who do the paying of the paychecks have that power. As much as we would like to think and hope that, you know, employee power is a thing, unions are a thing, you know, like top talent is a thing. And yet, within an organization at best, it starts from the top.

Bree Groff

[ 00:10:00 ] Now that takes a leader and a leadership team that really believe in those two arguments that we mentioned.

Bree Groff

[ 00:10:10 ] People having fun at work, enjoying their days is valuable as an end unto itself. And number two, they have to believe that that’s actually good for business, which it is. Now, like I wouldn’t expect any leader to say, ‘Oh, we’re going to have so much fun at work and screw the money because no, you need to have a healthy business. You have to be able to pay people unemployment.

Bree Groff

[ 00:10:31 ] In declaring bankruptcy, it’s the opposite of fun. So don’t go there. So if a leader believes both of those things are true, then it’s really up to the leadership team to do, to put some structural things in place. For example, How are you metering out work such that people are not overworking nights and weekends? But also culturally, how are you showing up as human and fun and, like, decent to hang around at the office? So that’s the ideal answer.

Bree Groff

[ 00:10:58 ] The backup answer, the backup solution, is really what I address in the book. Like, look, I’m at the company I’m at. I have the leadership that I have. What can I do as a manager or as an individual employee?

Bree Groff

[ 00:11:14 ] To make work fun. And there’s still so much to be done, which is the good news. You can work at an organization that is like, does not adhere to any of these ideas or principles, but at the local team level, one managers can do so much to create what I call cozy teams, which is really know at the at the manager level you think of yourself like you’re the ceo of the team in many ways so how are you making it safe to joke around making it safe to be a human making it safe to bring interesting ideas how are you rewarding people and building each other up And then lastly, maybe you have none of that. Maybe your organization’s terrible. Your manager is terrible. And in that case, I say, look, you have still levers at your disposal. One is something what I call thin slicing your joy. So even if you look at your whole day and you’re like, oh no, I’ve got meetings. I’ve got tasks I really don’t want to do.

Bree Groff

[ 00:12:16 ] I have uncomfortable conversations ahead of me. I want to do none of it. And the question is: look, if a day is too long to have fun. Is there one hour where you’re pretty sure that’s going to be an okay meeting? The hour is too long. Is there one minute you go get yourself a cup of coffee and you enjoy the shit out of that cup of coffee? Like, what are some ways that you can find agency in what brings you pleasure?

Bree Groff

[ 00:12:40 ] And then, as a bonus at the individual level, if you can find one friend at work.

Bree Groff

[ 00:12:46 ] then you’re really off to the races there’s so much research on having a best friend at work it does all sorts of good things for the business um improves like safety profitability things like inventory control for i don’t know how that one came out in the research but it’s true um just someone to dm a wink to makes all the world of difference okay so my very long answer see this is why i wrote a book instead of in a 30-minute podcast because i have so much to say but let me stop there No, but that makes total sense.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:13:20 ] As you were saying this, I was trying to think if at any point in my personal professional life, I did not have a best friend at work, if you will. And I can’t think of…

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:13:36 ] any situation in which I did not have someone I could lean on, I could joke around with, I could even just bad mouth other people. That’s sometimes it’s fun, you know? Oh my God, yeah. But I do believe that what you say is true. When it comes from the top down, it just makes it so that everyone feels safe to have fun, to joke around, to bring their full selves to work, whatever that means. But totally, I totally.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:14:09 ] I totally understand that. Do you think that this Do you think that having fun at work needs to come along with purpose? Does someone need to feel purpose in order to have fun? Or could it be like you said, I really like that example of the office. I don’t think anyone there had purpose. They were just there selling paper, except maybe Dwight. He had like a goal.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:14:39 ] But do those two come hand in hand? Having satisfaction at work requires purpose and the other way around— or no?

Bree Groff

[ 00:14:49 ] No. And I think I’m in the minority for this argument. There has been a huge upswell in writing, research, consulting, focus on purpose and meaning at work, especially as an alternative to ‘we only exist to make money.’ And so for that, I applaud it. Like I have done purpose consulting work myself.

Bree Groff

[ 00:15:10 ] So I want to be clear that I’m not anti-purpose here. Feeling purpose and meaning in your work is a wonderful thing. It’s great. And it’s also not necessary to have fun. It’s not necessary to have a good day. I think of purpose and meaning as one source of fulfillment.

Bree Groff

[ 00:15:30 ] Out of that diversity of options that you have available to you, the office example is a great one where you didn’t— you’re not able to pull that purpose or lever, a purpose or meaning lever, but you can pull the friendship and shenanigans lever. That’s actually kind of fine. I even think back to some of the like, least maybe traditionally meaningful jobs I had. I I when I was in high school, I worked as a dancer in a magic show at Six Flags. It sounds fun, it’s so fun, you know. And I know how to do the mental gymnastics to get myself to purpose. I would say, like, I was providing a moment of respite for people to come to a park, to spend time with their families, their kids. I was creating awe and magic and I was providing a sense of wonder in the world.

Bree Groff

[ 00:16:31 ] Like that’s how I would go about it if I’m trying to create a purpose statement for magicians.

Bree Groff

[ 00:16:37 ] But honestly, like.

Bree Groff

[ 00:16:40 ] Who cares that’s like such a big leap? Why should we have to do all this mental gymnastics? Like, can’t I just enjoy the fact that, like, it was pretty badass, learning magic tricks that I really liked, hanging out with the the other dancers and the magicians that I was like learning cool skills I was performing?

Bree Groff

[ 00:16:59 ] You know, I think the same about any, um, about any job. You know, you think about like a janitor in an office building, they’d have to go through like these mental leaps to say, ‘I’m sweeping the floor such that these people can then sell branding work, you know, in this marketing office,’ or you could just say, ‘Hey, like it’s pretty awesome that I can make this one small part of the world clean and that’s, and then I get paid for it.’

Bree Groff

[ 00:17:31 ] So that’s my rebuttal. Um, it’s, or it’s really like an invitation from, for us to think more expansively, I guess, about what gives us a great day.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:17:41 ] Yeah, I think we got to sort of start shifting our mindset, like you say.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:17:49 ] And something you mentioned a little earlier was the term ‘cozy teams.’ I want to dive a little bit into that.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:17:59 ] What does having or being part of a cozy team actually mean?

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:18:07 ] As a manager, and I’ll be taking notes because I am one, how can one make it so that their team is a cozy one? What are some simple actions managers or leadership can take or do to provide what you are referring to a cozy team?

Bree Groff

[ 00:18:24 ] Yeah, okay. It’s one of my favorite concepts. Um, I can give a little bit of a definition and then two practices. Cool. First, the definition: it is what it sounds like. If you’ve ever been part of a team where you feel safe, warm, cared for, like you’re in it together, despite any sort of blizzard or tornado that’s going on outside. So if you think cozy vibes, right? Like we’re approaching the autumn.

Bree Groff

[ 00:19:01 ] It’s that feeling of being snuggled up. And even if there’s a chill outside, in some ways that makes it ever more rich to feel safe and warm inside.

Bree Groff

[ 00:19:15 ] So every local manager can create this with their direct team or, or, um, direct reports, because coziness, as it implies, there’s a smallness about it. There’s a.

Bree Groff

[ 00:19:30 ] You know, I can see the four walls around me and the people in the space with me. So that’s sort of what it feels like. On a day-to-day level, people might say things like… I love my teammates. We get along so well. We fight, but it’s fine because we’re like debating the work— there’s, or in academic terms, there’s a psychological safety.

Bree Groff

[ 00:19:52 ] Ways to get this. So my two favorite techniques for creating cozy teams are the check-in ritual and the user manual.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:20:01 ] Okay.

Bree Groff

[ 00:20:02 ] So to start with the check-in, this is just a structured way to ask everyone on the team, ‘How are you?’ And then you actually listen and then you go about your day. So a lot of teams, when I use it on teams, I use it religiously for consulting teams when we have a daily standup. We do it the first five minutes of every daily standup. Or if you don’t have a daily meeting, a weekly meeting, whatever the cadence is, and it goes like this. You say, ‘Okay, how’s everybody doing? Let’s check in. Scale one to five.

Bree Groff

[ 00:20:35 ] Personal, professional, everything in between. You’re going to put it on your fingers. Everyone raises their fists and we go three, two, one, go. And then everyone, you put it up a four, a two, a one. If you’re on a screen, that’s fine. In person, that’s fine. You can see each other’s numbers. And then in about 30 seconds, you run around the room and everyone just says, ‘Why? You say, ‘Oh, I’m a two.

Bree Groff

[ 00:20:56 ] I tweaked my back. I’ve been having back problems for ages.’ I’m actually going to be screened off so I can just lie horizontal while we take this meeting. But otherwise, I’m good. Someone else says, oh, it’s my birthday this weekend, and I’m so excited about our product launch. I’ve just been having all these great ideas.

Bree Groff

[ 00:21:14 ] So you get the idea. It’s like personal and professional. And the trick is doing it consistently. The fastest way to a cozy team is bearing witness to each other’s lives, both sharing your life and receiving.

Bree Groff

[ 00:21:32 ] Now the trick of a check-in too, you don’t have to say like, you don’t have to share personal details or anything you don’t want to for the people who are like, I’m not bringing my full self to work. You know, you don’t have to tell them about your cholesterol report if that doesn’t feel safe. um but you sharing a little bit of something of yourself and then also receiving from someone else and it’s quick it’s like five minutes and it’s such a great accelerator of trust so that’s one making work human it’s literally human Yeah, I feel like sometimes we’re stuck in this energy of, we’re just monkeys pushing buttons.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:22:19 ] And, and I think, like you say, when when leaders can actually create that type of environment, I think, I think. When leaders are vulnerable and express vulnerability, that’s when the actual fun can begin. That’s when people start to see the company as what we should see all companies as: it’s an environment of people. We should be people within them. Period.

Bree Groff

[ 00:22:53 ] Yeah.

Bree Groff

[ 00:22:55 ] It’s like, it’s such a silly exercise in some ways because it’s just making formal and ritualized the very human act of being like, ‘Hey, how are you? How are you?’ There’s so much behind it too. Like I say it sort of all quickly, but there’s also like you’re increasing psychological safety, you’re increasing cognitive offloading. Or the notion that when you verbalize or externalize what’s running through your brain, you can then focus on the task at hand.

Bree Groff

[ 00:23:29 ] It thwarts any miscommunication. So the person who’s camera off— you might be like, ‘What a jerk.’ They’re not paying attention at our meeting, but now I know that their back is bad. So it has so many benefits in that way, priming contributions so that people speak again.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:23:45 ] And I think in the workplace we have introverts, we have extroverts. I think they just— I read something about that they’re…

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:23:56 ] They just created this new one for people that are not extroverts or introverts. I can’t remember what the term is. Otrovert? I can’t remember. I think before they released this new one, they were calling them ambiverts. But there’s people that need other people to feel satisfaction. And there’s people that sort of shy away from others to gain satisfaction. And you mentioned do nothing days as a strategy for work and for building creativity.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:24:29 ] Can you dive a little deeper into that? Do nothing days. I sort of get where you’re getting at, but. What would you say about these do nothing days?

Bree Groff

[ 00:24:39 ] Yeah.

Bree Groff

[ 00:24:41 ] So it’s a little disappointing when I start talking about them because people are like, it’s a bed rot day. I know what that is. Netflix all day. Take out. pajamas, no shower. It’d be awesome. So it’s not that, although that also sounds great. So you go for it. Do nothing day is a term. We coined for essentially an off-site with no agenda. That’s the best way to describe it. Um, me and my friend and colleague Sue Walsh came up with the idea many moons ago. Now, as we were leading consulting teams, realizing that you know when clients come to us and pay us the big bucks, they’re not paying us to be super fast at responding to their emails, although we try to be. They’re paying us for brilliant work, for impact, for improving their business in a sizable way.

Bree Groff

[ 00:25:42 ] And what we realized it was like that was just really hard to do in 30-minute increments when we’re getting together for like, okay. Now we have to think of some new ideas for what we’re going to add to this experience or this like, touch point with the customers. And it just felt like our brains couldn’t breathe.

Bree Groff

[ 00:25:59 ] So we said, okay, what would happen if we blocked one whole day where we committed to producing nothing, we were going to take no meetings, email, no emails, make no reports, just.

Bree Groff

[ 00:26:13 ] Nothing. We were going to tell our brains, you’re off the hook. And instead, we spent the whole day dreaming. So it’s a do nothing day, but it’s a think everything day. Another way to think about it is that we often get our best ideas in the shower. Right. And of course we instinctually know why that is because there’s no technology around. Nothing’s demanding our attention. We’re just, our hands are busy shampooing or whatnot, and our brains are free to just sort of wander. So we said, well, what, what, what if we took the notion of a shower and made it a clothed group shower? Scandalous. But you get where I’m going with this. Yeah. A day of unstructured thinking. So we went to a park. We had some loose prompts. There were parts of the client engagement that we knew we had to think about. So we’d say, like, okay, this component, let’s just chat about it. So we sat in the park.

Bree Groff

[ 00:27:08 ] And we just went where the conversation took us. If the conversation got boring, we stopped having it. If something was really interesting, someone was like, ‘Yeah, write that down.’ And now I’ve done this so many times and every time the best idea, the most like pivotal change in understanding or something that we needed to generate, they always come from that day.

Bree Groff

[ 00:27:34 ] Now, the trick is you can’t be like, ‘We better have a great idea that day because your brain will freak out.’ But it’s a way to sort of hack your brain and respect what human brains actually need, which is time, space.

Bree Groff

[ 00:27:47 ] um the ability to sort of socialize ideas as well without constraint so um i read a lot about it in the book there’s like prompts and instructions for how to do your own but i found they never fail yeah that That actually brings me to, and I mean, I love that.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:28:08 ] And that actually brings me to burnout where, I mean, the statistics show that currently, um, as of now, the workforce, the workforce is.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:28:22 ] burnt out more than ever, especially millennials in management positions.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:28:29 ] And I think some people find joy or happiness in work, but to an extreme. I think I’m going to categorize myself within that.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:28:43 ] At times where I actually consider myself to be someone who has fun at work. So I feel privileged in a way, but then I sort of tend to go to the extremes where it’s work, work, work, work, work. And I forget about life.

Bree Groff

[ 00:28:59 ] Yeah.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:29:00 ] How does that affect someone’s capability? Because what you just mentioned rings true.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:29:07 ] I think in my personal experience, when we overdo work, when we overwork, we tend to get into this cycle of uncreativity. And we sometimes need to step away from it to…

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:29:24 ] to really make sense of it all.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:29:27 ] What’s the risk of these people who are maybe having too much fun at work? Is that something that can happen? Can someone have too much fun at work where it’s sort of like the opposite?

Bree Groff

[ 00:29:40 ] Yeah. Oh, for sure.

Bree Groff

[ 00:29:44 ] Myself included. I have often had too much fun at work because that’s actually sort of the end of the spectrum that I tend to find myself on. That for me, it’s easy to overwork. I usually don’t feel like.

Bree Groff

[ 00:29:58 ] oh like the person at the top is bearing down on me and i have to work in order to please usually i feel like this is fun and important and i want to get all these things done and i want to do a good job so it’s usually of my own doing when i’m overworking So there’s a few costs, though, that we just have to be aware of.

Bree Groff

[ 00:30:18 ] I think the most obvious when it comes to burnout is when we overwork and underlive.

Bree Groff

[ 00:30:28 ] That’s just the nature of human finitude. Like, no one is inventing more hours in the day. So at some point in our, some points in our lives, it’s actually kind of fine. Like I know in my twenties, pre-partner, pre-kid. I was craving to work more. I remember telling my bosses, like, I got more to give, more in the tank.

Bree Groff

[ 00:30:52 ] Because there wasn’t as much opportunity cost.

Bree Groff

[ 00:30:56 ] Now in my 40s, I think like oh exercise is actually really important to me. I need this body to get me going where I need to go for you know the rest of my life. You know, now I have a daughter and a partner, and so I spend time with them. I also have a father with Alzheimer’s, and so I’m a caregiver. It’s just that, when we overwork, we have to consider the opportunity costs. So for some people, they’ll say, ‘Yeah, little opportunity costs.’ I’m having the time of my life.

Bree Groff

[ 00:31:22 ] Now, that may be true, and I buy it. But also, I think there’s a second case to be made, which is what you’re making.

Bree Groff

[ 00:31:32 ] That even if you don’t want to rest because resting is nice and you get to do that as a human, still, there’s the like any Olympic athlete is going to have rest periods and their trainer is going to make sure of it.

Bree Groff

[ 00:31:49 ] Because the body just doesn’t operate at peak performance unless you have some of that. Similarly to what you said about perspective and creativity, if you are filling your days with…

Bree Groff

[ 00:32:02 ] like production and output you’re not actually stopping to think more expansively and then lastly i would say like there’s also a cost when it comes to how you’re showing up as either a colleague or a leader if you don’t have a sense of perspective like oh this feature on this one product actually just doesn’t matter at all. Like if you don’t have that and instead you’re saying, everybody, we have to double down. Everyone’s going to be here till 9 p . m. tonight. We have to push that. You know, now you’re just leaking your life choices all over everybody else. And that’s not fair. um and also you’re probably you’re probably missing the force through for the trees as they say like well yes there’s one feature on this one product but like can we think a little bit more expansively on again opportunity cost if you’re focusing so much here what else are you missing in terms of other opportunities or threats that are coming down the line so a million and a half different reasons to pace yourself i love it i love it um we’re nearing the end of our episode and just before Just before we wrap up, I found something very interesting in your book that I hadn’t seen in other books.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:33:21 ] You included a crossword puzzle. Why did you do that? I found it to be, I don’t know, intriguing. I wanted to ask, why did you include a crossword puzzle in your book?

Bree Groff

[ 00:33:31 ] um there’s one review i got of the book where someone was like this author is really quirky like sure yeah like i’m just showing up as myself i included the crossword puzzle Um, for a lighter reason and for a deeper reason, the lighter reason is actually, I just really love crossword puzzles. A fun fact about me. I, my. The greatest claim to literary fame before this book is I’m the love interest in a book about competitive crossword puzzles, a nonfiction book called Crossword World.

Bree Groff

[ 00:34:10 ] Um, go pick it up— find all the salacious details written about the the love interest of the crossword puzzle tournament. Um, but yeah, my aunt Helené used to actually run the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. I just i love the vibe, I love the community. I used to be a judge there, which is why I was there. Wow. No, there’s just like, it’s my own little personal Easter egg.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:34:34 ] Love it.

Bree Groff

[ 00:34:34 ] But then, secondly, the deeper reason is because I couldn’t bring myself to write a book about humanity and fun that was just like 300 pages of research and case studies—That’s not that fun, and not that human. So I thought in writing the book, I thought a lot about the experience of reading it and like what would actually give the reader not just an intellectual experience, I’m thinking about fun at work, but how could I actually make that moment. of them reading the book.

Bree Groff

[ 00:35:12 ] Literally fun right then and I thought like, well, what’s more fun than a crossword puzzle? Um, so I had somebody—I paid someone to, a professional constructor— made the crossword puzzle. It has themes from the book woven in. Okay, and I was trying to say, like, I know you’re reading a non-fiction book that’s hopefully you know, improving your skills in your life, but also it’s totally fine to do something just for the fun of it. That’s actually part of the point.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:35:41 ] And it’s, I think, it’s sometimes, it’s sometimes the little things that matter the most, the ones that go the most unnoticed.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:35:52 ] I’d love to wrap up our episode saying that I really appreciate you being here with us. I highly recommend our audience to go buy the book. Where would you recommend our listeners to either get in touch with you, find the book?

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:36:10 ] Because I think there’s an opportunity here for people who are not.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:36:15 ] feeling like they’re having fun at work to maybe take this opportunity to get the book and find the space within your workday to read it and you might learn something and that could be your little fun do nothing time where can where can our listeners get the book and contact you Yeah.

Bree Groff

[ 00:36:33 ] Well, you can get it wherever books are sold, but more direct answer is you can find me at my website, briegroff . com or B-R-E-E-G-R-O-F-F . com. And from there, you can find links to buy the book. You can subscribe to my sub stack. You can find me on LinkedIn and Instagram. And I hope you all read it and love it and solve a crossword puzzle.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:36:58 ] Awesome. Thank you so much for you for being with us. I hope we get a chance to do a part two.

SPEAKER_3

[ 00:37:03 ] Would love it.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:37:05 ] And thank you so much for being a part of the future work podcast. Yeah.

Bree Groff

[ 00:37:09 ] Thanks for having me.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:37:10 ] Have a great day.

Bree Groff

[ 00:37:11 ] You too.

Daniel Lamadrid

[ 00:37:12 ] Ciao.