🤪 What if You Could Just Have Fun with It?
March Madness, Day 22
(Welcome to Day 22 of our March Madness series and continuing celebration of Mardi Gras, with love from Genevieve & Ali & the Ally Show.)
When we asked our March Madness participants why they wanted to sign up for the program, here are some of the needs we heard:
“I want a reboot this March”
“to spark creativity”
“to increase creativity and my creative writing practice”
“out of curiosity”
I feel we did a good job discussing the idea of rebooting oneself in our Day 19 post.
Today I want to focus on that “spark” - the creativity, the curiosity, the lightbulbs and lightning and apples on the head that we are all so often seeking.
And I want to share one of my most dependable ways to access that spark for myself.
Hint: It has a lot to do with my allowing myself to be a goofball every so often.
Remember Riley’s “Goofball Island” from the 2015 film Inside Out?
Yep, it’s just like that.
Do You Know the Way to Goofball Island?
Yes, you do! You can get there anytime.
Here’s one weird trick that works for me:
Find a way to tell your body that you are a kid again.
You can sit in a big chair like this ⬆️, run around barefoot in the grass, do something you used to enjoy on the playground like swing on a swing, read children’s books, play with your stuffed animals, follow your curiosity out in nature like chasing a bug or butterfly, whatever else you can think of.
If you know any kids, hang out with them and try to occupy the same mode of existence that they do.
We were all once a kid so we can all get back to this feeling if we roll the clock back far enough for even a moment.
This is one of the reasons I love qigong: I can pretend I’m an animal whenever I want, or pretend I’m anything else, for that matter. This zaps my kid self and imagination online right away. For example, you can easily:
pretend you are a Tiger and a Bear
pretend you are a Snake
pretend you are a little Airplane:
Once you feel your kid self stirring again, you don’t even have to think deliberately about the project or problem or challenge you are working on in your “real life.” Sometimes those lateral thinking thoughts will just pop into your head as if
💡 a lightbulb was suddenly switched on
⚡️ you were struck by lightning
🍎 an apple hit you on the head
👑 you’ve struck gold
💥 you’ve had a "wake up" or "a-ha" moment
Without even trying, you may suddenly (or gradually) start to have fun with your work.
And after that, whatever you make will embody that irrepressible sense of creativity and fun too. It might not even look goofy to others, but you will always know you were having fun when you did it and that might even make you like and respect your own work more.
Fun at Work #1: The Friendly Spreadsheet
My new friend Kat Sklar of the Friendly Spreadsheet offers an amazing set of services, including business & personal finance coaching and spreadsheet evangelism. They also offer a sublime array of human-centered newsletters - you can check those out here. I subscribed to all of them myself just last week and they are already helping me.
They recently undertook a redesign of their brand - you can read more about that here, and you should. You already know I’m going to be a fan, because with terms like the “Friendly Spreadsheet” and “Spreadsheet Evangelist,” they are already combining words and concepts in novel ways, just like kids are famous for doing.
But my level of appreciation zoomed up into the stratosphere above Goofball Island when I saw their new brand identity and logo up close and personal:
Can you see it?
This little face peeking out of this spreadsheet like Kilroy was here?
I don’t know about you, but this playful, elegant logo is part of why I ended up signing up for all of Kat’s newsletters. I know I am in good hands when someone has the playful, insouciant confidence to design something this simple and this perfect.
I would SO trust that person with my finances, even if they also embody the joy of a kid.
Huge hats off to Pam Huber Designs for bringing spark, curiosity, and verve to this project.
Fun at Work #2: Lexie Koss
My old friend Lexie Koss offers a different set of amazing services. She describes it like this: “I'm on a mission to deliver data-driven, customer intel-fueled copy that sounds like the best version of you, clarifies concepts, and drives action.”
Yay! Yes, please, pass the customer intel-fueled copy! I almost said “coffee,” pass that too! And who doesn’t want to sound like the best, clearest version of their brand? Sign me up for a lifetime supply.
I was paging through Lexie’s portfolio recently and when I got to the very last page, my heart skipped a beat:
Do you see it?
It took me a second.
Or so.
Why are those cute little letters a different color?
But then it was like:
💡a lightbulb was suddenly switched on
⚡️I was struck by lightning
🍎 an apple hit me on the head
👑 I had struck gold
💥 I had a "wake up" or "a-ha" moment
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, suddenly I could see the word “WOW” singing out of Lexie’s portfolio.
I have reviewed approximately 1M+ portfolios. Trust me, every creative person (including me) wants to wrap up their portfolio with an unforgettable bang. But not everyone (including me) always figures out such a simple, confident, unexpected Easter Egg to gift you with on the final page.
I thought about this trick for DAYS after I saw it. I had a call with Lexie and I must have raved about it for a good ten minutes. And that was before I saw the hug and kiss that had smuggled themselves into Lexie’s website:
Do you see it? The little “x” (💋) and the little “o” (🤗) in Lexie’s name at the top of the page?
Of course, not all of us are lucky enough to have both a kiss and a hug hiding right there in our first and last names.
But it wasn’t luck that led Lexie to slip these one-of-a-kind Easter Eggs into her materials.
Nope, it was knowing the way to Goofball Island and knowing how to surf its kid-like power in service of your adult goals.
Check in with me next week, I bet I will still be raving about this.
Fun at Work #3: Palladio AI
This week marked not only the Equinox but the celebration of another annual ritual in the San Francisco Bay Area - the much-lauded Game Developers Conference (GDC) which has been held once a year ever since a gaming pioneer named Chris Crawford first hosted 27 developers/friends in his San Jose living room in 1988. GDC was held this year from Monday March 17th through Friday March 21st.
This year, I happened to see that one of my former colleagues had this set as his LinkedIn name: “George Zhang 🔜 GDC.”
In the spirit of balance and doing things I don't usually do, or at least haven’t done in a while, I dropped George a note to say, “Do you want to meet up while you're at GDC? I'm not attending but I'll be in the city [San Francisco] so it's feasible if you have time.”
And to my surprise & delight, George said yes! We made a plan to say hi on March 18th.
And on March 17th, I learned from a LinkedIn post that George was not just attending GDC, he was using GDC as an opportunity to introduce the startup he is co-founding, Palladio AI.
When I met George at GDC, he demonstrated such a perfect grasp of the credo “Have fun with it” that I knew I had to tell you the story here today.
What had George done, you ask?
He was wearing a hoodie that bore a unique Palladio AI logo - a bold, stylized “P,” “A” and “I” cut from a scenic photo of the Golden Gate Bridge, with the name “Palladio AI” placed below, like this:
And then he showered me with gifts - the swag that George and his co-founder had chosen for GDC.
Rather than the usual mug or t-shirt or pen or stress ball that most startups distribute at events like this, George and the Palladio AI team had chosen to give out this branded hand-grip strengthener:
Do you see it?
It took me a second but then it was like:
💡a lightbulb was suddenly switched on
⚡️I was struck by lightning
🍎 an apple hit me on the head
👑 I had struck gold
💥 I had a "wake up" or "a-ha" moment
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, suddenly I could see this:
That's right, George and his team had made the creative leap to notice the resemblance between their brand-new logo and the iconic shape of the hand grip strengthener. They could be cousins! Siblings even! 👯
And, importantly, they had taken the time to bring their idea to life rather than hoarding it like gold in the dragon's cave.
So they had this unique and uniquely self-referential and self-reinforcing, I could even say iconic, item of swag to help them share their story at GDC.
And I saw how well it worked when I heard George tell the story behind the logo and the swag to another old friend, and the friend actually laughed. An actual true, positive, appreciative laugh about company swag. Unheard of, ladies and gentlemen and everyone!
And here I am telling the story to you, demonstrating how having fun with it can sometimes help you spread your message even better than the most serious, rigorously analytical plan.
Last Chance to Take Our Quick Reader Survey
We’re down to the last ten days of March Madness, so I’ll be letting the halftime user survey link crumble to dust tomorrow.
🌸🏀 March Madness Halftime Survey
Have fun with it. Be as silly as you want in your responses to this survey. I certainly had fun with it, with survey questions like this:
And one of our readers had fun with it, by answering this question ⬆️ with the words "D. Other - in more languages.”
Kk, so it’s your turn.
It’s the weekend.
Maybe you can go have fun with a project or topic or interest you usually wouldn’t let yourself have fun with. Can you find your way to Goofball Island? Can you bring back an idea or two for your usually-serious work? Please report back.
And don’t go it alone,
Genevieve