22 Ways to Ligthen Up Your Workday

1- Number your curse words and call out a number when stress strikes. If you are really stressed, call out a high number like “5,832,463”. If it’s a minor upset, call out a low number like -- “ffffffive”.

2- Collect cartoons pertaining to your industry and/or its problems. They make great comic relief when you need to lighten up a serious point. Use them in meetings, in newsletters and on bulletin boards. One CEO, for example, offers $1 per month for the best cartoon about what is going on in the company. “The best money I ever spent on research,” he says. “I learned more about the pressures and conce
s of my group than from any survey.”

3- Cartoons are also great in your memos to get point across. One I saw is perfect for anyone who always comes in late. It read, “Hedgepeth, you went to lunch in 1968, where have you been?”

4- Have funny signs around the office to remind you and others to lighten up. Signs like:
“Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
“Eat a frog the first thing in the morning, nothing worst can happen the rest of the day.”
Or this sign which is perfect for today’s business climate:
“Due to the budget cutbacks, the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off until further notice.”

5- Use stationary, notes or post-its with funny pictures or sayings. I have some post-its that say, “People I hung up while you were out.”

6- Send an outrageous postcard back to the office from your vacation.

7- Send an outrageous postcard back to the office even when you are not on vacation. Maybe send one from the local shopping mall. “Having a great time. Wish you were here.”

8- Send an outrageous postcard to yourself. Wouldn’t you love to get a real sexy card at the office and have everybody wonder who sent it to you?

9- Leave a bunch of helium inflated balloons on a colleague's desk.

10- Create either the “Funniest customer or client of the week” award or “The Worst Customer of the Week” award. Tellers in one bank, for example, competed for this latter award. Soon the tellers found that some of the customers stopped being so irritating because of all the attention they were getting.

11- Create a “HaHa” bulletin board for cartoons, jokes, funny bumper stickers, and ridiculous headlines. A bumper sticker I saw recently read, “Careful. I’m not wearing clean underwear.”

12- Line your walls with magazine photos of famous folks autographed to you. How do you get these? Write them yourself. Example: “To Mary. Thanks for the great evening last night. Love, Robert Redford.”

13- Start each meeting with a joke or funny story.

14- Call in well. Take a day off just for yourself.

15- Keep some wind-up toys around. They are great ten-second stress-busters.

16- Issue coupon books for good work. For example:
Permission to leave 5 minutes early.
orr
Can use company president's parking spot for one day (especially good when the president is out of town).

17- Have a Dress-Down Day.
Instead of TGIF, have a DDD. A “Dress-Down Day”. You can do it once a week as they do in Hawaii on “Aloha Fridays” or have it once a month. The last day of each month is a great time to celebrate the fact that you made it through yet another month.

18- Have a Dress-Up Day.
Wear silly hats, crazy T shirts, ugly ties, silly socks or outlandish underwear. Holidays are great excuses for this. Consider dressing up on Halloween or April Fool's Day. In San Francisco, for example, if you walk in a Wells Fargo Bank office on Halloween, you will see every teller, VP and president dressed in a costume.

19- Keep photos around of those people who bring you joy. Look at them when things aren't going well. Every time I give a speech, I have a photo of my daughter Sarah handy. It was taken right after she had a whipped cream pie thrown in her face. (It was something she had requested for years.)

20- Ask co-workers to bring in photos of themselves as a kid. Put them on the bulletin board and have people guess who it is.

21- Do the same as above but this time with photos taken of co-workers’ bare feet.

22- Create a tickler file with cartoons or funny things that make you laugh. Unfile it and read 'em when you need 'em.