PLEASE DIRECT YOUR ATTENTION TO THE FOLLOWING
Introduction. Seriously.
Before we begin, I need to clear the air.
This is not a book about fun.
This is a book about having fun. You may be thinking, “Oh, great. I’m not even one hundred words in, and this guy has already pulled the rug out from under me!” But hold on a second. If you stick with me, you’ll understand that the point I’m making is vital.
If this were a book about fun, you might expect me to talk about the science of fun, the history of fun, the value of fun, and the philosophy of fun. I’d create an elaborate equation on a quantum level: “If you take the square root of the song ‘Don’t Stop Believing,’ divide it by the cosine of a slice of pizza, and multiply that by ceaseless childhood wonder, you become a fun person.”
You’d probably also expect me to be a corporately appropriate pseudocomedian with wacky ties and a synergistic attitude. But this isn’t that kind of book. And I’m not that kind of guy.
This is a book about action — less about learning, more about doing. Yes, you and I will occasionally dip our toes into the research behind how having fun helps make you more productive and more successful. We’ll even brush up against how fun can help you be happier. But in the end, this is a book about helping you make having fun a necessary part of your daily routine.
As a coach of leaders, I’ve spent years consulting with hundreds of individuals and training hundreds of thousands of people worldwide via events and videos. During that time, I’ve come to believe that taking action on knowledge is far more powerful than just having knowledge itself. In fact, learning something and then not acting on it is often educated failure.
Intelligent, hardworking people have gone to great lengths to conduct brilliant studies and wonderful research experiments. That information has value. Ultimately, however, I’m less concerned with an experiment attempted by someone else and more concerned with an experiment conducted by you.
That’s where this book comes in. I’ve designed it to be something like a private coaching session between you and me. Imagine that we’re sitting across from each other in your office. My goal is to help you unlock the power of having fun. It’s something that so many of us want to do, yet we forbid ourselves from doing it. I find that, for bizarre and occasionally sadistic reasons, far too many of us deprive ourselves of having fun. Yet the very thing that we prevent ourselves from doing is the very thing that can help us be more successful. Fun and work are not opposites. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin. Your work life and your personal life are inseparably connected.
Don’t just take my word for it. After all, a book is just words on a page. The power lies in what you do with the information you acquire. That’s my goal: to help you do something about having more fun in your day. I’ll make it easy and, yes, fun for you to experiment. But please experiment. Your day, your time, and your activities are the laboratory. You and I will put on our lab coats and pocket protectors and put your experiment into action.
Sound good? Great! Just a little more housekeeping . . .
My hope is that this book has value for anyone in pretty much any position or stage in their career. However, the people who are going to get the biggest bang for their book buck are those who have some degree of flexibility when it comes to their work schedule. In this hypothetical coaching-via-book situation, my assumption will be that I’m talking to someone who has some ability to control how they spend their time.
In other words, if you’re at the C-level, on salary, a free-lancer, a business owner, an entrepreneur, or even a stay-at-home mom or dad, you have the greatest opportunity to get the greatest value from this book. Why? Simply because a significant part of the experiment that you and I will be conducting has to do with crafting your schedule.
If you don’t fit into one of these categories, if you are earning an hourly wage, or if you are working two or three jobs at present, you might find the execution of some of these principles a little trickier. Yet, if you still dare to continue reading this book despite being in one of those situations, you will still find value. I’d recommend that you approach this book with the mindset “How does this apply to me?” as opposed to “This doesn’t apply to me.” Read with an open mind, experiment where you can, and I believe you’ll still uncover an em powering message.