What do you think is the biggest difference between children and adults? Aside from the colorful clothes and cheerful laughter, adults—on the whole—take everything much more seriously than children.

Think about it. If a child falls, they stand up again and continue playing. But if an adult falls, it becomes a failure, an embarrassment, and a weight they have to bear. There’s a reason why the term “adult conversations” is often synonymous with boredom and dullness.

It’s true that once you leave Neverland, you have more responsibility, which makes it necessary for you to become more serious. But what if you could still keep some of the childlike joy? What would that look like? What if the secret to high performance in your work didn’t come from a strong sense of responsibility but from the feeling of joy and play?

Laughter and professionalism

Gallup’s 2013 study correlated age groups with the frequency of smiling and laughing. Over one million participants across 166 countries were asked: Did you smile or laugh a lot (May 10, 2024)? For participants between 16 and 23, the answer was yes. After the age of 23, the answer was no. According to this study, we don’t start smiling as much again until after we turn 70, which seems like a long time to wait to have a bit more fun in our lives.  

This study raises several questions. Why do we stop smiling and laughing? What impact does this have on our well-being and performance? Can we change this?

We seem to stop smiling and laughing because the work environment tends to be serious and doesn’t encourage laughter—even less so now that a lot of our work is remote. Unless you’re a comedian, humor isn’t often associated with professionalism and competence, even though a 2017 Robert Half survey found that 91% of executives believe that a sense of humor is important for career advancement.

Humor and high performance

Daniel Goleman, the author and psychologist, explains in his book Primal Leadership that pleasant emotions, the ones generated through humor, function like oil on the cogs of our brain and stimulate mental efficiency. Humor and pleasant emotions enable people to show greater flexibility in their thinking and better understand complex information.

As it turns out, humor and high performance go hand in hand. If you feel great, your work will be great.  Each time you laugh, you release your “feel good” hormones oxytocin and dopamine, and your stress hormone cortisol decreases.

Laughter also enhances your memory. If you laugh as you learn something, you’re far more likely to remember it. Do you still recall that learning from 10 years ago when you had a good laugh? That’s because your brain was feeling great and soaked up the information.

So how can you add humor to your workplace? First, don’t try to force yourself to be stand-up comedian. Start by taking things less seriously and personally. It’s about being able to smile when something surprising happens, and seeing the positive side of different situations, good and bad.

Humor comes when we’re more relaxed and have connected deeply with the people we are with. It’s something that naturally arises when we are calm, grounded, and connected. Games and gamification are another way in through the door of humor, because they add some playfulness to the otherwise mundane (and serious) nature of day-to-day work.

I recently spoke with a friend who loves her work. And the part she enjoys most? The lunch talks where they play the game of “guessing what song it is as the first musical notes come through.” This was she truly enjoys about her day-to-day work. A stolen few minutes a day of joy and fun can boost her mood as well as improve her productivity.

If you’re looking to boost your performance at work, perhaps it’s not only about setting more SMART goals and ambitious OKRs. Maybe it’s as simple as incorporating more play and laughter into your day, and encouraging your peers to do the same. It will definitely be great for your soul, and chances are, it’ll be great for your work, too.

---

Katie Stoddart is the founder and CEO of the Focus Bee.