Today Was Fun summary

A lot of career advice tells you to follow your passion, chase growth opportunities, or take the highest-paying role. That’s fine, but there’s a simpler question that can change your entire work experience: Do you actually like the people you’ll be spending your days with? You’ll spend a huge slice of your life with colleagues, so it makes sense to choose them as carefully as you choose the work itself. Even the dullest tasks become bearable – sometimes even fun – if you’re surrounded by people whose company you enjoy. Imagine shovelling manure: alone, it’s miserable; with people you like, it’s a shared story you’ll still be laughing about years later.

Friendship at work doesn’t mean expecting your colleagues to know you like a lifelong best friend would. But rather, enjoying their company, respecting them, and sharing a willingness to show up for each other. That’s not just feel-good fluff. Studies show that having a close friend at work boosts creativity, engagement, and productivity, and even improves unexpected things like safety and efficiency. In other words, friendship isn’t just good for you – it’s good for business.

If you were about to play a grand piano at a packed concert hall, you wouldn’t slap some motor oil on the keys and call it a warm-up. Yet most people treat their bodies – the only instrument they’ll ever have to do their work – exactly like that. The expectation is to keep showing up, no matter how tired, stiff, or run-down you are, as if performance and well-being aren’t linked. But they are.

Sleep functions both as rest and as a means of enhancing performance. Without it, your focus drops, your productivity slides, and your creativity tanks. Leaders become less charismatic, which makes them harder to inspire others and harder to be inspired by. Sleep-deprived teams make more mistakes, take longer to solve problems, and have less patience for each other. In short, you’re not only worse at your job, you’re also less pleasant to work with.

There are plenty of solid reasons to aim for brilliant work. It can grow a healthy, high-performing business. It can create impact in the world. But perhaps the most energising reason is simply that it’s one of the coolest parts of being human. We get to dream something up, bring it into existence, and watch it make someone else’s day better. Whether you’re designing software, baking bread, or running a classroom, your work can be an expression of your imagination and your stamp on the world.

Think of it less like fulfilling a job description and more like playing in the most elaborate sandbox ever built. You can try things, share them, and say, “Look what I made!” That’s not indulgence – it’s contribution. You’re the only person with your exact mix of experiences, ideas, and quirks. If you don’t put them into your work, they’re gone for good.

The simplest way to escape the treadmill of endless tasks is to crowd it out with work you actually want to do. When you choose projects that energise you, the less important stuff naturally falls away. In this context, fun means engaging in meaningful work that merits being done well. A good test is to ask, What would be the most fun to do? If the answer makes you feel a spark, it’s probably the right direction.

Fear can be another useful compass. Often, the work you’re most hesitant to take on is where the biggest breakthroughs happen. Pitching a risky idea, trying a new approach, or taking on a role you’re not fully sure you can handle – these are the moments that create distinctive, high-impact results. What doesn’t work is playing it safe to avoid mistakes or keep up appearances for bosses, boards, or shareholders. That mindset produces predictable, forgettable work.