May 15th, 2024

Hey, look, a year’s worth of newsletter!

I sent my first ever email newsletter last year on May 17th! To celebrate, (and also to cut myself some slack given my schedule this week), I’m resending the first email I sent! The list has grown quite a bit since I got started with this, so most of you haven’t read this!

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet….

I use squarespace and the templates have the usual ‘lorem ipsum’ text as filler. I got suddenly very curious about what it meant (pro-tip: if you call it “being curious” it’s not procrastinating). Turns out it’s not real Latin (which I should know because I took Latin in high school) but it is piecemealed from an old (duh) Latin text…which turns out to mean

"There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."

And I found this absolutely FASCINATING because, here, in my hunt for answers to my curiosity (see, not procrastination), I found a topic for this, my very first newsletter!

This phrase immediately made me think of play being seemingly purposeless…didn’t you? No? Oh, ok, I’ll explain.

If you’ve heard me speak about what play is for adults, you’ve heard me share my functional definition of play. It lists ten characteristics and one is that an activity must be seemingly purposeless. Meaning that to be play, the one doing the playing or being playful must be doing so simply because for the sake of doing it, which is apparently in direct opposition of pain.

Hm. Interesting!

Ok, back to what I really came here to share with you!

My goal for this newsletter is to help you cultivate a more playful life, especially at work.

Consistently, out of all that I share about being playful at work, folks seem to like my connection questions best. Connection questions are…(shudder) ice-breakers, but I despise that term. If we are hoping for people to open up to each other, communicate, and learn to trust each other and we are starting at the level of ICE, we need to do some warming up before we start drilling. My connection questions are intentionally crafted to allow for unexpected moments of “yes, relatable!” without being intimate.

One of the most common questions leaders use to start meetings, especially early week all-hands is “so, what did you do last weekend”? And everyone goes around the room sharing. Some people love this question because they have been dying for the opportunity to tell everyone that they climbed their 30th 14er or finished an Ironman. But I’m willing to bet real money that there’s at least one person in that room that spent their entire weekend binging Vanderpump Rules in their PJs. There is absolutely nothing wrong with either of those experiences, but let’s not force folks into feeling ashamed that their weekend wasn’t “good enough”.

So please, if you do anything different at work because of anything you ever learn from me, let it be to permanently 86 that question.

Instead, try “what’s saved for later in your amazon cart?” (or on your wishlist at your favorite store). It might be something a bit boring like towels, but then it comes up that you’re saving the towels because you might renovate your bathroom soon and haven’t decided on a new wall color yet. Then someone else in the meeting chimes in that they just renovated their bathroom and have some tips. Or maybe something interesting like “an old Stevie Wonder album” shared by an executive in one of my facilitations. A new member of the team spoke up in response to that, and by the end of the meeting they were great pals based on a shared interest in vinyl.

Also, let’s not with the “favorites”. I 1000% do not care what your favorite color is and there is no reality where mine will carry any value into your life. Also, I don’t have one, a lot of people don’t. Be intentional about your building connection with your team. It will happen a lot faster that way.

In a not at all shocking revelation, this email ended up being MUCH longer than I intended. This is the first email newsletter I have ever sent and in the spirit of the military teams (as shared by Simon Sinek), I request that you “throw spears”. My email inbox is open and ready for ALL feedback, good and bad (truly…I know a lot of people say this and then don’t mean it, but I live for it - for example, some of you may have experienced a bright pink webpage with a neon “play” sign when you signed up for this newsletter, which prompted Philip to reach out and tell me it was obnoxious (he didn’t use those words, he was kind, but it was the truth) so I changed it, because he was right!).

If you don’t have any feedback, I’d still love to hear from you - what is the best connection question you’ve ever heard in a meeting? I’d also love to hear the worst one! Just hit reply! I’ll really read it.

(and yes, all the newsletters will probably have this many parentheses).

Thanks for reading, friend! If you feel so inclined to forward this on to a colleague, friend, or even your boss, I’d be so grateful!