100 Ways to Play at Work #32: Talk without Talking

If someone all the way on the other side of the building makes the gesture of shoveling food in their mouths, you know you’re being invited to lunch. No need for words. We do it all the time. Here’s where the challenge comes in, try and communicate everything this way.

“Did you get my email?” (point to them, typing fingers, shrug)

“I love your new shoes!” (lift your foot high, point to your shoes, point to them, heart shape hands)

“Someone used the company photocopier to print out 200 pages of a file called ‘MyStory-novel-final-v.13.2’ at 10pm last night, was that you, you li’l rascal?” (you got this!)

Act things out, use your facial expressions, clearly mouth out your words, get your whole body involved, or simply learn sign language.

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This series was inspired by people asking me “How do I keep doing improv?” after a corporate improv workshop. There are, of course, improv classes, more workshops, team building exercises you can do with your group, but these games are specifically ones you can do on your own to practice “Yes and” and get into a state of play.

"What do you do for work and for fun and do you do them at the same time?"

Whenever we meet someone new, either networking, or dating, or small talk in the dentist’s waiting room, there’s two popular questions we ask to quickly sum humans up:

“What do you do for work?” and “What do you do for fun?”

As though they’re always two completely separate things.

“What do you do for work?” is essentially, “What do you make yourself do with your days to make enough money to put food on your family?”

And “What do you do for fun?” is like “What silly things do you do with any leftover time to try and help you recover from work?”

Instead of treating them as polar opposites, and that fun/play/joy could only possibly exist outside of work, try asking what I like to call a combo platter:

“What do you LIKE to do AT work?”

It forces them to think about the positives of what they do for a living. Are there little moments that are the highlights of each day? Is it the people? That they’re making a difference and helping others? The snack drawer? Do they just generally like their job?

In other words, as we’re always saying, look for the joy in work.