An interview with Bree Groff

What if the solution to improved performance isn't productivity hacks or better time management? What if it's injecting more joy into the hours we spend at work? That's the radical - and refreshingly human - thesis of Bree Groff's new book, "TODAY WAS FUN: A Book About Work (Seriously)" (Page Two; July 15, 2025). In this podcast we discuss how leaders can create cultures with joy and fulfilment as well as practical tools for making our days more energizing, creative, and humane.

Interviewer: Today, I'm going to be speaking to Bree Groff, who's a transformation expert, author, and senior advisor to global consultancy, SYPartners. She spent her career guiding C-suite leaders through periods of complex change. We're going to be discussing her book, "Today Was Fun, a Book About Work (Seriously)".

In her review of the book, Simone Stolzov, author of The Good Enough Job, notes: "research has proven that the happiest, highest performing teams all have one thing in common, high levels of psychological safety. Today Was Fun is like a workplace psychological safety manual. It will teach you how to design a living that you, dare I say, enjoy, but also how to design a life that you love."

Wow. Who wouldn't resonate with this vision, Bree, welcome.

Bree Groff: Thank you for having me.

Interviewer: What motivated you to write Today Was Fun?

Bree Groff: Well, I had this career in consulting where I'd had the benefit of peeking into dozens of organisations, interviewing hundreds of employees over the course of my career, and having a really good sense of what makes a good day at the office. And so I'm accumulating this wisdom. I thought, oh, maybe one day I want to write a book.

And then I, myself, had sort of a life-altering experience. About two years ago, my mother was diagnosed with a terminal cancer, and she passed away later that year. But while I was caring for her, it was really a moment of existential reconsideration for me because I had I hadn't before, I guess, really internalised how very precious our days on the planet are.

And so you think about, you know, you spend so much time at the cancer hospital, and everyone there is wishing for more days. And yet everybody back at the office is just wishing for Friday. They're trying to get through the week, not to enjoy it, savour it, value it.

As one of the few that we have on this planet. And so after that experience, I thought, look, I've learned a lot about what organisations can do, managers can do, individuals can do to have a better day today at work. And now I feel this sense of urgency that I've never felt quite so acutely before.

And I thought, well, I, this needs to become a book. This is going to be my form of art and self-expression and hopefully help for anybody out there who's feeling like they're merely getting through the week and therefore getting through their lives, because there should be just so much more.

Interviewer: So true. I mean, today was fun isn't a phrase we often hear about. What does it really mean?

And what do you hope readers will take away from the book?

Bree Groff: Yeah, you know, it's, it's the very simplest metric, to me, of whether we're doing our work and our lives right. So if you can curl up in bed at night and think to yourself, today was fun. You know, not every day, but most days, if you can do that, I think you've won.

You've won the game of life. You know, congratulations. And it's what I hope for myself, for anybody that I manage, any of the teams I lead, what I hope for my daughter.

I like it because it is so human and simple and to me, very honest. So when I think about today was fun in the context of work, I like it because in many ways it's subversive. It's a bit of a rebellion in a world that sees employees as human resources to value our own days, not just in terms of I want to be productive because that's what's going to get me the promotion.

And that's what I'm supposed to say. I want to hit these KPIs for my shareholders. But no, to really value the relationships we have at work, to really value laughter and the joy of creating something that other people value.

There's so much that's inherently good and fun about work. And so I wanted to bring that to life, hoping that, you know, after seven chapters and a whole bunch of pages that people can a little bit more often say today was fun.

Interviewer: Yes. And at the same time, you do make the connection between productivity and having fun at work. Can you expand on that?

Bree Groff: Yeah. So first I'll say, controversially, that is my second favourite argument for having fun at work. You know, as I've just shared, my favourite argument is the existential one.

The existential argument is we only get so many Mondays. And so they had better be good ones. That's why we, as humans of this earth who are going to work, you know, that's why we should value our days, because we only get so many of them.

So that's my favourite argument. The second argument I sort of give a hat tip to, which is having fun at work in all of its adjacencies, employee engagement, being present, striving for promotions, going above and beyond, getting that exceeds expectations, performance rating, all of those things. Yes, they are definitely good for business performance.

But also you can pick up almost any other book on culture or workplaces, and you can find that research all over the place. Gallup has done some really impressive work, even on things like having a best friend at work is significantly correlated with your performance and business outcomes. So these things do really matter.

And I find it actually pretty instinctive that they would. So even if you imagine somebody at work, a colleague past or present, who you felt like, wow, they're really loving it. Like, they're having a good time at work.

My guess is that what they are emanating is some combination of they're having fun with the actual work itself. They're enjoying the people around them. They are finding satisfaction and pride in the impact of their work.

And they're finding a way to blend that with their life such that they don't burn out. Now, not everybody is going to have all of those things. But absolutely, there's an argument, many, many arguments to be made for why genuinely enjoying your workdays produces that sort of above and beyond effort that leads to higher business performance.

Interviewer: Leaders, of course, have an important role to play when it comes to creating cultures that encourage people to do their best. And I was wondering where joy and fulfilment come into this. Can leaders really create cultures where joy and fulfilment exist?

Bree Groff: Yeah. Oh, a thousand percent. Because work actually at a fundamental level is fun and joyful.

So I'll often say we don't get paid because work is painful and people wouldn't do it otherwise. We get paid because we create value. And the pain, whether it's there or not, is entirely optional.

So if we can think what is the core of the fun, the joy, the meaning for my people at work? And there will be lots of answers to this. Let's say that you work on a marketing team.

Well, people are going to find joy because maybe you get to be a little bit creative if you do some advertising or with the marketing copy. People are going to find joy because hopefully the team is kind of a fun one and you enjoy each other and don't take yourselves too seriously. You'll find joy.

Hopefully, I don't know, maybe you have to bring some speakers in or collectively learn some new skills or have some sort of learning and development budget. It's fun to learn those things. There's so many ways that we can elevate the fun that's already present in our work.

As a place to start, sometimes it's just about getting rid of the things that keep us from that sort of fundamental enjoyment of our work. So things like performative professionalism, which is this belief that we have to show up in our blazers and with our hair all coiffed perfectly and we have to use the jargon and make the decks and look like everybody else's deck and be very professional. It's that sort of sense that I have to perform business as opposed to just showing up as the brilliant human I am who's going to make some jokes and have some great ideas and be able to flex my skills and laugh while I'm doing it.

So one thing to give something practical that leaders can do is to start to pull back on the perceived notion of what is professional in our office. So this can look like modelling. I don't know, show up to a meeting with wet hair because you exercised in the morning and you didn't have time to shower or you had time to shower but you didn't have time to dry your hair and you're just showing up as a human because you're just as smart if your hair is wet or dry.

Or maybe once in a while you show up at work in exercise clothes because you're trying to exercise after work. I use exercise as an example because it's just like a really important part of human health and so much about workplaces make us feel inhuman in many ways. I don't have time to eat, to go to the bathroom, to exercise, to check in on my family, any of those things.

So by modelling that kind of humanity we can take away some of the artificial stuff that we put on top of work that makes it less fun because underneath that work really is a joyful activity.

Interviewer: And you advocate for do nothing days as a strategy for better work and as a means of improving creativity. How does this work?

Bree Groff: Yeah, so a do nothing day, it has a catchy and controversial name. This is a practise I started with teams years ago and it is a working day. So it's not a, it's not PTO, it's not a day for the team to go to a museum and have fun.

It's a day where you produce nothing but you think everything. So if you've ever been in a situation where you want to think strategically about your business challenge or the client or the customer or whatever, the project you're working on, but you just don't even, you don't have the brain space for it because you're trying to get to inbox zero and return all the messages and have new meetings popped up on your calendar and like, oh my, when am I ever going to have time to just think? If you've ever felt like that, the do nothing day is an antidote. So it works something like this.

You can, you can shape it for your team. So you block off the day, ideally the whole day, where you are not going to produce any deliverables of any sort. You're going to email no emails.

You're going to send no marketing copy or, you know, whatever you're doing. And instead you're going to decide as a team, what are the things that we just want to talk about and sort of wander through our thoughts with no particular achievement outcome in mind. So when I do this for client projects, it's okay, we know we need to increase engagement scores for employees.

And so on our do nothing day, we're thinking about, let's just talk for, I don't know, an hour, two hours, if we like, 30 minutes, if we're bored about, what's their office space and flexible work like? Is it working for them? What does the engagement survey say?

What could be a really cool solution to that? I don't know. Do they need like smoothie day in the office?

Now that's a silly example, but the point is we so rarely give our minds, our human brains, what they need to do their best work, which is space and expansiveness. There's a reason why we get our good ideas in the shower because our brains know we're not trying to achieve anything other than shampooing our hair. And so our brains have time to just sort of dream and wander.

So this is like the professionalised way of taking a day-long shower, I suppose. And it's worked remarkably without exception. We have come up, all the project teams I've done this with have come up with really, in some cases, the highest impact idea for the entire client engagement.

Interviewer: What are some practical tools that people can use to break up the monotony of digital overload at work?

Bree Groff: Right. So some days you wake up, I wake up, look at my calendar and think, well, that's a wall of meetings. And how am I going to get through that?

And recall part of my mission is to help people not get through things or endure things. So when I see a day like that, my brain goes to, well, maybe the whole day can't be brilliant and exciting. But I can always zoom in.

So if you think of this in the same way that you would think of like a gravel driveway being flat, from afar, sure, it's flat. But if you're an ant on that gravel driveway, it's basically a mountain range, right? There's highs and lows.

And so if we think about our days in that same way, maybe my whole day is going to be filled with meetings because it just is. But if I zoom in, is there one hour that actually is a little bit more fun than the rest? Maybe it's a one-on-one with someone you like and trust and you can enjoy a little bit of work gossip or find out how their weekend was.

Now let's say, nope, that's not small enough. All eight hours of meetings feel stressful and intimidating. OK.

Well, how about within one of those hours, you can zoom in to maybe just one minute? Maybe it's a minute where somebody made a joke and you chuckled to yourself. And now you find yourself smiling and thinking, oh, I'm going to have to tell my friend or spouse about that.

If you're like, nope, Bri, all my minutes are rough. Then you zoom in even tighter to a second, a few seconds. So maybe, oh, this is going to be a rough meeting.

Our numbers are so bad. We have to think about what we're going to do. So I'm going to get myself, run out for a cappuccino or get one from an office cafeteria or make one yourself.

I'm going to sprinkle a little cinnamon on top. And before we start this meeting, I'm just going to breathe in, take a sip and enjoy the few seconds of peace that I have. So this is what I call thin slicing your joy because there's always joy available to us.

Sometimes we just got to get a little bit smaller. Other examples of this include, maybe you like art, but you haven't been able to pull out a canvas in years. Well, maybe in one of your meetings today, you're going to do a little doodle and then you'll pin it on your bulletin board or on your computer and enjoy having done a little bit of art.

These small little moments of delight or connection, they're always available to us. It's just a matter of, one, feeling deserving of them. Sometimes we think about our work like, well, I don't deserve to have fun.

That's why they're paying me. But you do, you do, because you're a human and you are alive and you have the benefit of this day and you deserve to enjoy at least one minute of it. And so these little acts, these little micro joys, if you will, are a way to honour that.

If you're feeling silly, one of my favourite ones is, so I have right now in my kitchen cabinet, a pack of umbrella picks like you would get if you were like on the beach having a pina colada or something. You know, sometimes I just put one in my yoghurt. My daughter does in the morning because it's silly and stupid and it makes me happy.

Or maybe you keep a plant at work and you're just happy to water it any day, every day. So these are small ways that you can break up the monotony of back to backs because, you know, you deserve a good minute.

Interviewer: Oh, I love that idea. And how does the idea of a portfolio life help people achieve a better balance between work and everything else?

Bree Groff: Yeah, yeah. So we've been talking about how do you make your Monday through Friday or your working schedule a little bit better. But part of what I focus on is how do we also make sure that work is not taking over the sum of our lives.

It's very, very easy to fall into a rut where at any given moment where we're not working, we're either recovering from work or preparing for work. I'm scrolling on my phone because my brain is just zonked out or I'm doing laundry, so I have something nice to wear to work tomorrow. But there should be so much more to our lives that work should really only comprise one joy of many.

Now, not to make anyone feel bad who's in this sort of work matrix because it's very easy to experience that kind of life, but the antidote is thinking about our time and our lives more in a portfolio sense. So we think of a pie chart where one slice, maybe a big slice, but one slice of how you're spending your time and attention is going to be work. But what are your other slices?

So this can be things like a hobby or family or friends or rest or exercise or anything that you're trying to get good at. Maybe you're trying to get good at pickling vegetables. I don't know.

Something beyond work and something ideally beyond productivity. Something that is not simply, I'm doing this in order to, but something that you find joy in. And the reason this works is you can think about it in the same way as a stock portfolio.

You would never want to have your life savings in one stock because what happens when that stock maybe goes away? And we can use the same analogy to think about our work. Now, if you have a bad day at work and work is your whole portfolio, now you've had a bad day in life or you get fired.

We have to think about how do we diversify, not income streams, that's something different, but how do we diversify the sources of joy in our lives such that we are resilient to bad days at work and they don't define the quality of our days.

Interviewer: Yes. And for someone listening to this podcast who wants to reshape their work day, what top three things do you suggest they try to do differently tomorrow?

Bree Groff: Sure. So I'll give you two for work and one for life. So at work, when I get asked this question a lot, it's like, I'm tired, I breathe, what do I do?

So the first thing is connections and relationships, they go a long way. All the longitudinal studies of human happiness are very clear. What matters most is the quality of our relationships.

And it's a little weird to me that we don't prioritise these at work. So what is the smallest way you can improve one of your connections at work? I like to start with ask a random question to a colleague.

One of my favourite questions is, what's your middle name? You can just randomly ask it, like, hey, is it weird that we worked together for two years and I don't know your middle name? What's your middle name?

And, you know, it's not too intrusive of a question, but you'll hear stories about family history or you'll make somebody blush or, you know, you'll go down a minute-long rabbit hole about name spellings or whatnot or childhood stories. It's just a, it's a way to connect with somebody beyond, can you send me that report by the end of the day? So a microactive connection is my first tip.

Other questions there can be things like, wait, do you have siblings? I don't know this about you. Or do you have any pets?

Or wait, do you eat eggs? How do you like your eggs? That's one of my favourite workshop opener questions.

So a little microactive connection, just get curious about somebody. I guarantee they're going to like it and feel flattered. And now you've made their day too.

The second thing is, in whatever way feels possible, try a little mischief, especially if you're at a moment where work feels like dull and drab and you're barely getting through. Mischief is such a good antidote because it gives you a little jolt of, hmm, I'm kind of doing something I shouldn't be doing. And it's kind of fun.

And you're maybe winking with somebody at the office and it's all, it's all jest, right? So this isn't like big mischief, like we're going to screw up our project or embezzlement. Like that's not mischief.

Mischief is like, let's rearrange our desks at the office. And if we get in trouble with the office facilities team, like, oh, so be it. We'll say sorry later.

Or you're putting a little riddle in at the end of your presentation. Or you're using a crazy typeface. You know, like these are not things that are threatening your business's bottom line.

It's just a little bit silly. Like try putting Comic Sans in and then just see the reactions. You're going to have reactions of like disgust and delight and like riotous laughter.

Like why did you put that? I can't stand. It's these little acts, almost like the show The Office where Jim puts the stapler in the jello.

It's a little act of mischief. And this is what confidence looks like when you value fun. You're like, I'm going to try something on.

So that's a second one. And then the third more like practical tool for your life is if you feel like work is eating my life. I cannot stop the flood.

Then what you should do, look a few weeks out on your calendar and start to block time for life. It's very hard once work comes to eat your life. Like you have meetings in the evenings and now you're blocked some time to get this thing done.

You can get it done. Once work has taken over your life, it's very hard to say like, oh, I can't make that meeting. I have to go to my kid's softball game.

It's much easier to decline a meeting due to a preexisting family commitment. You don't have to say what it is, but look a few weeks out and say, I'm going to block this hour to go on a run. I'm going to block this hour.

It could be anything to make pancakes with my kid. So this isn't you not doing your work or not failing to show up, but it's not going to kill your performance review or your business. If one day from five to six, you're like, oh, I'm logging off right at five o'clock because I have a family commitment and that family commitment is petting your cat.

I don't know. But the point is get there first. If you can prioritise life on your calendar, which is really the most honest reflection of your priorities, then you've got a fighting chance at defending really the most beautiful parts of your life, your relationships, your rest, your leisure, your health.

So there's a few things to do, a little checklist for you to start the week.

Interviewer: Well, yeah, thank you very much. I'm going to give that a go and such simple and easy to grasp things. But I can see that even just doing one of those would make a difference.

Tell us, how can people get hold of a copy of the book?

Bree Groff: Sure. So you can find it wherever books are sold, but more specifically on my website, Bree Groff dot com, B-R-E-E-G-R-O-F-F dot com. And from there you can find links to order.

You can also find me. I have a sub stack that you can follow and on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Interviewer: That's fantastic. Thank you. Well, what a fascinating conversation.