What if I Make This Work Fun Again?
A few years ago, something shifted, and not in a good way.
Workshops started to feel heavy.
I felt like I had to get things right the first time.
Failure didn’t feel like an option. Mistakes didn’t feel allowed.
Everything I used to love, sketching ideas, organizing thoughts with sticky notes, making sense of messy problems, started to feel like a factory process. It was like the outputs had become more important than the outcomes. More important than the real takeaways of design and innovation work.
The joy had been traded for an unhealthy pursuit of perfection, and worse, validation. I felt like I had to prove myself all the time. It didn’t happen suddenly.
It was like fog rolling in over skies that used to be nothing but blue.
I wasn’t having fun at work anymore.
And I recognize what a privilege it is to miss fun at work, because it means you’ve had it before. But I’ve been missing it. And the fun has been replaced by anxiety and pressure created by no one but myself.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped experimenting.
I stopped making things for the joy of it.
I stopped asking “what if?” or “can we try this?”
My curiosity didn’t die, but it wasn’t as healthy as it used to be. I shifted my focus toward optimizing, performing, and checking boxes, rather than innovating or creating joy for myself and others. The more I tried to conform, the more anxious I became.
Every workshop became a referendum.
Every design review, a judgment on my value.
And yes, work should be serious.
KPIs matter. Designers should help companies make or save money.
Strategists should ensure we’re building things that are truly useful.
The stakes should be high. The impact should be real.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun along the way, right?
Lately, I’ve been working hard to find the fun again. For me, the fun lives in the early moments, the 0-to-1 stretch, where things are uncertain, messy, full of possibility. I love exploring what’s possible, not just guiding what’s already been done.
But I also know I need to find the fun in the parts of the work where I’m most needed, even when it’s not what I want to be doing.
So now I’m asking myself:
How can I make this fun again?
What if I focused on being present and energized while facilitating, instead of trying to create the perfect outcome? What if I stopped worrying about designs that check every box and focused more on whether they’re making a difference for somebody?
What if I gave myself permission to make mistakes, have fun, and just try again?
Right now, I’m leaning back into experimentation. I’m diving deep into the parts of my work that I love, and creating better mental boundaries around the parts I don’t.
And I’m starting to understand: Maybe I can still do great work, maybe even better work if I stop trying so hard all the time and just trust myself. Trust my experience. And let myself have some fun.
So here’s to messy sketches. Failed prototypes. Design decisions that didn’t quite pan out.
Let’s learn from them. But let’s also find the fun in them