Want to be more persuasive, have better recall, and think more creatively? You need to laugh more!

and gifts will get sent around to celebrate. For so many people, work is serious, but it doesn't have to be that way. So how can we deliberately bring more laughs and levity into the work that we do. My name is doctor Amantha Imba. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium, And this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. When seventeen to twenty year olds were asked if they smiled all laughed a lot yesterday,

eighty five percent said yes. Now, this figure drops to sixty percent when we hit our mid twenties, right when most of us enter the workforce. We are taught that work is serious and that serious things don't mix with humor or levity. But in fact, research suggests that bringing humor into the office will significantly improve our work. So, firstly,

humor helps us get what we want. In a study that was conducted by researchers Karen O'Quinn and Joel Aronoff, participants were able to get buyers to pay an eighteen percent higher price when they used humor in their negotiation, and also, buyers reported feeling more positively towards this when humor was used, and this is despite the fact that they parted with more money. Humor also helps us remember things.

In research published in the Journal of Experimental Education, students who were taught material where the teacher used humor remembered more of what they learnt compared to a group where the teacher did not make any jokes. This led to the humor group scoring eleven percent higher in their final exams. Now, also, humour helps us think more creatively, so research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology explored the impact

of humor on problem solving. Half of participants were asked to watch an emotionally neutral video before undertaking a creative problem solving task while the other group watched a funny video. Those who watched the funny video were twice as likely to solve the puzzle. So what happened is that laughing helped overcome functional fixedness, which is where we get stuck in the same pattern of and it helped people make

new connections and associations. So there's a lot to be said for the importance of humor at work, which begs the question how do we be funnier now? A while ago I had Naomi Bagdonis on the podcast and she teaches a class in humor to stand for Business School students NBA students, no less, and is the co author of Humor Seriously. And I want to share a few of the strategies that she shared with me on how

I work. So firstly, apply the rule of three. The rule of three involves making a simple list where the first two elements lead people in one direction and then the third reveals something unexpected. So remember Naomi gave an example where you know she might say, I miss so many things about in person office life. I miss the supportive eye contact, I miss spontaneous lunches with colleagues, and

I miss wearing pants. So this might seem like a really simple hack, but once you start noticing frameworks like the rule of three, you'll start seeing them everywhere in comedy, and then they'll start to come more naturally to you as you're trying to incorporate humor into your everyday life. Okay, second strategy is use callbacks. Callbacks are a technique in comedy where you make reference to a moment that already

got a laugh. So something Naomi shared with me with me is she said, when she's on a call, especially if it's with a new client, she will look for moments where they organically laughed together. So they're probably going to have a laugh at some point, and she'll jot down the moment where they laughed and bring it back in an email. So, for example, Naomi was recently on the phone with someone she was trying to invite to come and speak at her course at Stanford in Humor,

and this person joked that he was superstitious. So Naomi wrote in the emas well, back to him, we're so hoping that you can come. We penciled you in while crossing our fingers, stroking rabbit foot key chains and throwing one thousand pennies into wishing wells that you can join us. So callbacks can be an effective strategy to apply within meetings and also emails to bring some levity to what

can otherwise be places where humor is seriously lacking. Now, one final strategy that Naomi shared with me that I will share with you today, which is never punch down. So there's a ruling comedy that you never want to punch down. Naomi explains this as this means that you never want to make the target of your joke someone who is lower status than you. So, if you're the highest person on the totem pole, like let's just say you're a boss or a manager, making fun of yourself

is a really safe place to go. But maybe don't make fun of people that report into you. Now, if you're not the highest status person in the room, it can be okay to punch up and make someone higher status than you the target of a joke, and doing so can actually help you gain status and influence. So by deliberately injecting more humor and levity into your work, not only will your work become more enjoyable, but you will reap some really practical benefits such as enhanced creativity

and greater cutthrough in your communication. And as John Sherman once said, if people are laughing, it means they are paying attention. Now, that is it for today. If you are looking for some more tips to improve the way that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things that I've discovered that help me work better, ranging from interesting research findings through to gadgets

and software that I'm really loving. So if you're keen for that, you can sign up at Howiwork dot co. That's How I Work dot c o. How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Seat Studios. And thank you to Martin Nimba who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound awesome. I'll see you next time.