Luke Barber - Work Like Your Dog: Fifty Ways to Work Less, Play More, and Earn More

Many years ago I had a strange dream in which the ancient philosopher Plato called me on the telephone. Collect. This guy calls me all the way from Athens, Greece, in 375 B.C., and he has the nerve to reverse the charges.

Big spender that I am, I accept the call.

In the dream, Plato tells me that he has been asked to make a speech at Aristotles birthday party and he doesnt have any ideas. He wants to know if I can help him out. So I give him the line What, then, is the right way of living? Life must be lived as play. He was very excited by the idea and promised to call me back and let me know how it all worked out, but he never did.

Several years later I was thumbing through Platos Dialogues and was astonished to discover that precise quote. I told some of my colleagues about it, and they insisted that I must have subconsciously known about Platos statement before my dream, even though I had no conscious memory of it.

I myself think the guy ripped me off.

Now, Im not altogether sure what Plato meant when he used those lines, but I know what I meant. I meant that the best way to live a joyful, healthy, low-stress life is to choose to see work as a game and ourselves as the players. And whatever happens on the job is just a part of that game.

What are the characteristics of a successful game? First, it should be fun for the players and enriching to their lives, or whats the point of playing? Second, it should have a set of rules and strategies governing it, which we can study in order to play more successfully. This book is intended to be a guidebook for playing the Game of Work.

Lets use tennis as an example. If you are playing a game of tennis and your opponent smashes an ace by you, you have a choice. Clearly there is nothing you can do about the fact that you have been acedthat, as they say, is history The choice you have is how you respond to the situation.

If you are really playing tennis as a game, then you move over to the other side of the court and wait for the next serve. It doesnt help you or the game to stare at the ground and complain. It doesnt help to smash the turf with your racquet and start making excuses for yourself. As a game player, you need only move to the other side of the court, andbecause this is the way the game is set upyou get another chance.

This, I know, seems incredibly simple and obvious. Yet, when our life at work serves us an ace, many of us act as if its the end of the world. Even the smallest of problems or mistakes can get blown completely out of proportion. We spend all kinds of time and energy living in the past, analyzing, criticizing, making excuses, worrying, and generally making ourselves miserable. What we really need to do is to move to the other side of the court. The game of work lets us try it again. We have the power to choose how we respond to the aces life serves us.

If you treat your work as a game, then as soon as youve been served an ace you can begin to look at the possible responses available to you. You can start by saying, Well, I certainly loused up that easy sale! or That was definitely the worst deal I ever made! or Now I can kiss that promotion good-bye! But if you want your work life to be a joyful game, then you have to start moving forward from there. You have to remember that your goal is to get to the other side of the court and to get on with the game of work.

You can ask yourself, What can I learn from this so I wont make the same mistake next time? You can remind yourself that you want to be a person who is constantly growing and improving yourself, and you cant do that if you never take any risks and never make any mistakes. Instead of whining, complaining, or beating yourself over the head with your racquet for messing up, you can say to yourself, Hey, nobodys perfect how can I learn from my mistakes if I never make any?

From time immemorial, frustrated parents have said the same thing to their children: Lets play a game called Clean Up Your Room! Although this popular attempt at parental manipulation seldom works, it does express a wonderful ideathat hard work can be fun and that anything can be turned into a game.

Dr. Ernie Lavorini is a master at bringing play to his work. The first thing I noticed when I walked into Dr. Lavorinis dental office was a large sign on the reception desk that said, BE KIND TO MY EMPLOYEES. I LOVE THEM ALL. ERNIE

The employees in Dr. Lavorinis office have gone river rafting together and have made company outings to places like the racetrack, the water slides, and the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. Every year they all go holiday shopping together and then out to dinnerfunded by the office. Its so much fun to go into the city at Christmastime, says Ernie. We never tire of it. We all love the way San Francisco looks lit up at night.

One time Dr. Lavorini even arranged for his employees to be kidnapped. A bunch of his friends arrived at the office with pillowcases over their heads, herded all the employees into their getaway cars, and spirited them away for a day at the beach.

But what about all your patients? I asked Ernie dubiously.

Oh, the receptionists were in on it. He laughed. It looked like we had a full day booked, but actually there were no patients scheduled.

Most people dont associate the idea of fun with a trip to the dentist. But Dr. Lavorini tries to make even that unlikely venue an upbeat experience for his patients. One day when I needed to have some emergency dental work, Dr. Lavorini said to me, You need a crown on one of your teeth. But Im going to show you how to turn a have-to-have situation into a get-to-have situation. Ernie explained that he could put a tattoo on the crown, a picture of anything I wanted. And since the crown would be on one of my back teeth, completely out of sight, no one would know about it except for me. And it would be a completely painless tattoo, since he would make it directly on the crown, before it was fitted on my tooth.

I chose a cometa silver star with a blue and yellow tail streaming out behind it. And I smile every time I look at itin fact, every time I even think about it. Its not that easy to look at, actuallyI have to pull my lower lip down with one finger, squeeze up close to the mirror, and squint out of one eye. But it always looks great. And if