241: How to Have More Fun While Achieving More with Dave Crenshaw

Pete Mockaitis
Dave, thanks so much for joining us here on the How To Be Awesome At Your Job podcast.

Dave Crenshaw
Thanks, Pete. Glad to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, first and foremost, I think we need to hear a little bit about you and Chuck Norris. What’s the backstory?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, for those unfamiliar, Chuck Norris facts are jokes that have been making a round the internet for, gosh, close to 10 years now, and they’re just statements of just ridiculous strength and power that Chuck has, things like Superman wears Chuck Norris pajamas, or Chuck Norris makes onions cry. And they’re fairly popular, and Chuck heard about these and put together The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book.

Well, in The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book he cites me and my book, The Myth of Multitasking, and it’s under the Chuck Norris fact, by the way, “Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird.” So, that is the connection and there are lots of things that I’ve done. I’ve been on Time Magazine, BBC, all these different places, but there’s nothing that will ever be as cool as being mentioned by Chuck Norris in The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book.

Pete Mockaitis
That is cool. And so, I guess Chuck was on board with your perspective in that multitasking or switch-tasking, if you will, is a thief and suboptimal and etcetera.

Dave Crenshaw
Yes, he does not believe in multitasking, and he believes in focusing on one thing at a time.

Pete Mockaitis
Boy, it feels like there’s a Chuck Norris fact.

Dave Crenshaw
There is actually. So, when that happened, I sent that out to my social media followers, and said, “I’ll give my books and The Chuck Norris Fact Book to somebody who can come up with the best Chuck Norris fact about multitasking.” And the winner was, “Chuck Norris doesn’t multitask. It’s never taken him more than one punch.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, we’re having fun. And so, I want to talk about your latest book The Power of Having Fun which is a compelling title, and I’m so intrigued to get the details on this about what I read thus far. So, could you give us your view? What’s sort of the main idea behind this book and why is it important now?

Dave Crenshaw
Sure. The first thing that I want to say is that I am a productivity expert. I help build productive leaders. So, when I’m talking about The Power of Having Fun I’m coming at it primarily from a productivity standpoint. And what I’ve learned, it’s sort of the cousin to The Myth of Multitasking. The Myth of Multitasking is about what you shouldn’t do. You shouldn’t try to do multiple things at the same time.

Well, The Power of Having Fun is about what you should do. If you want to be more productive you must make having fun a top priority in your schedule. It is something that you should put in your calendar and protect just as much as you protect an appointment with your most important client, with your boss, with anyone who is critical to your success because it is critical to your success.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, Dave, this is a message I love to hear because I’m subject to some of those, I don’t know, guilt things about not doing or achieving enough, or “should I be having fun in this moment” type things, so I love this thesis. So, could you back it up a little bit? Like it almost sounds too good to be true. Like, why? Why is having fun this important?

Dave Crenshaw
Sure. Well, I can back it up. The first thing that I want to say, though, before I go into any kind of studies or research or science behind it, is I am less interested in the research of others and more interested in the research or the experiment of you. What that means is sometimes we get all lathered up with all these studies and statistics.

And what really matters is, “Does this apply to you?” So, rather than taking my word for it, and going, “Well, that’s what everybody should do,” I would encourage people who are listening to this to test it, to put it into application into your life, maybe just for two weeks, and try that experiment because, ultimately, that is the most powerful proof that I can offer.

And what I believe you’ll find is what many of my leadership clients have found which is that when you make fun a priority you get more done, you’re more productive, you’re happier, and you’re more creative.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, yeah, I’m with you there that, certainly, like that’s where the rubber meets the road and sort of the ultimate bottom line there is not so much that it worked for this population of people studied over at the University of such and such. But is it going to work for you?

Dave Crenshaw
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
But just so that the listeners get fired up, and me fired up, about doing such a test, could you share some of that research or data that suggests it’s extremely probable that if we do this test we will like what we see?

Dave Crenshaw
Sure. Well, my favorite one is it comes from a study, and this is the actual study title, The Role of Dopamine in Learning, Memory and Performance in a Water Escape Task.

Pete Mockaitis
Water escape. I’m thinking of Harry Houdini right now.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, yeah. This was published by the University of Washington not too long ago. And what it was is a study to show the role of dopamine in how well a mouse could learn and perform over time. So, what they did was they had two different groups. They had a group that had naturally-occurring dopamine in their body, and then a group that was deprived artificially of dopamine occurring in their body.

Now, if you’re not familiar with what dopamine is, it is the motivation-inducing chemical that your body naturally creates when something enjoyable happens, like having fun, like taking a break, whatever is fun for you, reading a book, going for a walk, playing video games, whatever it is, your body releases a little dopamine into your system.

Pete Mockaitis
Like even the dark side of fun.

Dave Crenshaw
That’s a whole different topic though. Here’s the thing, when mice had dopamine in their system, naturally injected, they learned faster and better. In other words, their performance over time improved, they got better and better at escaping from this little water task that they had setup.

The mice, though, that had been deprived of naturally-occurring dopamine, their performance got worse over time. In other words, the more they did it the worse they got at it. They didn’t perform better, they got slower, they made more mistakes. Now, here’s where it comes into our world. We aren’t mice in a maze but many people treat ourselves as if we are.

We deprive ourselves of having fun which creates that naturally-occurring dopamine, which means that when we do that, we’re getting worse at our performance. Every single day that you persist at your desk with skipping those vacation days that you should’ve used, you’re not getting better. And, in fact, the research backs that up as well.

Project Time Off found that when people take more than 10 days of vacation a year they were more likely to receive a raise and get promoted than those who did not take all their vacation days.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. All right. That’s good stuff. That’s good stuff. And do you have maybe one more you can lay on us with regard to research or studies. I’m feeling it.

Dave Crenshaw
So, well, I’m going to shift gears just slightly because it does relate. One thing that I talk about in The Power of Having Fun is the need to not just have an oasis is what I call them. An oasis is this fun break that you schedule in your calendar. And one thing that I found was that when couples take time to go on a date once per week, and that is also part of having fun.

When a couple has that time, according to the National Marriage Project, they are 3.5 times more likely to report being very happy in their marriages compared to those who did not spend that time together. And additionally, if they just had one dedicated time per week, they reported higher satisfaction in communication and sexuality in the bedroom.

And that is so critical because of other studies that show, that talk about the work-home resources model. In other words, when you’re happy at home you are more likely to succeed at work. And if you have people in your life that you care about, if you want them to be successful at work or at school, spend time with them. Not only will you both feel better about your relationship but you both will succeed more in your career.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I like it. I dig it. So, convinced. So, let’s jump in, then. When it comes to fun, I mean, fun is fun. We like it. We’d like to have some more of it. And so, I’d like to get maybe a bit of perspective when it comes the work time versus fun time, although, hopefully, work is fun but dedicated fun, rejuvenation, non-work time. Is there sort of like a sweet spot or a ratio? Or how do we think about kind of the relative application of precious time between the two?

Dave Crenshaw
Sure. So, I define an oasis as something that is brief and recurring in your schedule, and you want to have oases of different scales. You want to have a daily oasis, a weekly oasis, a monthly oasis and a yearly oasis. Let’s knock down the yearly first or cover it. That’s usually what people refer to as a vacation, all right?

So, we want to make sure that we’re keeping that and having that, but that’s not enough. It’s too far in between. We’re depriving ourselves for far too long a period of time. So, we also want to have once a month, perhaps a half-day or a day that we take that is reserved in advanced just for us to relax and enjoy ourselves, do something that’s fun.

Then once a week, you have something that’s a little shorter, maybe one to two hours once per week that you relax and enjoy this oasis. And then, finally, you have a daily oasis that’s occurring once every day that’s in the neighborhood of 30 minutes to an hour, and that can be anything from watching your favorite Netflix program to working on a hobby, whatever it is that you find enjoyable.

But all of these should not be something that you fit in the seams. The problem, the mistake that many people make with having fun is they do it after everything gets done. They say, “Well, once I do this then I will be able to have it.” But instead we want to have a clear commitment in our schedule of when that’s going to occur.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, when it comes to the scheduling, any pro tips for scheduling well?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, the first thing is just to do it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Dave Crenshaw
That sounds so basic yet I’d worked with executives all around the world and I’ll tell you that people are not using their calendar the way that they should. There’s way too much – gosh, what I’d say? Just kind of going with the flow, and that’s not just a problem with having fun, it’s a problem with time management in general. So, you want to get in the habit of using that calendar as a time budget, a commitment in your calendar.

The next thing I would say is try to find natural ebbs and flows in your day. So, there are typically times in the day where you’re going to have more downtime, you’re going to be more relaxed, or not as many interruptions. That’s usually a good time to schedule one of these oases.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m very intrigued by something you said there with regard to you see this with lots of your clients, there’s calendar misuse, there’s way too much going with the flow. Can you expand upon that a little bit? What do you mean by that? And what’s the superior alternative?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, what I mean by that is we are driven by the culture of now.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Dave Crenshaw
The culture of now says, “If someone asks me a question, I have to respond to it now. If I’m going to do something, I need to do it right now.” You know, I got a neighbor who does, just kind of as a side hobby, does T-shirts for people. And she said to me, this is almost before, she said, “If someone wants me to do it, I don’t want them to tell me the date by which it gets done. I want them to tell me, ‘I need this tomorrow.’”

Pete Mockaitis
They’d want that.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, they’re driven by the adrenaline. But the problem with the culture of now is that it contradicts itself. You cannot do it all now. And if you’re allowing all the inputs to come at you at once you are setting yourself up to try to multitask which is going to really screw things up. So, the superior method is to move to the culture of when.

The culture of when relies upon the calendar, and says, “I am going to work on this project, and this is when I’m going to do it. I’m going to respond to your quick questions, and this is when I’m going to do it. I’m going to make these T-shirts, and here’s the time that I have dedicated in my week to making T-shirts.” That is far superior, it helps you live a more relaxed and less stressful life, and creates opportunities for having fun as well.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, Dave, I’ve seen this in my own life, and I think that in some ways it’s just a matter of getting real about what are the commitments that are actually are you committed versus what resources or time do you really have available, and thus what is actually going to get done versus what is not going to get done.

And to be in the driver seat for actually making those decisions as opposed to, I don’t know, sometimes I feel like a crazy person just like, “Oh, the next thing. Oh, the next thing,” as opposed to getting real, like, “No. In fact, you’re overbooked, you’re overcommitted, overscheduled, and it’s an impossible fantasy to believe that all of those things will be done. And so, it’s sort of like endure the pain now of realizing it ain’t going to happen, and then just decide to schedule, budget the time in a way that is most aligned with your highest order of objectives.

And I know you’ve heard of this and I’ve shared it, but from time to time, you know, everything is sort of descends at once and it’s like, oops, it’s time to take a step back and recollect and get real about the time allocations.

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, and when you talk about that one thing that really comes to mind is how so many people right now are wearing the busy badge as a badge of honor, “How are you doing?” “Well, I’m really busy,” as if that means that we’re being successful. And the reality is the busy is a white flag of surrender not a badge of honor.

It’s showing that you cannot control your time. What really matters is what results are you getting. In fact, I teach people, I teach my clients that if anyone says, “I’m busy,” to follow up by saying, “Great. What results are you getting?” And what you’re trying to do is shift your mind away from perpetual motion to productivity.

Productivity is not about perpetual motion. It’s about finding your rhythm, and The Power of Having Fun reinforces that, because so many people feel that taking a break to have fun is not productive but in fact it’s part of that rhythm. Taking that downtime is giving you the ability to really perform at maximum levels when you go back to work, and that’s really what rhythm is about.

If you think about rhythm in a song, there are periods of high intensity, there are middle periods that are sort of drifting along, and then there are silence, and all of those things come together to make a beautiful piece of music. It’s the same thing with our personal productivity.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. I dig that. Well, so then, yes, back to having fun, you know, and these oases. I’m curious then, it seems like we have our own intuitive sense for what we like to do, what we find to be fun. But I’d love to know are there some kind of particular components of these oases that make them extra-rejuvenatingly awesome?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah. Well, and it’s interesting. You would think that people could figure out what’s fun for them yet, gosh, a lot of very successful executives that I worked with, when you ask them, “What do you do for fun?” there’s a very long pause.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “I forgot. I haven’t done it much.”

Dave Crenshaw
Right. Right. So, one of the steps in The Power of Having Fun is discovery, is going through that process. And one of the things that I did in the book was kind of fun, was I surveyed 500 children from all across the US and asked them two questions. The first question, “What do you like to do for fun?” and number two, “What would you say to an adult who has forgotten how to have fun and be happy?”

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, nice.

Dave Crenshaw
And the list that was generated that I put in the book, of all the activities that kids like to do for fun had a purpose. It’s not just, “Oh, this is cute. Look at what kids say.” What I’m doing is asking adults to answer the question, “What did you used to do for fun?” When you were a kid you knew how to have fun. If someone says, “What do you do for fun?” there’s no hesitation. You got a list. My kids have a list of things that they can do to have fun.

And so, what you can do is you don’t have to act like a kid. Personally, I believe adults should like adults. I know some people have a different philosophy on that. But what you can do is find the adult equivalent of what you used to do as a child. So, for instance, I used to like to play with Legos, so perhaps building models is a way to do it. Or maybe doing more advanced Legos, or building something else, right?

Or if you like to play outside, you like to run around maybe you can start doing mountain biking, or walk the dog, or whatever it is that’s enjoyable to you. So, you call upon the wisdom that you had when you were a child to figure out what to do for fun as an adult.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. That’s good. That’s good. And so, then, so you’re reflecting back, “Okay, when I was a kid what did I like to do and what could be some grownup equivalence?” Any other sort of pro tips in the discovery phase?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, another thing that you want to do is make sure that you’re focusing on something that is constructive not destructive, and that goes back to your comment about sex and drugs and stuff like that. It’s important to recognize that when I talk about having fun I am talking about things that build you up and make you happier or don’t have negative consequences.

And one example of this is one female executive that I worked with. She determined that for her, one of her little moments of fun in the day was to enjoy a piece of chocolate, it was just to sit and savor that and enjoy that. And for her that’s not a problem but if somebody else has an eating disorder, using food as a potential reward is not what I’m talking about. So, in that case you’re going to want to find something else that builds you up.

You also want to find things that are well within your budget or free. We’re not talking about spending lots of money and it is not necessary to spend lots of money. Another female business owner that I worked with, for her, her daily oasis was to go for a walk, and she put it in these particular terms. She said, “I want to go for a walk down the hill, go see Bessie the cow,” which there’s a cow pasture near where her office was, “and pat Bessie on the nose and talk to her a little bit and then come back.” For her that was enough of an oasis.

So, let’s make sure that it’s constructive, that it’s cheap to free, and that it is, as I mentioned before, that it’s brief.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. Well, so now, working through your stages here, we sort of naturally organically covered it, we got the permission to play because we’ve seen, “Hey, there’s real research that the dopamine is going to make you better. It’s powerful.” Getting to the bottom of what’s fun and scheduling it. When it comes to putting it on the calendar you said, “It’s key just to do it instead of going with the flow.”

Dave Crenshaw
Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
And to acknowledge the ebbs and flows and rhythms of when you can do that scheduling. I’m curious, are there any kind of patterns you see in terms of beginning the day, end of the day, lunch, or are just kind of tend to make a lot of good sense for a lot of people?

Dave Crenshaw
Usually, I see this right around lunch or at the end of the workday or in the evening. Those are kind of the three major places where most people put their oasis. Typically, in the morning people aren’t ready for it yet. They want to go to work, they’re ready to do work, but there’s nothing wrong with taking that break in addition to lunch.

And notice that I emphasized that it is not lunch. Lunch is what you need to fuel your body then the oasis is what you need to fuel your emotion and your energy. Two separate activities. But those are typically the three major places where people end up scheduling it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so then how about protecting that time you’ve scheduled. How do you do that effectively?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, so protection, stage four, that’s about looking at some of the things that could get in the way. So, the perspective that I come from as I say, “You want to think of these as different diseases that can creep into your life and you want to inoculate yourself against them. You want to have a strategy to prepare yourself against them.”

For instance, let’s talk about the busy bacteria, right? We talked about how busy is a problem. And so, one thing that we want to do is get in the habit of scheduling buffer time in our day. And buffer time is basically scheduling space for nothing. And that sounds like, “My gosh, who is this guy telling me to schedule time for nothing? How can that be productive?” And I will tell you that it’s one of the keys to being highly productive especially in our day, in the 21st century.

You know, back 34 years ago when people talk about time management and productivity, it was about maximizing every minute, every hour that you had on your schedule. In the 21st century, we have a radically different problem. Our problem is time protection and time reclamation. We are going to get interrupted because of the pace of technology, so we must have extra space in our schedule to accommodate for those interruptions not scheduling our calendar to a razor’s edge.

So, how does that relate to having fun? Well, if I’ve scheduled my calendar right to the minute and then fun comes up and I’m behind because I got interrupted earlier in the day, then what happens? “Oh, well, this doesn’t matter. I need to take care of work, right?” But if we have that buffer space, and if we’re living well within our means in terms of the schedule, we will feel that we have enough time to have fun which we should.

Pete Mockaitis
I hear you. And so then with the buffer space, so you schedule time for nothing. So, it’s interesting, I guess I’m thinking about my email inbox and how it lately has been expanding. And so, then when you say schedule time for nothing, it’s not even scheduling time for inbox clearing which I’ve been thinking, “Maybe this is what has to happen if this is ever going to go down,” but rather to just nothing-nothing.

And so, I’m wondering though do you have like a game plan in terms of, “Okay, if I schedule time for nothing, and then in fact nothing comes up, is there like the backup statement or is this just like, I will sit in silence?”

Dave Crenshaw
Oh, no. Of course, if that time comes up and you don’t have anything then you could use it to help check your inbox or do whatever you want to do. But the thing is when that happens then you feel like you’ve got extra time rather than feeling like, “I can’t keep up with all this. It’s too much.”

And, by the way, what you’re bringing up in terms of just getting your inbox to zero, again that’s a different topic I cover in my course Time Management Fundamentals on LinkedIn Learning. And in that I take people through the entire process of creating a time management system so that you’re bringing your inbox to zero on a regular basis.

And that sort of highlights something that I mentioned in the book which is having good time management, having solid principles that you’re living is an important component of making sure that you’re having this oasis in the day. Because if you’re completely out of control with your time management, if you can’t keep your desk organized, if you can’t keep up with the papers and the email and everything that’s coming at you, then, yes, what I’m asking people to do to have fun is going to become a very tall order.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And so, the final stage is just enjoying the oasis. How does one enjoy fun all the more?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, so this one is a really fun one. Whenever I think about this principle of enjoyment I think of one client that I had, and she told me how she was on vacation. She was at a beautiful tropical location, she’s sitting down enjoying the surf and, well, the surf and the sand is around her, she’s got a tropical drink next to her, and then she’s on her phone scheduling, planning her next vacation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Dave Crenshaw
And she said, “Holy crap, I have a disease.” And so many people have this disease. When fun things happen to us they’re unable to take them in. I’ve experienced this in the past where you have something wonderful happen to you and it just bounces right off of you, and that’s so much a symptom of the multitasking world that we’re living in, our inability to feel it yet we must take time to allow our body to take it in so that we can get that precious dopamine in a positive way.

So, here’s the three-step system that I talk about in the book I gave to this client, and it’s head, heart, mouth. And it’s always helpful to actually point to the body parts to reinforce this in your mind. You point to your head, you point to your heart, you point to your mouth, and here’s how it works.

Head. You intellectually acknowledge something great that happened. So, new instance of my daughter giving me this wonderful thank you card. I intellectually say, to my mind, “That was great to get a card from my daughter. That was enjoyable.” Now that sounds very clinical, and it is. It’s designed to be.

Pete Mockaitis
“I enjoy this experience.”

Dave Crenshaw
Yes, exactly. And it’s supposed to be like that because what you are doing is you’re stopping your brain and saying, “Whoa, don’t move to the next thing. This was good.” Okay? Then we go to the emotional aspect of the heart by asking a question, “How did this make me feel?” This creates an open loop that the brain must close.

So, now I have to think about, “Well, it made me feel really good. It made me feel like I’m a good dad that my daughter would take the time to write this card to me,” whatever it is that comes to your mind. And then we move to mouth which is an acknowledgement, a verbal or written, some sort of external acknowledgement.

So, you can say out loud, “This was great to go on this vacation.” Or, in the case of this card that my daughter gave me, I’ve made another card for her and gave it back to her, and said, “Thank you so much for doing this.” I’m a very practical guy. This isn’t touchy-feely stuff. This is brain science.

What you are doing is you’re strengthening the neural pathways of enjoyment. You’re strengthening your enjoyment muscle and you’re restarting your ability to actually feel good when good things happen to you. It’s a simple principle but it’s powerful. If you practice it over and over, it will completely change your perspective on what’s happening around you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Awesome. Well, Dave, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, just if you’re curious about it and not sure if you want to buy the book, you can dive in by taking, there’s an assessment, a free assessment you can get at PowerofHavingFun.com. It’s a 21-question assessment called the Fun Scorecard and you can check your score and find out how well you’re doing in terms of having fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. Thank you. So, now can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Dave Crenshaw
It’s probably not going to be what you expect but I do mention this in the book, and the quote is, “Blessed is he who expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Please elaborate.

Dave Crenshaw
Well, so much of happiness in life comes from a matter of expectations met or exceeded. And where people get themselves into trouble is they set expectations or even just kind of go with the flow and create expectations that other people have for them without really being conscious about it. And instead, if you go through life with saying, “You know what? I don’t know what’s going to happen. I can’t expect what’s going to happen,” then when great things occur, you are more likely to be happy and more likely to be successful.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. I dig that. So, now, at the same time, Dave, I’m wondering about like, you know, should we call them standards that we have for ourselves or colleagues that we work with?

Dave Crenshaw
Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Pete Mockaitis
So, in a way a standard is kind of like an expectation, like, “You have met my expectations or you have exceeded my expectations.”

Dave Crenshaw
I look at it a different way.

Pete Mockaitis
All right.

Dave Crenshaw
I use the word values. I use the word vision and values. A vision is where I’m trying to go           in my life, it’s a place that I’m trying to accomplish. And I do think that we should set our visions high. And values are the ways in which we live our life. But you said an interesting thing which is other people not meeting that standard, and if you make your happiness dependent upon other people meeting your expectations you will always be disappointed.

You cannot control the actions of others. Even if you’re a boss and people are getting paid to do stuff, you cannot control their actions. All you can do is get them excited about the result that you’re trying to get and get them on your side. There’s a very big difference, and a kind of – this is a whole other subject – of hinting at the difference between managing and micromanaging.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And how about a favorite book?

Dave Crenshaw
You mean besides mine?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah.

Dave Crenshaw
You know, I’m a big fan of 7 Habits by Stephen Covey. That was probably the book that really inspired me to do what I do. So, yeah, I think there’s a lot of great wisdom in there that I lean on still to this day.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And how about a favorite tool?

Dave Crenshaw
You know, my favorite tool of the moment, there are lots of tools right now. I’m really enjoying my Google Home Mini and I use it in my office, and I’ve got all my lights setup to it and all sorts of things. And I’ve found that it saved me a ton of time.

Pete Mockaitis
Intriguing. What activities were you doing that have been displaced?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, if you do as much video as I do, you see I have a whole setup in my office. So, now, in fact let’s see if we can even get it to do it. If you can hear it in the background, say, “Okay, Google. Turn on everything.”

Pete Mockaitis
Neat things, huh?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, so it turned on my whole setup in my office, and I find myself asking it questions all the time, and it’s super convenient. So, again, I’ve got lots of tools that I love to use but right now that’s the one that I’m thrilled with.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. And how about a favorite habit?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, it’s going to sound like it’s redundant but, honestly, my favorite habit is what we’re talking about, and I didn’t mention what my daily oasis is. I’m a geek and my daily oasis is to play video games for 30 minutes at the end of each day. And that habit, I cite as one of the reasons why I am successful and, perhaps more importantly, why at 5:00 o’clock each day when my children come into my office, I am able to focus on my family and be present with them for the rest of the night instead of continuing to think about work.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. And is there a particular nugget you share in your courses or your trainings that seems to really connect and resonate, getting folks nodding their heads and taking notes and such?

Dave Crenshaw
Boy, I’ll just call the first thing that comes to mind, and it sort of dovetails with what we’ve been talking about. And here’s the principle: you can do anything you put your mind to doing just not all at the same time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. And, Dave, if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Dave Crenshaw
Well, again, you can find out more about the book at PowerofHavingFun.com and you can also reach me, I’ve got my blog, I send out a new video every week at DaveCrenshaw.com

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action that you’d issue to folks seeking to be awesome at their jobs?

Dave Crenshaw
Yeah, try this, try The Power of Having Fun for two weeks. Measure where you’re at right now. On a scale of zero to ten, how much energy, how much focus you have at work? Then schedule a daily oasis every day, short ones, just 30 minutes for two weeks. Do it and then re-measure where you’re at, and let’s see whether or not the experiment works for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Dave, thank you so much. This has been a real treat and it’s fun, and it’s license for more fun, so win-win. So, thanks for all that you’ve shared and good luck in all that you’re up to. I hope that you just keep rocking and rolling and spreading this good word.

Dave Crenshaw
Great. Thank you so much for the opportunity, Pete. Appreciate it.