How to Stop Hating Your Job Find More Humor at Work with TEDx Speaker, Drew Tarvin

Sneak Peek:

Drew:    00:01:12    A class that was so boring that you fell asleep and started to dream about happiness and milkshakes. See you at the happy hour later. Thanks tears. Best guard xoxo <laugh>. And a lot of times once you start to see that the older generations are like, wait, we want that stuff too, right? <laugh>, I would love to have flexible work and I would love to have more meaning in what I do. There's a difference between being efficient and being effective.  

Kristin:    00:01:50    Hey guys, so welcome back to another episode of Digital Nomad TV and we're doing something a little bit different today and I'm interviewing somebody who's hilariously funny and also has come from a background in the corporate environment. Invented his own job and since 2012 he's been traveling all around the world and all around the US teaching over 250 corporate organizations and 35,000 people how to incorporate humor into their day job. So everyone <inaudible>, Ted Talk extraordinaire, <laugh>, Andrew Tarvin. His videos have been watched over millions of times and he's gonna tell us about how he transitioned from the standard nine to five lifestyle to his own job and what he's seeing in his work on a day-to-day basis and how he sees the future of work going. So let's just jump right in. Hello. 

Podcast Interview:

Drew:    00:02:48    Absolutely. Yeah. Well thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. Certainly happy to chat about kind of my journey and hopefully share some things that will be helpful for other people as well.  

Kristin:    00:02:57    I really identified with your story because, and I think a lot of people watching do as well because we're both from the us, we did everything like right, got good grades, went to school, went to college, you went from the kind of traditional route or studying engineering and then going into a tech job at a big corporation. And then how long were you working? Was it at Proctor and Gamble?  

Drew:    00:03:22    Um, yeah. So I spent six years at P&G, year and a half in Cincinnati where their global headquarters are and then uh, four and a half years in New York.  

Kristin:    00:03:30    And what kind of gave you the idea to go out on your own and start teaching people how to use humor? Because that's not a typical job description. And my job as well as like a relocation consultant and I help people become digital nomads, it's like no one ever told me that this was an option. It just kind of happened based on a specific skillset and taking a few calculated risks along the way.  

Drew:    00:03:56    Mm-Hmm. So I went to the Ohio State University, got a degree in computer science and engineering. And after I graduated that's when I started working at UH, project uh, Procter and Gamble as a project manager in the IT space. But for me in college, the other change was that my best friend wanted to start an improv comedy group. And so I started doing improv and standup because it kinda like forced me to join and it wasn't immediate but over time one I fell in love with doing improv and standup 'cause I was never a person that was like the class clown or the life of the party type person. But improv and standup gave me this opportunity to be funny in a kind of structured space. I learned that I actually could be funny, it was a skill that I had to learn, but I also learned that it helped me to be more effective in the workplace. So as a project manager, 90% of your role is communication and I was like how do I do this as efficiently as possible? So one that was like, okay, I wanna send an email. When I send an email to someone, I wanna send an email that's like do this thing, right? Like I don't wanna have to explain why or whatever. I don't need to say your name, I don't need to say goodbye. I just wanna say do this thing but  

Kristin:    00:04:56    Instead. Yeah. Not like, Hey how are you doing today <laugh>.  

Drew:    00:04:58    Exactly. Because that's what we have to do in the corporate world. It has to be like hey so and so. I hope you had a great weekend anyway, I was hoping you could do this thing by this date for this reason. See you at the happy hour later. Thanks. Cheers. Best regards, exo, whatever. Right? And what I realized by improv and standup is that there's a difference between being efficient and being effective and we can be efficient with things like computers but we can't be efficient with people because people have emotions and feelings and uh, I didn't necessarily have the skill to be effective with people, but that's where improv and standup came in. 'cause the same skills you need to be effective as an improviser. Some of the same skills you need to be effective in day-to-day communication with people. So I started incorporating that into my work at P&G as a project manager.  

Drew:    00:05:41    I started adding jokes at the end of my email I started teaching improv exercises to my team resources. And the thing that I did that thought for sure maybe I was gonna like have to beg for forgiveness for was I proclaimed myself the corporate humorist, the P&G. So they had an internal blogging platform. So I started blogging on that. I got business cards made that said corporate humorous. And I assumed that eventually someone would come up and stop me uh, and say Hey, you can't just create your own job title. But no one ever did. Uh, instead people started referring to me as a corporate humorist and it built my internal branch. So I still did the project management work but I was blogging about hey this is what I'm experienced when I'm using humor and this is why jokes at the end of my emails are helping or here's some of the research that I've started to find on it. So research in the Harvard Business Review and the Journal of Applied Psychology and what other companies like Google and other places are doing to actually incorporate humor and how they're getting better results because of it. If people like this internally, then maybe additional companies or additional people could benefit from it. So I started my company Humor that works part-time in 2009 and then left in 2012 to pursue it full-time.  

Kristin:    00:06:47    Awesome. So how many hours a week were you working when you had both jobs going at the same time? Because something that I talk about a lot, I have a Facebook group called Long-Term Digital Nomad Success and it's mostly people who wanna start to become digital nomads. And I talk a lot about inventing your job and creating your job and there's all this stuff on the internet of like yeah, buy a one-way ticket and figure it out when you get there and you'll make it work. And I always tell people like make sure you have revenue streams before you send in your notice. And that's typically probably at least months if not years before you can build up that type of revenue that you can leave your salary job. So how was that for you?  

Drew:    00:07:30    Yeah, so I think for the people that like quit their job and go and get a one-way ticket or whatever, I mean more props to you, that is not something for me. Like even though I have left a comfortable position at P&G, even though I was in nomad for a period of time, I technically have a place now I travel about 50% of the time, but all of these decisions, I'm still a relatively risk adverse person. And so like kind of what you said earlier, taking a calculated risk and so I was putting in 40, 50, sometimes 60 hours a week at P&G depending on the week and where we were with project. And then I was putting in another easily 10 doing improv and standup, uh, and then probably another 10, 15, 20 on the the humor side of things. And so I would leave the office a little bit early, like luckily P&G has flexible work hours.  

Drew:    00:08:15    So like if I left I could leave at say three 30 as long as and go and do an event and then later that night I would pick up and do some of the P&Gwork and I ultimately created a spreadsheet of things that I had to to officially accomplish before I could leave. So I called it Operation Leave Corporate America and it was a spreadsheet of do all of these things before I felt comfortable leaving. So it was things like do X number of speaking engagements, make X number of dollars through these events or these trainings, have a website up with testimonials and images. That list helped in a lot of ways. One it once I had checked everything off the list, it gave me a reason to believe oh I could be successful when I leave. Rather than just being like, I hope it works out.  

Drew:    00:08:58    It says well over the course of a year and a half during this part-time, I've achieved these things so if I apply full-time to this, I should theoretically be able to continue this growth. And then the other thing that it really helped with is that sometimes we feel antsy when we're in that corporate job and we know that that's not the thing that we wanna do forever. But having the list helped me manage that because if there was ever a day that I was kind of stressed out or I was like wanting to quit, I could go back and say, oh well no, this job right now is in service of this longer term goal and so I can manage to stress a little bit because it's not I'm doing this indefinitely, it's I'm doing it to achieve this thing.  

Kristin:    00:09:33    That's really amazing. I mean it's kind of, I know it wasn't that long ago, but when you think about how much has changed with technology and the mindset of people today, it's kind of before your time to be going through this process to liberate yourself to do what you wanted to do. And I love that you took the technical side of your schooling and your skills with this other creative side because I think that everybody is good at something but also skills can be learned, even a creative skill. You are not just born like you were saying in your talks. You're not just born with a sense of humor or a skill to make people laugh, but you can develop that with practice. And sometimes people think that they have to acquire a certain skill of something they don't like, like to make passive income or do programming or something very technical when just using a little bit of creativity with their existing skillset coupled with maybe something new.  

Kristin:    00:10:32    Then over time they can turn it into something really unique because like you're the only corporate humorist I know <laugh>. Yeah. And I'm the only poker relocation expert that I know. What is like the climate because you've done what over 500 talks now and trainings, how do you see the corporate climate changing from when you started in 2012 to today? Um, do you think people are getting more stressed out? Like is there a greater need for the work that you do? Um, do you hear like buzz of people talking about like wanting to shift out of that environment or pressuring the management big companies to allow more flexibility and more remote work opportunities?  

Drew:    00:11:15    Yeah, so I think there's definitely a shift certainly from where it was before I was just at at a conference in Kuwait and one of the other speakers there was uh, talking about generational differences and she said that for the first time, millennials are the first generation to include fun as a attribute of an ideal work environment. First generation to say no fun is something that we want to have in the workplace. And so I think there's a lot of changes coming with millennials in the sense of we want meaningful work, we want work that has an impact in the organization itself and we also want um, meaning for ourself we wanna work at a company that feels more than, oh I'm just making this widget for whatever reason. Flexible work hours I think is certainly part of it. And then yeah, this idea of having a little bit more fun in the work that we do, uh, I think are all changes that we're seeing.  

Drew:    00:12:03    And a lot of times once you start to see that the older generations are like, wait, we want that stuff too <laugh>, right? I would love to have flexible work and I would love to have more meaning in what I do. So I think we're definitely seeing a shift because people wanna retain the top talent and things like fun is an important aspect of it. Things like managers is an important, I do a lot with middle managers because 31% of employees leave their company because of their manager. They might like the company, they might actually like the work, but if they don't like their manager then they're gonna leave and find a different opportunity. And so if you have older managers of an older mindset that don't understand the value of fun or don't understand the value of flexible work schedule and still believe that hard work means you being in that particular desk and that particular location, you're gonna lose that top talent.  

Drew:    00:12:48    And so you need to kind of provide that training. And so I think we're definitely seeing a shift but it's also quicker in some areas. Startups tend to lean more towards that a little bit. Certainly certain roles lend themself to being a little bit more flexible. So programming is one. Customer service assuming you have good connection can be one that you can do from a lot of different places. But something like sales, if you have to be in person and do in-person sales calls, there's gonna be a limit to the flexibility that you can have just based on how the role is potentially set up.  

Kristin:    00:13:17    That's a really good point of people leaving their jobs maybe prematurely. And that would be interesting to know how your work has been able to prevent some of that because sometimes people think that their only option is to quit. So how have you seen things change from like maybe a toxic environment towards like what you see when you go in and the kind of work and training that you do? Has that been able to help people like save their own jobs basically? Mm-Hmm.  

Drew:    00:13:47    Yeah. So I think that one of the big key takeaways from my program and I'm getting better at clarifying this even more is that it's my belief that you are responsible for your own happiness. That it's not up to your coworkers to make sure that you enjoy what you do. It's not up to your manager, it's not up to anyone else but yourself, right? You're the one that has to live that life. So you might as well be the one that owns your happiness around that, whether it's like personal or work. And certainly you would hope that your company or that your coworkers don't negatively impact that. But at the end of the day it's on you to control it. And so a big part of what I talk about is the choices people are making, the micro choices that you're making every single day in terms of how you approach your work and using humor, using some of the techniques that we talk about.  

Drew:    00:14:35    You can start to make your work more fun. It doesn't mean that you're magically gonna automatically love every single thing that you do, but you can start to make things a little bit better and you can start to tweak your work so that you do the work that you enjoy. And not every organization is like this, but a lot of the good good ones don't know the talent that you have. And so if you are being underutilized, if you can kind of slowly carve out a way to get better utilization of your skills and your strengths, organizations want that because they're gonna get a better return on their investment in terms of your salary and benefits and all that kind of stuff. And if you're more engaged, they want that because you're gonna be more productive, less stressed and overall happier. Those are all kind of long-term benefits for the organization.  

Drew:    00:15:15    And so I do think a lot of it can be a mindset, right? Is starting with, okay, this thing that I don't like, either I change that thing, maybe I delegate it or maybe I move roles or whatever if I have to or I change my perspective about it, I change how I do it so that it's more fun. So like for example, as a quick example that I share in some of my talks is that when I get bored in email, so I have to go through email, I'm starting to delegate more and more that to an assistant. But there's some emails that I have to go through and if I'm getting bored in email, I start to read each of the emails in a different accent in my head just as a way to make it more fun, more enjoyable. It makes it, it changes it just a little bit to say, okay, it's slightly more engaging.  

Drew:    00:15:56    That's funny or yeah, or you listen to music while you're working or whatever. There's small things that you can do to make the process a little bit easier. And what I talk about is one smile per hour. If you can do each hour of the workday and even really each day of your life, that said, that brings a smile eye either to your face or to the face of someone else. And that's going to slowly make you kind of improve your perspective on your position. Which will either mean, oh, maybe I'm willing to stay in this role a little bit longer or I will at least as I move into the next thing I'll have a little bit more clarity on what I want. The last thing that I'll kind of say about this is everyone's definition of success is very different. And if you don't have clarity of what your long-term goals are, it can be challenging whether to know do you stay in this corporate job, do you leave and become a digital nomad or is it something in the middle? And once you get a little bit of clarity of at least a direction ahead, that's where decisions become a little bit easier.  

Kristin:    00:16:50    Yeah, that's a very good point. I actually talk about that in my workshops as well in my talks and I really try to drill that point home because yeah, if you don't know why you're doing something or where you're intending to go, then you're never gonna know if you're on the right track and you're not going to have that like barometer for if you're making enough progress in the right direction to finally make that end decision. And when you never make that decision, you just get stuck in like this flux and this twilight zone and this like, I don't know what to do sort of phase that I think a lot of people are in in all different types of jobs where they feel trapped but they don't know what to do and then the years just keep going by and like nothing's changing because they're not taking any action in any specific direction 'cause they don't have a lot of clarity over what it is that they actually want differently and why.  

Drew:    00:17:41    Absolutely. I mean if you think about the old school kind of American dream, it was have a house with a white picket fence and have two and a half kids and a dog and a cat and all that. And so by that metric, you and I are failing, right? Yeah. Or I have an apartment in New York but I don't have the white picket fence and your digital nomad, you're going from spot to spot. So that would be failure, but that's not the metric that you're using. It's not the metric that I am using. This kind of shifted for me at P&G because I remember meeting someone, 'cause I've always been a type a very ambitious person. And so I go into P&G, right? Have <inaudible>. I'm like, okay, how do I rise through the ranks? How high can I go? What's, you know, the highest position that I can get?  

Drew:    00:18:22    How can I continue to get promoted? And I met um, a guy there who uh, was very happy in kind of this more middle role, a highly technical role, not managing other people. And he didn't want to get promoted. People wanted to promote him because he was very good. But he is like, no, I don't want that. I was like, how can you not want that? And he is like, well I know if every promotion comes an expectation of an increase of at least five more hours per week, kind of as like a rough idea. And I don't wanna manage other people. I like the technical stuff. And he is like, my goal is to work at a job where I can sustain a, a living for my family so that my wife can stay at home and homeschool our kids 'cause that's what we've decided to do.  

Drew:    00:19:02    And I wanna be available to go to all of their football games, their soccer games, to be involved in Boy Scouts, to be involved in X, Y, and Z and to do all these things. And if I get a promotion, yes it's more money but it's less time. And that was the first time that it like really clicked for me that people's definition of success are different. Mm-Hmm. And so he was very clear. So he knew he could say no to a promotion because it wasn't helping him get to his longer term goal. And I think for all of us, we kind of needed to find that and we needed to define it for ourself, not by the metrics of other people, right? Because we sometimes assume, oh well I have to have the biggest house or the fanciest car or whatever. And digital nomads are saying, well maybe there's success in not even owning any of that. Maybe there's success out of living out of two carry on bags and traveling around the world. So I think that that metric, that defining is a very important  

Kristin:    00:19:50    Thing. Yeah, I completely agree. And I've gone back and forth a couple times maybe I wanna think that programming is so ingrained in like the national psyche, the materialism, like the corporate ladder. So I've gone back to the US for a time and thought like, okay, now I need to get a car and now I need to have a nice house and pottery barn and all of this. When I would do that three months later I was like, okay, now I have like all my kitchen supplies and a walk-in closet and like a nice car, but is this it? Like is this done? You know? Yeah. So, and then I would start traveling again and it just, yeah, just do what makes you happy but also for people to keep in context that you are not always gonna be having fun and always happy all the time. And sometimes that genuine fulfillment from your job comes through like the tough challenges, like the struggles of working a lot and creating something new and being successful at transitioning to your own business or whatever. Like that's blood, sweat and tears, but it brings a lot of genuine fulfillment versus like short term happiness, like dopamine hit from social media or something like that.  

Drew:    00:21:02    Well I was just gonna say that like stress is not a bad thing. Stress overall is a good thing. Chronic stress is bad if you don't relieve that stress. If you don't actually take a break. Stress by itself is a good thing. 'cause when we work out, what we're doing is we're stressing our muscles, right? That's how we grow. But the problem is our muscles don't actually grow when we're working out. Our muscles grow when we are taking a break stress. And so the same is true in our own individual work. Like I remember my first manager at P&G, I was very blessed, I had incredible managers the entire time at P&G. And I remember like at P&G, my manager kept on giving me work, kept on giving me work. I'd finished one project, something bigger, another project. And eventually I was like, you know, listen, I can't do anymore.  

Drew:    00:21:42    And he is like, okay, we found it. And I was like, we found what? And he's like, we found your ability where you can work because every person is different. We don't know as a manager how much you can handle until you tell us you can't handle anymore. So we're going to continue to give you stuff and we wanna find a stretch zone where you're working a little bit harder and there's maybe a little bit of stress because then long term you're gonna get better. You're gonna improve your time management skills, you're gonna improve your ability to execute, you're gonna improve your ability to manage all these different things and you're gonna get a bit over time. So we need to stress your muscles, but we also need you to take a break. You need to actually take those vacation days. You need to actually get away from your devices on the weekend. You need to actually have breaks throughout the day so that you recharge. But that overall stress is how you're gonna grow and become better. And and that's something for me, like I'm constantly wanting to grow, like I wanna be better today than I was yesterday. And so I want those pieces of stress that can help me get there. Because if we're comfortable, if we're completely comfortable, that can lead to complacency, in which case we're not growing, we're not becoming better.  

Kristin:    00:22:39    Yeah. I just read something, I think it was yesterday even in a book that was like, if you're not embarrassed by who you were a year ago, then your goals aren't big enough. And it's so true. And I think back to a year ago and a friend of mine today sent me a message, he's like, oh, you're doing so great with your videos and your posting because the last time I saw her I had just bought a GoPro and I didn't even know how to turn it on. And that was like barely a year ago. And now I'm making videos like sometimes on a daily basis. It's like that concept was not even in my realm of possibility a year ago. Like producing a video every day or a few times a week. And now it's just like a regular habit.  

Drew:    00:23:21    Yeah. And I'm sure when you first started that it was like, oh man, this is so much work. How do I, like what framing do I have in the background and how do I edit it together and what do I do next? And I think one of the things that we forget, particularly as we get older is that we're not gonna be great at everything right away. It takes practice and repetition. And one of the things that I've learned from improv is that failure is just data. Yeah, right? It  

Kristin:    00:23:44    Data point <laugh>  

Drew:    00:23:45    Yeah. If it doesn't work, it's just a data point to say that one way did not work at that time. And that's what we do in standup is we're constantly testing material. And if I go up on stage and do a joke that doesn't get a laugh, it doesn't mean that my self-worth as a human being is lesser, that I'm not a funny person. It just means that that particular joke didn't work. So the next time I try it I'm gonna maybe tweak the word a little bit or I'm gonna restructure it a little bit. And so it's just constantly kind of trying things. It's, it's, you know, Carol direct's growth mindset of if I haven't succeeded, I just haven't succeeded yet. And I think people have to recognize that that's gonna be true of any new endeavor that you start. If you gave up on everything that you weren't good at when you first started it, you'd be crawling around on the floor because, because you never would've learned to walk.  

Kristin:    00:24:25    Yeah, that sounds like a really good just exercise for everyone to do. I know people put like giving a public speech or doing standup comedy as like their top biggest fears and yeah, it's just like continuous feedback loop that can help make everything else less scary because mm-hmm of the obvious reasons. So how do you balance your work and life now that you've been doing this for a few years and you clearly like to work hard? Ambitious, overachiever, I definitely relate to that. So what's your strategy? Has your traveling, you're giving speeches, you're on the road, and then how do you like recover and kind of get that balance?  

Drew:    00:25:03    Yeah, so I think uh, part of it is I love what I do and so in some ways like parts of it doesn't feel like work. One, I'm very fortunate that I absolutely love what I do and so it's partially my work, partially my passion, partially my hobby and the things that are ancillary to it. So like I love watching standup. So I just started watching James a caster on Netflix last night and I love watching that and it's partially a little bit of work because I'm like, okay, what's working, what's not working? But I'm also just enjoying it. So I think taking a breakthrough media. So I love watching Netflix specials and series and binge watching stuff. Also when I travel, I try to make it a point that I do something in each place that I go because as a speaker it can be so easy to fly in, go to the hotel, go to the conference the next day and go straight back to the airport and then like never actually see the city that you're in.  

Drew:    00:25:50    Yeah. And so I try to make sure even if it's going for a walk or going to a restaurant that's unique to that place, when I was a nomad I went to all 50 states and so I made sure that in a year and I was like, okay, I wanna make sure I speak or perform in each state, eat some type of food in that state and take a selfie in each state <laugh>. So that I created a video that's 50 states, 50 selfies. So I've kind of taken that with me is that I wanna go, same thing of like try to eat something. I love being outdoors and doing physical activity. So going on a hike or going surfing or whatever, taking a break and trying to experience the benefit of traveling too. It's a waste some time on Reddit follow, you know, the NFL and the NBA, uh, I got a Nintendo Switch, which is great for people who travel. So every now and then I'll pop in and play uh, a video game from the old school days. So there's a lot of like small things that I do and take advantage of if I have a flight. Okay. That's when I can binge watch a series or that's when maybe I start to play some games because then I'm doing, not only am I getting from one destination to the other, but I'm also relaxing a little bit recharging my batteries.  

Kristin:    00:26:48    Yeah, I love that On flights. It's like such a guilty pleasure. Either work like really focused work or just complete binge watching of like movies and shows you would never watch. Yeah. In your daily life. Awesome. So how can people follow you and follow your journey and if they wanna hire you for their company or get some insights into how to make humor work for them for their happiness, wellbeing and productivity, where can they find you? And we'll link it below as well.  

Drew:    00:27:16    Yeah, for sure. So everything social media is Drew Tarvin, so D-R-E-W-T-A-R-V as in Victor, I-N. So that's Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. Uh, so you can find me there. I tweet puns uh, most every day. So if you like puns you can certainly follow that. Instagram also some fun, uh, images and stuff there for humor in the workplace. You can check out humorthatworks.com. There's a bunch of resources there meant for people if they wanna get started, they can sign up for the newsletter that gives weekly tips on how to use humor or some of the, the resources that we have in the blog. Also, you can find there the skill of humor TEDx talk. So I just learned it just recently passed 2 million views, which is exciting I saw. So you can check that out and that's kind of the 15 or 20 minute version of what it is that I do and around the skill of humor and why it's valuable. So that's also a great starting point and then I'm more than happy to chat with people. I wanna try to help spread this message of humor as far as I can. So if you have questions or have a potential group that you're like, Hey, maybe our team could use this or we're having a conference coming up or whatever, certainly feel free to reach out via email at andrew@humorthatworks.com.  

Kristin:    00:28:23    We'll know that you'll be reading those emails in different accents. <laugh>  

Drew:    00:28:27    In my head. Exactly. Yeah, you can even if you want, you can include in the beginning like try this one in a British, or hey, I'm emailing from this country so try it in a French accent or whatever. Yeah.  

Kristin:    00:28:36    Oh that's so funny. Great. Well thanks so much for coming on this show Andrew, and I'm sure we'll see a lot more of you on the internet.  

Drew:    00:28:43    Absolutely. Thank you for having me. Bye.