Number of Players:
5 – 8

Duration of Play:
1 hour

How to Play:
1. Before your meeting, draw a graph with four quadrants. Write “not-work” on the left of the x-axis and “work” on the right. Then write “play” above the y-axis and “not-play” below it.

This gives each quadrant a specific meaning

• Quadrant 1: Joy – work activities that people enjoy (ex. conferences)
• Quadrant 2: Hobbies – activities outside of work that people enjoy (ex. reading, biking, cooking)
• Quadrant 3: Chores – activities outside of work that people don’t enjoy (ex. cleaning)
• Quadrant 4: Job – work activities that people don’t enjoy (ex. mundane office meetings)

Job and Joy (work) = external to the individual; liking of the activity depends on the situation or attributes of it
Hobbies and Chores (leisure) = internal to the individual; self-motivated activities outside of the workplace

2. Pass out sticky notes and pens to your team members. Ask them to write activities they do that apply to each of the quadrants.

3. After about 5 minutes, have your participants place their sticky notes where they feel the they belong on the chart. For instance, if someone likes cooking, they would put that in the “Hobbies” quadrant. If they don’t like cooking, they would place it in the “Chores” section. Things that people like to do at work go under “Joy” and work activities people don’t like go under “Job.”

4. Ask each person to explain the activities they wrote and why they placed it where they did. Use this discussion time to learn about each other and collaborate on how to make work more enjoyable for everyone.

Strategy:
The writing and discussion time should begin with activities people love to do outside of work and move to more work-oriented activities. This will help everyone think of ways to make their jobs more enjoyable while creating a fun environment.

Online Job or Joy

Start playing Job or Joy immediately online! Clicking on this image will take you to an “instant play” game at innovationgames.com, where you can invite participants to play. Here, there will be two icons:

• Happy face: what you enjoy to do
• Frown face: what you don’t enjoy to do

Simply drag these to the chart and collaborate about the moves in real time. When finished, your results are organized onto a spread sheet so you can get the most out of your game.

Key Points
When people enjoy what they are doing and become engaged through self-motivation, they can push themselves to form innovative ideas and breakthroughs. Their participation is catalyzed by the activity they are involved in and they channel their personal commitment toward achieving the goal. Discover what your colleagues like/dislike to do in order to better understand who they are and how you can all maximize your joy — both during and outside of work.