Today Was Fun
A Book About Work (Seriously)
Filled with suggestions to help people reclaim their joy at work and beyond, Today Was Fun is a supportive self-help text.
Bree Groff’s upbeat career guide Today Was Fun asserts that work should be joyful, human, and playful.
Urging people to rethink their relationships with labor, stop treating work as a grind, and see work as a creative act, the book blends personal stories, business insights, Buddhist philosophy, and accounts of workplace experiments to promote practices that realign the nature of work. These include “Do Nothing Days,” project pre-mortems, and forming cozy teams.
Split into two parts, it begins with proposals for injecting joy into work, like scrapping jargon, regular check-ins, building friendships, and prioritizing comfort in attire. There are also suggestions for holding meetings in parks, cafés, and during pedicures. The book’s second half is devoted to recommendations for keeping work from consuming one’s life, both by engaging in reflection and by prioritizing fun, as with a crossword and a fortune teller game. There are exercises included to put such shifts in mindset and behavior into practice too.
The prose is charming and lighthearted; it features a preponderance of witticisms. This fuels the book’s momentum but also blunts its force at times. Its sharp critiques of capitalism and of the physical toll of overwork are softened by its friendly asides. While it raises compelling questions about employers’ and employees’ relationships to work throughout, its demands for genuine change are sometimes concealed by its easygoing tone. Further, the occasional grammatical issues, which include extra periods and midsentence capital letters, are distracting.
The book’s illustrations are quite often personal, as with asides related to Groff’s family members, but outside research is also included to support its points. A conversation with Sue Walsh, the longtime employee of a renowned designer, runs throughout to ground certain ideas in lived experience. Anecdotes from industry leaders are also used to reflect their different approaches to work, though some of the related quotes are ill-incorporated.
The book acknowledges that its advice may not apply to those without the privilege of amenable workplaces, savings, or freedom from caregiving roles. More generally applicable are its summary notes, extensive references, and QR codes to access additional materials, including worksheets, templates, photographs, and game instructions.
Today Was Fun is a self-help manifesto for joyful work that blends humor and personal insights into its call to reclaim one’s life.
Reviewed by
pine breaks
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
