I work in a serious industry. It has serious impact on global economies; it is affected by serious geopolitics. Mining has a serious role on our day-to-day lives and is prerequisite to almost every object we interact with. Sandvik is a serious company that partners with serious clients and produces a serious number of products with seriously large transactions every single day. I take my job at Sandvik seriously – This whole thing is very serious, as it should be.
Despite all this seriousness, I don’t think people are predisposed to be serious all the time; and let us not forget, it is people who make this industry a reality.
I often find myself in rooms where I can’t help but notice that everyone is being extremely serious. In some cases, this is necessary; when the sensitivities of the topic being discussed require it. However, I think in many cases this seriousness is purely a matter of one’s ego, it is a performance. In the same way people weaponize anger to instill fear in others as a means to get what they want, misplaced seriousness can also be counterproductive and toxic to a workplace culture. Maybe it’s my age or my perspective is askew, but when somebody is too rigid and cannot manage a laugh in a low-stakes environment, it is a surefire way to not trust them as readily. Despite their serious facade, they are actually the one performing and playing pretend. It is disingenuous. In some instances, I think to myself: am I crazy? This is ridiculous and silly. We’re all playing pretend, being super serious, and we’re not even having any fun to show for it!
Some people are in positions that require them to be serious most of the time. Luckily, I have not found myself in such a position. Having the bandwidth to be a bit unserious is a helpful coping mechanism for me. I am a highly anxious person, so my default way-of-working is to put an immense amount of pressure on myself and catastrophize constantly. If everything is serious all of the time, then every mistake is also serious and it will have serious consequences, and everyone will seriously think I’m an idiot and I will seriously mess everything up in a really serious way. I want to be taken seriously, like everyone else. But I often have to remind myself that not everything is a serious matter. The only actual serious matter is that we all arrive home safe at the end of the day – everything else is secondary.
I need to be able to laugh a bit at my work, because then I am not as scared of doing it. I do well at tasks that are fulfilling and bring me a sense of pride – but I excel when tasks also bring me joy. I feel that sometimes seriousness can be at odds with joyfulness, so when there is room for something to be less serious and a bit more joyful, I prioritize making it so. Not everything has this element of joy built into it, so I take a lot of responsibility in injecting joy in the tasks I do. I call this adding whimsy. If you’ve worked with me over the past year or so, you’ve probably heard me mention whimsy, a lot. Some may be tired of hearing me talk about it. I think whimsy is important and underrated, and it can be strategic. If you take a anything away from this blog, I plead for you to find a small way to prioritize whimsy in your work the next time it is appropriate to do so. Start by asking: how will you make the task fun? How will you experience joy today? How will you build community with your team beyond just sharing a common goal? Allowing yourself to be silly is cornerstone to being human.
How is whimsy strategic? Well, anybody will tell you that the worst learning environments are either extremely boring, or high pressure. I think being boring and high-pressure is a symptom of being too serious. Struggling is learning – and when there is pressure to learn something on the first try, struggling can be embarrassing and a reason to quit. I remember many instances in university where I held back questions during a lecture because I was worried that my classmates or the professor wouldn’t take me seriously for asking something potentially “stupid”. Looking back, it was never serious. It was just physics. I was taking it seriously enough by just showing up and trying in the first place. The classes in which I thrived were when the professor was silly, or even whimsical. When they made jokes and had goofy stories. It was totally disarming, and this is when I felt psychologically safe to be myself and to relax. It was also memorable. It allowed me to feel okay to try, and fail, and try, and fail, and struggle, and then ultimately learn something new.
In my position I give a lot of presentations where people are expected to learn something new. I want to recreate the same psychologically safe environments that I thrived in while in university. My favourite way to add whimsy to my job is through these slidedecks. Whimsy is a tool that enables this comfortable and safe environment. By leaning into whimsy (silly transitions, memes, irony & self-deprecation, aggressive splashes of color, dumb clipart, some jokes), I disarm myself and create something memorable. For example, I recently gave a presentation on a complicated topic (i.e. a “can of worms”) and literally sprinkled images of real worms throughout many slides. It was kinda gross but I had a lot of fun doing it, and it held people’s attention. The topic was serious but the delivery wasn’t, and I think I was effective in sharing the message I intended to share. I am really proud of it.
Sometimes, I worry that being whimsical or silly means that I put myself at risk of never being taken seriously in the future. Or, perhaps I’m not as whimsical as I think and everything is just awkward and cringe. My coworker Claudius – someone highly intelligent and whom I respect a lot – recently said to me: “I think being cringe is really important”. I’ve been reflecting on that for about a week now, and he is right.
If being whimsical in a low-stakes environment helps people relax and stop taking things so seriously (including themselves), it frees up their energy to actually learn, instead of performing seriousness. If a silly slidedeck helps put someone in a low-pressure headspace where it isn’t so serious to learn something heavy and immediate, then I’ve done my job effectively. If they can laugh and experience joy while doing it, then all the better. In the worst case, if I miss the mark and just end up being cringe? That’s okay too. It just proves to the room that I’m not a perfect person, which gives everyone else permission to drop their guard. It shows I’ve built a safe space to take risks and ask “stupid” questions without fear – because I am not a scary, serious person (and neither are you).
I am proud and fulfilled by my job. I take my job seriously, and I am a professional. I conduct & produce technical studies to help people make strategic business decisions. I develop and deliver educational content about new technologies. I write reports and provide detailed data analytics so we can all learn something new. These things are serious; and I take them seriously by doing them well. But my most fulfilling performance and the role I’m most proud of is adding a little workplace whimsy to everyone else’s day. Being appropriately whimsical is a skill, one that we should all practice. A small laugh is a welcome relief when we are all feeling the pressure of a big deadline or stressful quarter – and there is no pride or fulfillment in going home sad, stressed, and angry every day. So long as we are safe, there is not a job in the entire world worth taking so seriously that we neglect to prioritize joy – or whimsy.
(September 10th, 2026)
