(Sara- means all/full. Aadha- means half. Dher Sara means – many.)

We don’t have fun filled twists and turns in work life, definitely not in the online world, away from colleagues, in work from home environment. It is all straightforward, rectangular boxes on the screen, sometimes just the dark rectangle with the video off (the most common excuse beingpoor network) and the ones with the video on may be sitting in knickers and jackets. Life is like that. Hidden fun. Knickers in combination with jackets. Baby starts dancing on the bed, switch off the video. Spouse comes angrily at the disturbing child, and you switch off the video. Eat food. Must switch off the video. Mess under the table but a neatly, color coordinated bookshelf behind. Small joys but hidden joys. One wonders, is it more joyful because it is unseen, undiscovered, unheard. Memes, jokes are not rocket science. Joke tellers are. With the eyes that see the unseen, ears that hear the unheard, they write lines that extend the laughing lines. They bring notice to something mundane, something not so obvious yet something that is all around.

Like the sounds of cats- the purring, chirping, chatterting, trilling, tweedling, murmuring, meowing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling and other modes of cat communication that Susanne Schotz brought attention to. Who would have thought that writing down a paper on cat communication would win you a prize, a prize with a name that has Nobel in it and is given by a real Nobel Laureate. Susanne Schotz with two other colleagues won the Ig Nobel Prize in Biology for analyzing cat- human communication. Quite a cat!

Whoever wrote the phrase curiosity killed the cat would fear Schotz. She took the cat to kill her curiosity. Her curiosity of how cats communicate and her research on twilling, trilling, moaning, spurring etc got her a prize, a prize that stands for awarding, not-so-obvious, curiosity.

If you are amused, or confused or humored, that is exactly what the organisers and judges of the Ig Nobel Prize would like you to be. In today’s habits for thinking, I am bringing your attention to a secret ingredient, the joy of chuckles, smiles and impromptu laughter. The joy of humour at the workplace.

There is nothing as coveted and revered as the Nobel Prize. To create a parody on it is a serious business. What is Ignoble prize? Ig Nobel Prize, (a play on the words ignoble and Nobel. The pronunciation used during the ceremony is /ˌɪɡnoʊˈbɛl/ ig-noh-bel, not like the word “ignoble”.) — a parody of the Nobel Prize. It is awarded every autumn to celebrate 10 unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. While the Ig Nobels don’t necessarily address the world’s most pressing challenges, they do represent the curiosity that is an intrinsic part of discoveries.

The annual ceremony at Harvard University recognizes research that “makes people first laugh, then think,” says Ig Nobel Prize founder Marc Abrahams, who along with a panel of experts evaluates thousands of nominations each year. Theawards are presented by genuine Nobel laureates at Harvard University.

For example, staying on the subject of cats, one of the winners was: Are cats liquid or solid? Seriously?

Yes. ‘Can a Cat Be Both a Solid and a Liquid?’ was inspired by photos of cats tucked into glasses and buckets. The researchers used mathematical formulas to conclude that active young cats hold their physical shape longer than older felines.

As bizarre as it can be.

The awards are not for the best or worst, but rather to highlight research that encourages people to think in unusual ways. In 2010, Sir Andre Geim was awarded a Nobel Prize in physics for his work with graphene, thus becoming the first person to have received both a Nobel Prize and an individual Ig Nobel.

First laugh then think

A sense of humour is beneficial because it allows for new concepts to be entertained, writes The Guardian. Today the “butterfly effect” is well understood: a small disturbance like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can induce large consequences far away. Yet the image was meant to be a joke, dreamed up by the organiser of a conference when the father of chaos theory, Edward Lorenz, failed to come up with a title for the ground-breaking paper he was to present. Instead, one was invented and “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” was humorously accepted.

Laughter is a serious business:

There are comic artists that have built castles on laughter of others. Itis a serious business to create memes, crack jokes, do stand-ups and deliver crackling statements. Comic columns whether Dilbert or RK laxman and many others use humour to leave a thought.

Using humor to bring attention to something has been a serious business. Bewakoof, the apparel brand, has built an empire of more than 10 million customers who have engaged on the basis of humor based social media interactions and merchandise.

In today’s Habits for Thinking, the attention is on the humor, the subtle humor, the not-so-subtle humor and the gargantuan laughter. Each one brings some meaning to the workplace. Like the butterfly effect in the research that earns a name by being a subtle title and the Ig Nobel Awards that are not so subtle in humor, these layers of joy add more fuel to the curiosity.

Being foolish, being humorous and bringing humor and foolishness is a sign of intelligence, a sign of curiosity, a sign of growth.

Steve Jobs said in his famous Stanford commencement address:

Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.
On the back cover of their final issue (The Whole Earth Catalog, a magazine he loved dearly) was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
-Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

First laugh, then think.