Humor, Seriously: Why Humor Is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life is told from a scientific and comedic perspective, highlighting how levity and humor are essential tools for forging more human connections, improving performance in the workplace, unlocking creativity and boosting resilience in bad times. 

RATING: 4/5

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KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• “Humor is like salt: you don’t want to use it all the time, and a little goes a long way.” -Daryl Dodson

• The average four-year-old laughs as many as 300 times per day. The average forty-year-old, by comparison, laughs 300 times every two and a half months.

• “You can always tell how smart someone is by what they laugh at.” -Tina Fey

• Researchers found that people who watched a humorous film clip before taking a brief short term memory test recalled more than twice as much information as people who took the same test after simply sitting doing nothing for the same duration. 

• “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” -Albert Einstein 

• “There is nothing like a gleam of humor to reassure you that a fellow human being is ticking inside a strange face.” -Eva Hoffman

• Professor and author Siegfried Vögele found that 90% of people read the post script before the body of a letter. Meaning that your PS is likely to be your recipients first impression, not the last.

• A 2019 Harvard business review survey found that 58% of employees trust a complete stranger more than their own boss. 

• “If you’re leading and no one is following, you’re just taking a walk.” -John Maxwell

• “I am struck by how laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter.“ -John Cleese