Editor’s Note: Rough Draft welcomes new columnist Steve Carse, the co-founder of Atlanta-based success story King of Pops and author of the book “Work Is Fun: Seven Ways a Successful Ice Pop Company Makes Work Meaningful and How You Can Too.”
At this point, I’m pretty dug in.
I got laid off from my corporate job during the Great Recession, for those who weren’t alive yet or were still in diapers, that was 2008. Instead of jumping back into insurance, I did a 180 and started a popsicle company. I wanted a story to tell. I wanted to have fun.
Fifteen years later, I’m still chasing that same idea. I wrote a book called “Work Is Fun,” and despite the internal eye rolls from the King of Pops team, I can proudly say I still believe work should be fun.
Sadly, most people haven’t joined me on this quest.
My litmus test isn’t the stark Gallup poll that reminds us every year that roughly two-thirds of people are not engaged at work. It’s much simpler. It’s a question-and-answer exchange that happens in millions of households every single day.
You walk in the door after work. Your significant other, roommate, or whoever happens to be available asks how your day was. You respond somewhere on the spectrum from terrible to OK.
Very rarely do we say good.
Maybe if we get a promotion or a bonus. But on an ordinary day, saying good can feel like gloating. Like tempting fate. Like we will be assigned extra chores for having such a cushy day. Have a good day at work, and suddenly you owe someone a foot rub.
It is ingrained in most of us that work is a sacrifice. Not something we want to do, just something we have to do. But those two things do not have to be mutually exclusive. You can have to do something and still have fun doing it.
My four-year-old has to go to swim lessons every Tuesday. Sometimes she complains beforehand, but once she is in the water, she is almost always having fun. And afterward, when I ask if she had fun, the answer is nearly always an enthusiastic YES.
I am just getting back into the work groove after a two-ish week trip to Jamaica. The trip was one part beach vacation, one part family reunion in a very remote village. It was special. Distant cousins became best friends in an afternoon. A goat was slaughtered on New Year’s Day to feed the community. And yes, there was the beach.
It was also significantly harder than any two-week stretch I can remember. My two-year-old son is never still, and the landscape is littered with jagged rocks every few feet. It was truly “not kid-friendly.”
I was the default chaser of my son, constantly sprinting after him, scanning the ground, anticipating the next fall. That pressure was amplified by the fact that my wife has a very low tolerance for injuries, bug bites, and sickness, and the nearest hospital was over an hour away.
Constantly moving, settling, re-settling. It was exhausting.
Did I mention there was no running water?
Was it a good vacation? One hundred percent YES. Vacations are supposed to be good. We are doing it wrong if they are not. And just because there were difficult parts does not mean it was not great.
So what if, in 2026, we applied that same mindset to work? What if we made space for it to be fun? I know it is possible. It is the boat I have lucked into.
And honestly, this is not just about you. It affects everyone around you. When work feels better, you feel better, you are more pleasant to be around, and you model what a healthy, content relationship with work can look like.
There is no better time of year to try this no-lose experiment. You have survived the holiday vortex. Now it is back to routines, traffic, and dreary weather.
You might as well let work be one of your bright spots.
