‘Today Was Fun’: How Bree Groff Is Reclaiming Workdays And Redefining Joy At Work
Bree Groff
It started in a waiting room.
Bree Groff was sitting beside her mother in a cancer center—overwhelmed, heartbroken, watching others around her cling to every precious minute. In that quiet, heavy moment, a friend texted her: “I can’t wait for this week to be over.”
That message, so casually tossed off, collided violently with the reality around her. “Everyone in the hospital was wishing for more days,” Bree reflected, “and everyone back at the office was wishing for Friday.” That was the moment she realized something had gone fundamentally wrong in how we experience time—especially at work.
The contrast became the seed of “Today Was Fun”, Bree’s radical, hopeful, and deeply human book about reclaiming our workdays—and rediscovering what makes them matter.
The Hidden Tragedy of the Modern Workday
For many of us, weekdays have become a blur—emails, meetings, deliverables—rituals of productivity that leave us oddly disconnected from ourselves. Bree saw this not just as a cultural problem, but a personal one.
“We lose days not just because we don’t live long enough,” she told me, “we lose days because we don’t value them—and we give them away to our companies while we’re healthy.”
“Today Was Fun” is her call to reverse that equation. Instead of seeing our work lives as something to tolerate until Friday, she asks: what if we actually designed our days to feel like they belonged to us?
Why ‘Fun’ Isn’t Frivolous—It’s a Strategy
Using the word ’fun’ in a business book is almost subversive. Bree knows it makes some people uncomfortable. “For some, it just does not compute,” she said. “They think fun means off-sites or happy hours—something flippant on the side of work.”
But her definition is deeper, and more urgent. “We so often neglect our own pleasure at work,” she told me. “The notion of pleasure at work just sounds like—what are you talking about? But I think that just goes to show how little we value our own experience of our working days.”
This isn’t about being unserious. It’s about being fully human. Fun, for Bree, isn’t escapism—it’s engagement. It’s flow. It’s doing work that excites you, with people who energize you. It’s not a side benefit of good work—it’s often a sign that good work is happening.
“I like the word fun because it’s irreverent, visceral—and if you take it seriously, it pushes the boundaries of what our working experience should feel like.”
And in an age of automation and artificial intelligence, Bree believes fun is more than a feeling—it’s a competitive advantage. “If AI is coming to do a lot of the things you once felt were your professional identity,” she said, “then the one and only move is to become more human—and learn how to use your brain more expansively and creatively.”
The Ten-Minute Workday and Organizational Minimalism
One of the most useful tools in Bree’s book is a simple thought experiment: The Ten-Minute Workday. “Of all the things on your plate, what’s the one thing that you are uniquely good or valuable at?” she asked. “If you start there, you’re doing the whole 80/20 rule.”
This kind of thinking shifts the entire mindset from busyness to clarity. Bree encourages readers to stop measuring productivity by the number of boxes checked, and instead, measure meaning. “Can you get rid of anything that’s not bringing you joy—or frankly, bringing the business joy?”
It’s a form of workday minimalism—less about doing less for its own sake, and more about doing the right things with intention, skill, and care.
No One Cares About Your Cholesterol But You
For Bree, writing “Today Was Fun” wasn’t just a creative exercise—it was a recalibration of her own life. “No business or client is going to care about my cholesterol score,” she told me. “That’s up to me.”
There’s a story in the book that captures this perfectly. One night, she was rushing through a bedtime story with her young daughter—flipping two pages at a time. Her daughter looked at her and said: “You’re not doing your best.” That moment hit hard.
“I realized I was doing my best at work,” Bree confessed. “And my family was getting the leftovers.”
That line stayed with me. It’s a truth so many high performers need to hear. Yes, you’re showing up for work—but are you showing up for your life?
Becoming a High Performer—for Yourself
Since writing the book, Bree has made intentional changes to how she lives. “There’s no coincidence I’m in the best shape of my life now,” she said with a smile. “Because the book kicked me into gear. I started being a high performer for myself, not just for a company.”
This idea—that your energy, joy, and wellbeing matter just as much as your outputs—is a theme that runs throughout the book. It’s not anti-ambition. It’s ambition, redefined.
A Book Passed From Hand to Hand
Her dream for the book is simple, and powerful. “I hope it gets dog-eared and passed around offices. That would be amazing—like an underground manual, some secret society of people saying, ‘You have to read this.’”
And when I asked her what she wanted the book to do for readers, her answer was beautiful:
“I hope they have better days more often. I hope someone picks up the book on a Monday and thinks, that was a day well spent of my life.”
The Revolution Starts With One Good Day
We’re living in a moment of profound transformation in work culture. AI is reshaping industries. Burnout is reaching new heights. The future of work feels uncertain. And yet Bree Groff offers us something clear, grounded, and incredibly human: a reminder that work can feel good—and that it should.
She’s not asking us to leave our jobs or burn it all down. She’s asking something far more radical:
Make today count.
Because when the days are finite—and they are—you deserve to make as many of them fun as possible.
Today Was Fun by Bree Groff is available now wherever books are sold. Learn more at breegroff.com
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