Adam Grant’s NY Times article about “languishing” offers a space in between depression and thriving where a lot of us have ended up through the pandemic. A cure, Grant proposes, could be setting up boundaries of uninterrupted time, spaces to concentrate, act with purpose, and feel ok not attending to the rest of your responsibilities.
Prax heard you Adam, and built accordingly.
First popularized by Google in its startup days, the 80/20 rule asked workers to set aside 20% of their paid time to pursue passion projects. It gained notoriety when we all learned gmail and google maps were concepts that came out of this passion-time. However, as lucrative of a structure as it seemed to be, Google, and the companies who followed suit, abandoned this work culture. Regardless of why, let’s take a look at it from the perspective of, not a company, but a human being, like you :)
What if you did give yourself some real me time? Not for work, or responsibilities, but play. Pure, childlike, innocent, curiosity and fun-driven play! The kind of play where you can answer whatever flicker of a whim flashes in your imagination. Where all it takes is a guitar in a closet, an old art project stuffed in a drawer, or that skatepark across the street to ask, “What if?” Because now there’s a praxtitioner with a prompt waiting for you who’s been in your shoes and answered that call already and wants to see you do the same.
Play, not necessity, is the mother of invention. As Dr. Stuart Brown, the author of Play, surmised through these examples:
A toy airplane and toy train came before the real things. 🚂
Wind up, coil technology was used first on toys before it was applied to a a pocket watch 🤖
Before firepower, there were fireworks. 🎇
Before Einstein toiled over a black board, he played with a magic spinner called a compass. 🧭
Have the same confidence in yourself to invest in your own fun, curiosity, and creativity, and who knows where it will lead.
Nature bathe, meditate about a golden orb floating above your head, doodle, steal your kid’s recorder, find a tree you can name. The point is, whatever Prax is interesting to you is a Prax worth doing.
