Some people put a lot of emphasis on purpose. There’s got to be a reason behind every little thing we do. If there’s no purpose, it must be a waste of time. But what if the best way to spend the time is to “waste” it.

Something jumped out at me while I was wasting time watching one of those After Skool videos that use whiteboard drawings to complement audio from notable public speakers. This particular video featured a talk from Alan Watts in which he said…

“If you don’t have room in your life for the playful, life’s not worth living. ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ But if the only reason for which Jack plays is that he can work better afterwards, he’s not really playing. He’s playing because it’s good for him. He’s not playing at all!”

Alan Watts, “Man and Nature”

Here’s another way to think about it… Imagine a doctor writes you a prescription for play.

At first, it sounds like a great idea. Instead of giving us more pills, doctors should be telling us to get out and play. But the problem is, if play becomes a prescribed medication, it stops being fun and stops being play. It becomes something we are supposed to do – because it’s good for us.

Even if it makes us feel better, we don’t often enjoy taking our medicine or doing just about anything because we have to for that matter.

A colleague of mine called out a founder/CEO on LinkedIn for purporting the idea that there are no benefits to taking vacations longer than one week. Of course, this was LinkedIn. So, the CEO was thinking of improving productivity, avoiding burnout, and returning to the job refreshed.

In her reply to the post, my colleague brought up other benefits: spending significant time with family, becoming immersed in a new location, thoroughly enjoying new experiences, resting, healing, and pursuing creative hobbies. All these things could take more time than a typical work week.

When did we decide that the measure of a good vacation is how ready we are to get back to work? In that case, maybe what we really need is a horrible vacation.

Play. Vacation. Leisure time. Picking up a pebble on the beach. What advice does Alan Watts have for us on all of this?

“Enjoy the pebble,” he says.

Sounds like fun to me.

Main photo by Myles Tan on Unsplash