little monks playing in the afternoon (by Sukanto Debnath)

This is a guest post from David Masters of Be Playful. David wants to help you be more playful and creative in your everyday life. You can find out more at his blog, beplayful.org.

A Simple Rule for Living

My life has one simple rule. For an action to be worthwhile, it has to be playful. If something doesn’t make me excited to be alive, then it’s not worth doing.

Howard Thurman writes it this way:

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive.”

Living Simply: A Trial Run

A couple of months into my subscription to On Simplicity, I decided to try living simply. I threw out all my spare pens—on my desk I now have just one blue pen, one black and one pencil. I went through my CD collection and sold all the music that’s never excited me. I gave away the clothes I don’t wear. I auctioned off my much-loved but never used PDA computer on eBay.

Having fallen in love with the simple life, I decided to think though what I enjoy about it. What, I asked myself musingly, is playful about simplicity?

What’s Playful About Simplicity?

Simplicity Gives You More Time for the Things that Matter

Simplifying your life, you’ll find time and space you never knew you had. This means you’ll have more time to pursue the things that make you feel alive, whether that’s quality time with your family, writing the novel that’s swimming round your head, or volunteering with a local charity.

Trial and Error

A simple life is not something you wake up with one morning, an instant transformation. It’s a process that takes time and playfulness, a willingness to try new things that may not work and to learn from your mistakes.

Some attempts to simplify your life may actually end up making life more complicated. I tried clearing the desktop on my computer once. It was a refreshing feeling to have all that unused space, but it ended up taking me longer to find the programs I wanted to use. I put the icons that I needed back on my desktop, and it was still cleaner than when I first started.

When simplicity goes wrong, learn from your mistakes and try something new.

Simplicity Forces You to be Creative

Sweden has a high minimum wage and strong labor laws. That means companies can’t reduce costs by cutting wages or firing employees; instead, they are forced to think creatively about how best to boost profits. That’s why some of the best innovations in the world come from Sweden. Think: IKEA, orange juice tetra packs, seatbelts, and LCD screens.

Likewise, the so-called constraints that you put on yourself by simplifying your life can help you to think of new, creative and exciting solutions that otherwise would never have crossed your mind.

I can see this pattern in my own life when I decided to simplify my diet and become a vegetarian. I was still living with my parents at the time, so I had two options: eat what my mum cooked without the meat, or learn to cook. I quickly picked up some simple cooking techniques, and although I’m not yet a master chef, I love being in the kitchen and learning new dishes. Bean burritos, Balti curry, and vegetable lasagne are now my specialities - three dishes I’d never have been brave enough to try cooking if it wasn’t for simplifying my diet.

Too Many Toys Means You Don’t Know What to Play

As I child I was fortunate enough to have a lot of toys. However, having so many toys reduced both my play time and my enjoyment of each toy. When I wanted to play, I spent most of my time deciding what to play with rather than actually playing.

By simplifying your life, you minimize your choices, eliminating all choises that don’t make you come alive. That way, you spend less time deciding what to play, and you can make sure that all your choices are worthwhile to your life.

Getting rid of your TV, for example, would mean no more frittering away your time watching shows just because they’re on and you’re bored. Instead, you might finish off the DIY project that’s been on your to-do list all year, or start learning how to use the digital camera you were given last Christmas.

For me, having fewer CDs makes it easier to choose what to listen to. Instead of all my music collection gathering dust because I can’t decide what I’d prefer to listen to, I can now put any CD and know that it’s one of my favourites.

Play is the Ultimate Act of Simplicity

Jump for Joy (by bingbing)

A child at play gets completely lost in her imaginary world. So too an adult who has embraced simplicity chooses to focus her attention upon one action at a time. Both playfulness and simplicity are a choice to be fully present in each moment.

To live with playful simplicity:

“Ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that.”

Why?

“Because what the world needs is people who are alive.”

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