Workplace practice · 7 minutes
How to practise Ikigai at work.
Ikigai — a practice from Japan is The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life. Here is how to bring it into your life between meetings, without anyone seeing.
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Step 1
Use the gap between two meetings
Ninety seconds. No app, no notification. Ikigai fits inside the gap that other people throw away.
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Step 2
Recall the teaching once
Hold the sentence: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life. Let it touch the conversation you just finished, and the one you are about to enter.
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Step 3
Name a single application for the next hour
Not the whole day. The next hour. One reply you will write more honestly. One sentence you will leave unsaid. One person you will hear better than the email lets you.
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Step 4
Walk back in slightly slowed
The practice is not the recall; it is the slightly different entry. Most colleagues will not notice. The work, quietly, gets a different colour.
That is the entire practice. You do not need a longer version of Ikigai than this — only a more regular one.
Other contexts for Ikigai