Workplace practice · 7 minutes
How to practise Wabi-Sabi at work.
Wabi-Sabi — a practice from Japan is The beauty of imperfect, impermanent, incomplete things. Here is how to bring it into your life between meetings, without anyone seeing.
-
Step 1
Use the gap between two meetings
Ninety seconds. No app, no notification. Wabi-Sabi fits inside the gap that other people throw away.
-
Step 2
Recall the teaching once
Hold the sentence: The beauty of imperfect, impermanent, incomplete things. Let it touch the conversation you just finished, and the one you are about to enter.
-
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.
-
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 Wabi-Sabi than this — only a more regular one.
Other contexts for Wabi-Sabi