Purpose Vs Play Vs Peace: Plentiful Ingredients For A Pleasant Life

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.

Reading time: 3 mins


Summary: One lens I have for life - there are three types of time: Purpose, Play and Peace (rest). In a normal week I try to do 5 days of Purpose, 1 day of Play and 1 day of Peace.


Equations for Purpose vs Peace vs Play

  • Sometimes happiness comes from serving others. Sometimes happiness comes from being good to yourself. Other times happiness is the absence of any worry / stress! 

  • For me, done well, work can give you purpose. 

  • I think it’s possible to have happiness in all parts of your life, but that the type of happiness might be very different. This doesn’t mean that I think all times should be happy. In fact, I don’t think being happy all the time is optimal. There is no north without south, there is no happiness without sadness. Sadness isn’t necessarily badness. Amongst other things, done well, I think sadness can help you appreciate life more fully!


Jingle 1: Variety is the spice of life, that is why you want all the ‘p’ types of time ;)!

Jingle 2: A life without seriousness is frivolousness. A life with only seriousness is silliness.


Purpose vs Play vs Peace: they are sometimes opposites

  • In some respects relaxing well (peace) is the opposite of work (purpose). 

  • One lens: 

    • Work = There are things that have to be done by a certain time and above a certain level of quality

    • Relax = Can do things, but don’t have to do anything. And who cares about quality?

  • I think you want to be good at being ‘on’ (eg work mode), good at being ‘off’ (eg peace mode), good a having plans (eg work mode), good at being spontaneous (eg play mode), good at being responsible (eg work mode), good at being silly (eg play mode). 

  • This blog I wrote relates to multiple modes: I contain multitudes: one should have multiple modes