I spent a few days last week up in Burlington, Vermont, and one day, with temperatures a bit warmer than usual, took a walk down to Burlington’s waterfront park. (It’s called, accurately enough, Waterfront Park.) It’s a beautiful park, with a bike path and a science museum and gorgeous views of Lake Champlain. But the thing that stood out to me most were the swings.
Alongside the water, where you’d expect benches to be, Burlington’s placed these swings, maybe a dozen of them alongside a quarter-mile stretch of waterfront. On a warm day, you can sit there, watching the water slowly move towards shore, as you swing back and forth back towards the water.
A swing instead of a bench isn’t a huge change — at the end of the day, they’re still a place to sit and look at the water — but because I didn’t expect it, I stopped and spent a few extra minutes in that park. It was something different, something unexpected. I found those swings absolutely delightful.
All of us could try to bring the same spirit to our work. Try something small, new, and unexpected. It might lead to the creation of something special.
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That’s a photo I took of the swings in Burlington’s Waterfront Park.