The 5 Ps exercise by Josh Bruce

Updated: May 11, 2026
Original: September 8, 2018

Fair warning, this can be a difficult exercise.

To front-load things, the 5 Ps are:

Passions:

Things you do with no form of coercion or motivation; the thing itself is the reward.

Pensives:

Things you will do but usually require a bit of outside influence.

Prohibitions:

Things you won’t do regardless of coercion or outside influence.

Peeves:

Things others do that bother you.

Pedagogies:

Things you want to learn or are willing or able to teach others.

The goal is to list at least three things that fit into each of these categories for you.

Quick example for me:

• Passions: Helping others make peace with time and space.
• Pensives: Software development.
• Prohibitions: Lying - specifically, speaking what I know to be counter to reality; I may be wrong about something, but it’s because I’m coming from a place of ignorance.
• Peeves: When people assume to know my “why” or speak on my behalf without my consent.
• Pedagogies: Learn to become a better storyteller and teach others how to design their lives.

People often ask me whether to limit this to work, life, or both. I lean toward both by default because I follow the spirit of Henry Rollins, that there is no such thing as work time, spare time, free time, or downtime, only lifetime. Go!

Having said that, I’ve run people through this exercise in settings where they didn’t feel comfortable sharing with, say, their coworkers. Regardless, when we talk about designing your life, there is no area that is off-limits.

For groups

As a group exercise, the 5 Ps can go a long way toward creating an intentional culture, or be an effective icebreaker; family or corporate.

1. Ask everyone to do the exercise individually.
2. I typically go around the group, starting with passions and then moving to the next category.

These are the only two steps needed to use the exercise as an icebreaker. When using it to create an intentional team culture, I’ll capture themes or higher-order concepts from what the individuals come up with.

I worked with a software development team once, wherein everyone was pensive about software development. So, that became a team-level pensive for the team, and an entire discussion about career choices for everyone in the room, which was funny. And, to be fair, a non-trivial number of us get jobs in something we’re pensive about to earn enough to fund our passions; software developers passionate about travel or playing music.