Finding Joy When You Have Limited Free Time

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It might seem that high-achievers with important jobs don't need — or even have time for — activities that bring them joy. But it turns out that finding joy at all stages of life (along with achievement and meaningfulness) is essential to feeling satisfied and being a more effective leader. Harvard Business School professor Leslie Perlow has studied busy executives who do - or do not - find joy and explains the main ways that we can all make the most limited free time, including avoiding passive pursuits and diversifying our activities. Perlow is founder of the Crafting Your Life Project, which created the Life Matrix tool, and coauthor, along with Sari Menster and Salvatore Affinito, of the HBR article "How the Busiest People Find Joy."

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before we begin, I want to tell you about another podcast called Think Fast Talk Smart.
0:05.9	Each week, host and Stanford Graduate School of Business Lecturer Matt Abrams teaches you communication skills,
0:13.2	like how to excel at small talk, write winning emails, and keep your nerves in check when speaking in front of crowds.
0:20.4	Communicate better to get ahead.
0:22.8	Check out Think Fast, Talk Smart, wherever you get podcasts.
0:37.2	I'm Alison Beard.
0:38.6	And I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HPR Idea cast.
0:48.6	Adi, I'm going to ask you a personal question.
0:51.4	Do you have a lot of joy in your life?
0:56.0	That is a very personal question.
1:00.8	Well, let's talk about professional lives, at least. I was editor-in-chief of Harvard Business Review for 16 years. I recently took on a new role as editor-at-large. And that was because I needed
1:07.5	something different in my professional life. In the past, I wanted to be a manager
1:11.4	and have lots of direct reports and lots of responsibility. And I realized that joy in my professional
1:17.4	life, you know, as I've gotten older, really depended not on those trappings of power, but on
1:23.5	being able to do creative work. So yeah, in my professional life, I definitely have more joy these days.
1:29.3	That's very good to hear.
1:30.8	And I'm also impressed that you can find joy at work.
1:34.0	Our guest today has done a lot of research with very busy, very ambitious, very successful people.
1:40.4	And she finds maybe as you did when you were an editor-in-chief, managing a whole
1:45.0	organization, that it's sometimes difficult to find joy at work. And so you really do need
1:51.6	to do it in your free time. And it's important, even when you're sort of at the stage of your
1:57.1	career where you're climbing the ranks and definitely prioritizing work, you need at all
	...

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