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Learn more at www .kpmg .us -insights and beard. And I'm Addie Gnaceous and this is the HBRID test. Adi I'm going to ask you a personal question.
Do you have a lot of joy in your life?
That is a very personal question.
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 as editor large, and that was because I needed something different in my professional life.
In the past I wanted to be a manager and have lots of direct reports and lots of responsibility, and I realized that joy in my professional life, as I've gotten older, really depended not on those trappings of power but on being able to do creative work.
So, yeah, in my professional life, I definitely have more joy these days.
That's very good to hear.
And I'm also impressed that you can find joy at work.
Our guest today has done a lot of research with very busy, very ambitious, very successful people.
And she finds maybe as you did when you were at an chief managing a whole organization that it's sometimes difficult to find joy at work.
And so you really do need to do it in your free time.
And it's important, even when you're sort of at the stage of your career where you're climbing the ranks and definitely prioritizing work, you need at all stages to have three pillars for a satisfying life.
One is achievement.
100 % also meaning the purpose you find in your friends, your family and your job.
But then also joy. You need it at all times to truly feel satisfied.
So I'm wondering, is there a business case for why people need to seek and find joy?
absolutely because when you do find joy in the limited free time that you have you become a better person at work.
You're a more thoughtful caring manager, you are a higher performer, you are more productive.
It's definitely a virtuous cycle.
So she studied 1500 Harvard Business School alumni using a tool called the Life Matrix that she developed, which all of us can check out, and she dug into to how all of these people who are absolutely high flyers in their careers found joy in their very limited free time and their five ways you can do it and she's gonna explain all of them.
Leslie Purlow is a professor at Harvard Business School and co -author of the HBR article, How the Busiest People Find Joy.
Here's my conversation with her.
Let's start with the problem.
This might seem like a silly question But why is it so important, especially for all those high achievers out there listening to be interested in finding more joy.
Joy is super important for us to have in our day to day lives.
More important than I think many of us recognize, what we've found is that you actually need some amount of joy, meaning and achievement, at all stages of your lives.
And if you take my students, the Harvard Business School, they tend to think that they're and have achievement first and then meaningfulness and later in life joy.
But actually it's incredibly important for you to find joy for your own wellbeing and we also find that the more joy you find in your life outside of work, the more you'll find value in your work and bring a more productive self into the workplace as well.
Okay, so your definition of joy is what?
Positive emotion in the moment.
And it is important to us that it's in the moment.
It's not this broader sort of catch all phrase of happiness, but more that you're currently in the moment experiencing this positive emotion.
How do you measure that?
Because I imagine it must be really subjective, what generates positive emotion for you might not for me.
Can you also find joy in the same things that give you achievement and meaning?
How do you quantify any of this?
So that's an excellent question.
And if you even step back and think about, How do you even evaluate your time?
We know to think about if our time is productive, are we efficient, or effective, and there's tons of research on how to better manage your time, but are you living your best life?
Are you using your time in the best ways?
And that's a hard question for us to actually answer ourselves.
And so, what we've done is build a tool that actually has you walk through all the activities that you do in the course of your week and ask you to both assess how important Joy achievement and meaning to you as well as how much joy achievement and meaningfulness do you feel that you derive from each of these activities.
So it's self -reported the positive emotion that I might be feeling in any particular activity.
It's self reported, but then also compare to cross your different activities.
We also ask you about your aggregate or your perception of joy in your life.
at large, we have a set of questions where we first start by asking you to understand what's your what we call your jam type, joy, achievement, and meaningfulness type.
And people can be dominant in any one of the three or any two or all three.
It's important to understand to start with what matters to you because at the core, what we're really trying to do is build a way for people to assess.
Are you living your life consistent with your values?
And so we want to understand what are values and then we want to understand how are you actually living your weekly 168 hours.
How much joy achievement and meaningfulness matter to affect what is the minimum that you need as well as life stage, what's going on.
There's a variety of factors that are affecting those minimums. And what we're doing in the life matrix is providing you information about how you are relative to others in terms of meeting what's the minimum for you.
So your original study group using this tool that the article is based on is a group of Harvard Business School graduates who have both demanding careers and families, correct?
Yeah, by definition, we just looked if you were in the full time workforce and had kids.
What we found is that this group, and it is a highly ambitious group, we're gonna average of 50 hours a week and have another 12 hours a week of care taking our chore responsibilities or what we call non -work responsibilities.
Yeah, and so for these sort of high powered executives, Just what did you find in terms of their desire for joy achievement and meaning, and how well they were living up to those expectations.
First of all, we find that in your work, or your non -work responsibilities.
We find that joy is much more limited in those realms of your life, but the place where people find joy is in their free time or their discretionary time.
time. We also find that even though they have about 26 hours a week of discretionary time, only 10 hours or so are actually joyful for people.
This is the discretionary time, right?
So, you have 26 hours in addition to all your work, your sleep, your hygiene, your non - Consultabilities, but it might be spent scrolling social media or sitting in front of the TV or whatever you are choosing to do with that time, which often unfortunately doesn't bring people nearly as much as it could.
We found that they spent their discretionary time often doing things that didn't provide them value.
And it's not as surprising, it didn't necessarily provide them achievement and meaningfulness.
But joy is something that people do find in their free time and so what it raised for us is are their ways for people to actually find more joy on average.
The crux of your article is this idea that it's really not necessarily about finding more free time You know in a in a busy life when you have so many professional and personal obligations It's actually about making more of that limited free time that you have because people aren't tending to do that well right now I think that's such an important point Certainly resonates with me even right how much time we spend complaining about about I am always at work I have all these responsibilities like we have so many demands on our time and so we say I just don't have enough free time but the the huge
insight that we found in this research was actually you should stop complaining?
I should stop complaining and we should start making more of the time we have because actually you'll be way better off if you just take advantage of the free time you do have and it doesn't matter even for people who work a lot people have a lot of outside responsibilities, just making an hour or two, more of the free time you have, more joyful, will have a profound effect, both on your, on your life, on your well -being, but actually also on the, the you that you bring to, to work.
Yeah. I mean, just anecdotally oftentimes I think to myself, like, oh, well, I really only have an hour, and then I find myself scrolling social media, but if I had spent that or I don't know, calling a friend, or even doing a crossword. I feel like I might feel better after that hour.
So let's dig into the various ways that you can improve the limited free time that you do have and find more joy in it, just at a high level, what are some of the big buckets of advice that you would give to people?
So we found five key opportunities for people to find more joy, one is simply doing things with others.
We found for every activity that we were tracking that if you did it with others versus alone, on average, you would be better off doing it with others.
One of my favorite findings about this is watching tv.
The more time you spend watching tv is negatively correlated with life satisfaction, but actually if you watch tv with others, it suddenly becomes positively correlated to life what are you doing and with whom are you doing it is one of the important takeaways for us.
That does make me feel better because I do like watching TV but I generally do it with my husband or my kids so keep on doing that definitely.
The second thing we found is that of course there's going to be activities that you do alone but it's really important to make those solo activities things that you're doing better active versus passive.
Back to this you know sitting alone, watching TV or scrolling social media are particularly negative for your life satisfaction, doing things that are active are much, much better.
Okay? We also find that, and I think we're all guilty of this, you know, giving advice to our kids or to ourselves that, you know, you should do the things that are perceived by others to be valuable.
Uh -huh. But actually we find you should worry less about doing the things that other people find valuable in their free time, that things that other people drive joy and do the ones that really drive joy from so our favorite example and we talk about this in the article is if you really like cleaning your closets you should clean your closets instead of doing a set of other activities that people are telling you to do and I have to say I've started sharing that in some of the in some of our executive classes and the number of people who find truly find joy in cleaning their closet is just awesome.
Yeah, I regret that is not something I find And another thing we find is that you really should diversify the activities that you're doing in your free time, that there is a point for all activities at which there starts to be a declining return in terms of the value you're driving.
And I think that's probably because at some point it goes from being something joyous and something that you're really engaged in because you just want, it's just a spontaneous, it's a free time activity.
And it becomes more of a responsibility or a project or a chore, you can play too much chess.
Because it goes from just being something that you're doing, because it brings you joy to something that you got very competitive and you feel a real need to win.
And it becomes more achievement focused.
Exactly. Exactly. And so, diversifying your activities.
And then we also find you should, on the margin, be protecting your time because it is such a slippery slope.
It is so easy to spend that extra marginal hour at work versus at home, and if you can use that marginal hour at home, and in particular it is something that brings you joy.
It just has tremendous value for you.
And it is also tempting to use that marginal hour folding the laundry or, rather than going outside and playing kickball or something, you know, with your kids.
Okay, so I wanted to dig into each of those categories.
First of all, engage with others.
Does it matter who?
Because obviously, there are people who bring you joy and people who don't.
I think the answer is obviously, and that's for you to define for yourself to be aware of doing it with the others and the right others.
People who bring you, make you feel more joyful is what we want to encourage you to be thinking about.
So who are those people for you?
And then how do you encourage yourself and them to be doing some of these activities together?
And then on the active versus passive pursuits question, you know, I am particular as I probably can tell by the examples that I've given.
I love doing crossword puzzles.
I love reading books.
So why is it better for me to go exercise instead of doing those things?
So I mean, I think on some level these are averages and advice for you to be thinking about, and it's important for you not to spend all your time doing those.
Those things but on the margin doing some of that versus some other things, you know, all these rules are not mutually exclusive and so figuring out what brings you the most value.
I think on average people aren't spending their passive solo time in ways that actually are bringing them the value that it could.
And so we really see these as opportunities for you to reflect on your life and think about okay what am I doing and what brings me value yeah and i guess those tensions sort of lead us into the whole idea of following your passions because if your passion is something that's more sedentary you know like crossword puzzles are knitting then it's okay to do that because it does bring you joy exactly right i mean the the whole idea here is to really get you to pause and about am I using my discretionary time in ways that bring me joy?
What do you say to people who say, well, my passion is social media.
My passion is video games or things that generally people wouldn't recommend you spend your free time doing.
There's a declining return.
I mean, I'm not going to say you should do no social media, but my students have argued long and hard with me about the fact that they want to come home after class and sit the couch and do so, you know, scroll through their social media.
And that may be valuable, they're convinced it's valuable up to a point.
But I think that the key thing is to realise, you can do way too much of it.
And I think we all under deep down recognize that, right?
But there's, partly that you're doing a little bit of it to keep in touch and to keep up on what's going on for some people.
But then it just goes over a cliff.
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Drive more value from your workplace at eptura .com slash IDA cast. We talked a little bit about the diversifier activities idea, that they're sort of diminishing returns, but how do you quantify that?
Is it a different for every person or is there a number of hours, that is the threshold, where once you get over that, you got a stop.
I wish there was a black and white answer to that.
We don't find that.
It does seem to be there's an answer for each activity, but it's not the same for all activities.
And that's probably because we do, on average, different amounts of certain activities.
I mean, we just simply are exercising more in the week, on average.
As certainly as the group of people that we were studying, then we're doing things like reading.
Would you say that it's better to sort of have a small diversity of activities or a very wide diversity of activities, or you're sort of dabbling in everything, or is it better to sort of find a core that you really enjoy and bring you joy?
So the data suggests that more of the better.
There's no sense that you can be doing too many, but look you don't have that many hours.
So I think that it's a limiting factor as certainly with this population.
If you add all your hours And you were spending them all on discretionary time, we might find something different.
But for this group, finding several vs. one is clearly better.
On the protect your time advice, what recommendations do you have for how people might actually do that when there are so many competing demands?
Certainly for the HBS graduates, you studied certainly for the see suite executives that are in our audience base.
And really for everyone that's trying to balance career and family.
I just think it's very easy to get suckered into believing that the extra hour at work is actually going to be more critical than the extra hour at home.
And so we tend to make the trade off to work and convince ourselves that actually and by the way, our managers in our peers convincing us as well, that that's what really matters.
And I think the best thing we can do is set some hard constraints around making sure we have enough time.
And maybe it's just picking a few discretionary activities that are is specifically going to bring you joy and putting them into your calendar and holding yourself to those just like you would hold yourself to your work.
Yeah, block off of that time.
And do you find that the people that you've studied who have difficulty protecting the time?
Is it going back to that thing you said that they say to themselves, this is my time for achievement.
This is my time for meeting and I can postpone finding joy or at least find a lot less of it for a while.
I find people convince themselves that, especially in like professional service jobs, that this is the way it has to be, this is what the client needs and they'll put in their heart and soul into doing their work and it will pay off later.
And what we're finding is that that actually has very negative implications for you and your life and your well -being and actually for the you, that you bring to your work as well.
But I think people convince themselves especially earlier in their careers, that this is, I'm paying, I'm paying forward. Yeah.
So the negative consequences are things like burnout or actually not performing as well at work.
Yeah. Not performing as well.
Not coming to work as sharp, as motivated, with as much intentionality as they could.
So I think it's not just the long run effects, but actually the day to day effects.
We find lots of evidence that if you do just have a little more joy in your life outside, you come to work as a much more refreshed and gauged committed employee.
There's this hidden metric for team performance, which you get from how you spend your time outside of work.
And I think we're obsessed with what people are doing at work and we're all obsessed with sharing and being busy, whether it's at work or all the things we have to do outside of work, instead of recognizing the tremendous value of what we can do in little ways.
Before we started recording, we actually talked a little bit about commuting, which I now realize is where people spend so much of their free time, even though it's not free.
Because you're driving.
But do you have any recommendations for what all of us might do if we're on the train or stuck in traffic to sort of employ some of the advice?
I think figuring out ways to use that commuting time whether it's, I mean, now because of technology, whether it's listening to podcasts or using it to do more than just commute.
There is a tremendous opportunity for you to make that feel more valuable And there are some people who commuting is considered, like you can see this in all the ratings, it's just not such a negative experience.
And then for others it's a negative experience.
And I'll just say one of the things in the pandemic that people would say to us is, wow, now I miss my commute.
Never missed their commute, but now in the pandemic when you're always at home that that commute actually is a valuable, can be a valuable time between work and getting home, but how do you use it for that and making sure you're getting value from it?
and pausing to think about what would that be?
I think we just don't ask ourselves that question.
Yeah, I tend to listen to the news, which does not bring me joy.
But I also tend to call my mom, which might bring her more joy than it brings to me, but maybe that brings me joy too.
So, or maybe meaningfulness.
Yeah, exactly. What advice would you give managers who want to encourage their employees to try to find more joy, but also still get their work done?
For me, this finding is actually very exciting for managers.
I've worked a lot with organizations trying to help them think about how do you make the workplace better and what small changes can we make at work.
They will both make work better but also people's lives better.
And suddenly, I think we're finding actually, if you want to create better work, if you actually provide people just the awareness and just the encouragement to, if they will spend an hour or two a week doing something that's valuable outside of work as a manager, You don't have to give them any more time off.
You don't really have to do anything.
Beyond just encourage that they're creating that space for themselves outside of work, then it has tremendous opportunity for you to be a more caring, engaged manager of your employees and your employees to actually come to work in a better way.
So it wasn't at all what we set off to do, but I think what we've discovered is what you know, I said this before, this sort of hidden metric to team performance.
And so I would encourage managers to actually be aware of are they providing the space for their employees to get some joy outside of work?
I would not encourage them to start meddling in people's lives outside of work, or to take that on as a responsibility.
I don't think that's the place.
I think it's more just making sure that in our two a week of something joyful is going to be tremendously valuable to everybody.
Yeah. So it's really helping out with the Protect the Time element and then just the self -awareness what brings each individual joy and encouragement to pursue that.
I even think if everyone was able to say one activity they were going to do a week and the team worked together to ensure that they could do that, to protect the time but recognize it's not even like protect the time so they can have it outside of work but protect the time because they truly recognize that by having them having it outside of work, it brings value to work.
So it's almost just saying, you know, Betty is taking her yoga class at noon, you know, So let's move the meeting, but then I know we need to get out at six so that Peter can go to salsa dancing, that sort of thing.
I think so. Or you know, they just the team even being before they just sharing with each other, being vulnerable and saying, here's the one thing that I really care about, that I'm going to commit to doing and then making sure that everybody commits to doing that, but not so that every day there's a middle of the day and an end of the day.
I mean the way you describe it, it could become a little bit daunting for the manager and I more see it as an opportunity for it to be empowering for the team to really work together to engage in own collectively that they care about each other.
And what about for higher level organizational leaders?
You know, we do hear about the idea of creating joyful workplaces, but it sounds like you're saying that where people find the most joy would be outside work.
So should organizational leaders create a culture and policies that allow people that So, such that they do have the free time and can make choices their own individual choices about what brings them joy and that time.
Yes, but you make it seem more daunting than I want managers in case.
Okay. I just want managers to realize they don't have to do anything.
They don't have to change anything.
They don't have to be more flexible.
They don't like if they could just have people be aware of the time they have. And if they could use the time they have, the discretionary time better, they would be better off.
I'm just trying to lower the bar so much that there's no excuses for us not doing this, because if we just do that we all have a lot to gate.
We can raise the bar for sure, and do even more.
But I think right now if we could just acknowledge that and enable that, it's so low -cost. Yeah, so it sounds like for people at every level it's very much a self -management question versus managing people or managing organizations question?
Absolutely, great. Well Leslie, thank you so much for being with me today.
I hope that you have some time off today to find joy.
Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.
That's Harvard Business School Professor Leslie Purlough.
She's co -author of the HBR article, How The Business People Find Joy, and you can find the life matrix tool at yourlikematrix .com.
Next week, Audi speaks to Laura Wang about the importance of recognizing and following your intuition.
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