Leisure's Not a Luxury. It's a Requirement for Top Leaders.

I'm a classic striver. I work really hard. I want to put points on the board every single day. You know what I'm bad at? Leisure. Now, I know what you're thinking. Leisure is chilling on the beach, and you're probably not very good at leisure, either. If you're watching this video, you're watching content from HBR because you want an edge, man. I completely get it. But, here's where we're wrong, fellow strivers. Leisure is a serious business. There's a very famous book written in the middle of the 20th century called Leisure, the Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper, German philosopher. He was a great philosopher, and he said that we need to be great at leisure. By that, he meant that we need to be strivers at leisure, too. And that meant not being lazy. He talked about leisure as being a serious thing in which we're not compensated by the world, but which enriches us and makes us better. You don't need work-life balance. You need work-life integration. And the way to do that, to be better at your job, is also not-job. The three parts of leisure that make you truly excellent are all about learning things you don't have to learn, deepening your relationships for which nobody pays you, which is to say, not on the clock, and becoming spiritually or philosophically deeper than you once were. Those are the three areas of leisure that you can dedicate yourself to get better at, and watch your happiness, and your effectiveness, and your productivity, and your creativity truly grow. And those are great goals for any striver.