Piera Gelardi’s 5 Ways to Bring Playfulness Back Into Work and Life

Piera Gelardi, a creative entrepreneur and cofounder of Refinery29 and the creative wellness company NoomaLooma, shares five key insights from her new book, The Playful Way: Creativity, Connection, and Joy Through Everyday Moments of Play.

Gelardi defines playfulness as being curiously, creatively, and courageously engaged with life. It’s not about taking the easy path. Playfulness demands authenticity, the willingness to risk looking silly, and the courage to try something that might not work. In a world that rewards performance and polish, choosing play is a quiet act of courage that can help you feel truly alive.

Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Gelardi herself—in the Next Big Idea app, or buy the book.

1. Pressure narrows. Play opens.

When life throws a curveball, you face a choice: the Pressured Way or the Playful Way.

The Pressured Way is often our default response: tense up, try to control the situation, and force a solution. The Playful Way, in contrast, approaches the same challenge with curiosity, levity, and openness. It’s the difference between white-knuckling through life and seeing it as an adventure.

Think about the last time you felt truly stuck—whether tackling a problem from the same angle, avoiding a difficult conversation, or facing an impossible decision. The more pressure you applied, the smaller everything felt. That’s not a personal failure; it’s what pressure does. It narrows your thinking, tightens your options, and puts you in survival mode.

Play does the opposite. Recall a time when someone cracked a joke in a tense meeting, and suddenly the room shifted. Or when an unexpected question opened new possibilities that weren’t visible moments before. The Playful Way reorients situations toward curiosity instead of control, openness instead of force, and fluidity instead of rigidity.

2. Playfulness makes seriousness bearable

Many of us grew up absorbing messages like “be serious,” “get focused,” or “act your age.” We were taught that play is for kids, weekends, or something to earn after completing “real” work. When Gelardi’s company, Refinery29, expanded and she began hiring more corporate professionals, she started hiding her natural playfulness. She believed that to be taken seriously as a leader, she needed to suppress the parts of herself that were curious, irreverent, and imaginative.

In this mindset, she slowly suffocated. From the outside, it looked like she had reached a career high, but she was spending nights lying on her apartment floor, crying and making lists of all the ways she was failing. She was overworked and underplayed—spectacularly, chronically underplayed.

Cutting herself off from playfulness didn’t make her more professional. It cut her off from her resilience, perspective, joy for the work, and her ability to creatively roll with challenges. When she reconnected with play—bringing it back into the office, into her leadership style, and into her daily life—everything changed.