In the March chapter of Time Well Spent, our series celebrating those who spend time as beautifully as they keep it, we visit with Rashida Jones and explore the rhythms she channels that give her life meaning.

Known for her roles in Parks and Recreation, The Office, Silo, and Black Mirror, as well as her writing, producing, and directing work across film, television, and documentary, Rashida has built a career defined by range. She moves between comedy and drama, performance and authorship, structure and spontaneity, with ease, joy, and purpose, carrying the desire to learn and grow through every endeavor. A self-proclaimed “generalist,” she is drawn to the freedom of trying, for beneath the credits is a woman deeply attuned to time, maximizing it through curiosity and growth.

Rashida Jones was born into Hollywood royalty and immersed in a world of creativity, levity, and love. The daughter of icons Peggy Lipton and Quincy Jones, her childhood unfolded in the glam and romantic Hollywood of the 70s and 80s. She remembers big birthday parties with trampolines, joyful music coating the bright scene, piñatas strung up in front of the ranch-style house where she grew up, and Sundays, filled with Brazilian soul food, laughter, and languid afternoons that blurred into evenings. Her parents were intentional about surrounding themselves with other mixed-race families, helping Rashida and her sister navigate their African American and Jewish identities.

As a preteen, Rashida was not yet the glamorous woman we know today, “but a chubby, awkward, straight-up nerd.” Voted “most likely to succeed,” she still carries that earnest, determined version of herself. Her “kind of hippie parents” found it endearing that their child wanted to be a lawyer. Or a judge. Or the president. She followed her intellectual passions to Harvard where she attended college thinking she would graduate and pursue law.

In college, Rashida studied religion and philosophy, but found herself, ironically, drawn to the storytelling forms of her parents that she had once resisted. She sang in the Opportunes a cappella group, appeared in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf, a therapeutic exploration of her identity, and wrote the music for Hasty Pudding Theatrical’s senior musical at a time when women were still not allowed to participate.

What followed graduation was many auditions, many rejections, small guest roles, and more auditions. When she joined The Office in 2007, it felt like a turning point, until the role proved short-lived and she returned, once again, to the drawing board. While on hold for a project that would become Parks and Recreation, Rashida sought fulfillment elsewhere. With her close friend Will McCormack, she took a daunting leap, and began writing, without expectation. They wrote daily, in her backyard, on the couch, anywhere they could, sourcing material from their own lives. The partnership quieted her inner critic, and she found catharsis on the paper. What emerged was Celeste and Jesse Forever: a tender, complicated portrait of love, separation, and emotional evolution.

It was a pivotal moment. Not only because the film became a Sundance success, but because it expanded her sense of what her career could hold– writing, producing, directing. And for the first time, she pushed beyond the dependable, affable girlfriend, friend, or voice of reason she was often offered, and allowed herself to be messy. Vulnerable. And not that likable. She turned down “safe” studios to preserve the integrity of the story.

That same instinct, to stretch, to try, to grow, shapes her life beyond the screen. Rashida, at her core, is a student for life. She believes in maximizing time by learning new things – not in pursuit of mastery, but in pursuit of expansion. Singing lessons. Tennis lessons. Dance lessons, twice a month. New skills, new disciplines, new discomforts. She is drawn to the unfamiliar and attracted to people “who know more about life than she does.” She loves being bad at things, the humility of it, and the process of slowly, imperfectly, getting a little better. There is a seriousness beneath her warmth, because she wants to understand this life, and the people in it, better every day.

It is that curiosity that has continued to pull her into new, braver terrain. Rashida’s work has expanded with courage, including into documentaries. In 2015, she produced and co-directed Hot Girls Wanted and in 2018, she turned the camera toward her family. Quincy, her portrait of her father was both a professional milestone and a deeply personal act of curiosity and devotion. Through learning about him, she learned more about herself. With his legacy in her life came a fascination with craft.

She continues to search for new experiences, moving from LA to London for a year of exploration. As a mother, Rashida continues to build legacy and to channel much of her parents into her child. She spends days in her garden. She works on projects that feel meaningful. She loves to dance. She hosts with warmth and ease. She throws “Pajammy jams” for her birthdays uniting lifelong and new friends for no other reason but to wear pajamas and dance, stripping away the Hollywood armor many of them carry.

Across every chapter of her full life, Rashida Jones returns to the same instinct: to learn, to stretch, to stay open. In choosing curiosity over comfort, and expansion over ease, she has shaped a life that is not only accomplished, but alive. A life built, deliberately and beautifully is what it means to spend time well.