53:53 minutes
|
May 14, 2025
#23 Overwork
Redefining Success and Sanity with Brigid Schulte
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About The Speaker
Brigid Schulte works at the intersection of personal transformation and systems change to ensure that all people have the opportunity to life a rich, full and wholehearted life. She’s an award-winning journalist, think tank program director, keynote speaker and author of Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life and the New York Times bestselling book on time pressure, gender and modern life, Overwhelmed: Work, Love & Play when No One has the Time. She was an award-winning journalist for The Washington Post and The Washington Post Magazine and was part of the team that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. She serves as the director of the Better Life Lab at New America, using the power of story to reimagine better work, family, gender, and care. She hosts the Better Life Lab podcast on Slate. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, the Guardian, Time, Slate, U.S. News & World Report, New York Magazine, Fast Company, CNN, and many others. She is a frequent television, radio and podcast guest and has been quoted in numerous media outlets.
She lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband and their two children.
Episode Description
We’re facing a crisis of overwork that’s literally killing us. In this eye-opening conversation, award-winning journalist and author Brigid Schulte reveals how our toxic work culture has made overwork the norm, with devastating consequences for our health, happiness, and productivity.
Brigid traces the origins of our overwork epidemic to the 1980s when corporate priorities shifted toward shareholder value above all else. This transformation created what she calls “greedy work” – jobs that demand more and more of our time, attention, and energy. For knowledge workers, this manifests as a pressure to be constantly available and working excessive hours in one job. For the 44% of Americans in low-wage positions, overwork means juggling multiple jobs just to survive.
The most shocking revelation? Work itself has become the fifth leading cause of death in America. The psychosocial stressors of modern work – long hours, toxic management, and work-life conflict – contribute to both acute conditions like heart attacks and chronic illnesses like diabetes and cancer. Yet despite this health crisis, the myth persists that working longer hours makes us more productive.
Brigid demolishes this myth with compelling evidence showing that countries with shorter work weeks and better support systems match or exceed U.S. productivity. The problem isn’t about working more; it’s about focusing on what truly matters. She identifies three concentric circles of work: core value-creating work, work around the work (emails, meetings), and the performance of work (looking busy). In overwork cultures, we waste precious time in those outer rings.
The COVID pandemic proved flexible work is possible when leaders question assumptions. Organizations that successfully transform their work cultures share a common “success sequence”: they pause to identify what truly matters, train managers to focus on outcomes rather than hours, and create systems that enable people to do their best work.
Isn’t it time we stopped working ourselves to death? Listen now to discover how we can transform work to reclaim our lives, improve our health, and actually become more productive in the process.
