American culture tends to glorify busyness and overwork, focusing more on the amount of work than the actual value. Since most women are stuck in traditional gender roles and unfair cultural expectations, this workplace norm puts them in a pretty hard spot to grow and thrive. Kate Byrne discusses how to go beyond this status quo with New York Times bestselling author and journalist Brigid Schulte. Together, they discuss what it takes for women to combat overwork, reclaim their precious time, and push leaders away from the Ideal Worker myth. Brigid also explores the importance of treating your calendar as an art gallery and taking short pauses to get out of the grind and live a more fulfilling daily routine.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Beyond The Grind: Author, Brigid Schulte On The Workplace Of The Future Breaking Free From Overwork And Overwhelm
In this episode, we’re going to tackle a topic that affects all of us. Why the heck are we so busy, yet we never feel like we’re getting anything done, let alone enough done? My guest is Brigid Schulte. She’s a Bestselling Author, Award-Winning Journalist, and a Director of the Better Life Lab at New America. She’s got two great books. One is Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time, and the other is Over Work.
It unpacks them this modern obsession that we have with busyness and why our relationship with work, desperately needs a reset. We’re going to take a look at the future of work. We’re going to cover the difference between busyness and real productivity, how men and women experience time differently, both at work and pleasure, and what that means for work and life and work in life balance. The future of work, what’s broken, what’s changing, and what needs to happen next. We’re going to hear what the ideal workplace for Brigid looks like.
Lastly, we’re going to take a little time and get some practical tips on how can you reclaim your time, your focus, and meaning in an always on culture. If you’re like me and you feel way too stretched too thin, and buried in to-do lists which are like anchors weighing you down or wondering, “Is this just how life is now? Is it ever going to change?” Come on in. We’re going to show you some ways that you can have that life and here’s how you do it.
I’m so excited to welcome Brigid Schulte, New York Times bestselling author for her book, Overwhelmed, and soon to be on the New York Times bestselling list, Over Work, I bet and fabulous journalist. Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. It’s what I’m dedicated my life to, so I’m thrilled to be in this conversation.
Introducing Author And Journalist Brigid Schulte
We’re saying to each other, and it’s so true, such an important subject, quite honestly, especially in these times when people are monitoring, what we can and cannot speak to. Now more than ever, I want to galvanize people to stand up and speak truth to power. This is going to be one of the conversations that is going to play a huge role, so let’s jump in quickly. Before we jump into the book itself and the subjects of Over Work, which is amazing. Time in life, how did you get to where you are? What made you go, “This is what I want to do. Here’s what I’m supposed to be writing about. Shazam. I’m on my way.”
It was never like that. I would say it was a lot of feeling very lost, wandering, late-night anxiety, wondering what’s the purpose and what am I doing with my life. In general, it was always asking the question, why am I here? What am I doing? What should I be doing? What speaks to me? It’s always being open when I could calm down enough to listen. I’m very anxious and spend a lot of time. We’re here for a short period of time on Earth and how do I make the most of it?
I’m one of four daughters. I’m raised by a very conservative, patriarchal dad. My brother-in-law says we were more afraid of our dad than we were of God. We were Roman Catholic, so that tells you something is. I was raised with very strict ideas of who I was, what I could do, and what I could be. I always bristle against that even as a kid. We’d go in these long driving trips. I grew up in Oregon. My parents are from Wyoming and we would drive from Oregon to Wyoming in an air-conditioned station wagon for two days of utter hell along the way.
I always remember being in the backseat and nobody ever told me where we were going or when we would stop. I feel powerless and hating that feeling. A lot of what fuels me is the sense that women get to be people, too. That it’s not just men who are smart or make choices about what they do with their lives or who have more opportunity to live a rich and full life. I was expected to either get married and have children or be a nun. That was it maybe.
When I was working on my first book, I interviewed both of my parents and it was shocking. Even my mother bought into that and said things to me. My dad worked in higher education, and I said, “I thought that education was always so important to you and you wanted us to be educated.” My mom said, “We always thought that would be a good backup just in case.” I’m older than a lot of folks, but I graduated from college in 1984. It wasn’t in the 1950s. I was like, “A backup for like just in case.” I didn’t do the “right thing.”
That’s a long way of saying the reason that I am where I am, get up every morning, and so passionate about what I do. If feminism is about the personhood of women, that’s what I’m all about. It’s not like Black Lives Matter. It’s like, we didn’t say anybody else’s lives didn’t matter. It’s just that when you look at statistics Black lives are more targeted and more affected by police violence. It’s the same thing when about gender equality.
It’s not just women’s advancement that I want to see. I want to all of us to have all the opportunity for a more human future. Part of what I do is I look at men and I tell the stories of how they get involved in care and caregiving. Things that were always seen as “the women’s fear,” or women’s invisible and diminished. Part of what I’m trying to do is elevate the value of that care.
I know we’ll get into the book, but one of the big arguments that I make in this new book is that we need to think about work in a much bigger way. It is not just what we do for pay in the marketplace, but it is also all of the unpaid work of care and home and all of that. Everything that is not leisure time is work. All of that work should be good and fair and well represented. That’s a lot of what I’m passionate about, is making the world a more human place.
How Women Experiences Time Differently Than Men
I’m going to do this a little different. Let’s start with the gender work and the notion of time, then we’ll do a bit of a deeper dive into this whole culture of overwork and busyness then talking a bit about some tips that you might have for people who could reclaim time and wellbeing. Without further ado, I know your research which is amazing at that. It found that women experience time differently than men. Can you explain that?
It’s so fascinating, but when you think about it, time is always constant. There’s always going to be 24 hours in a day, but how we experience time can be very different. The perceptions that we have of our experience of time often is far realer than clock time. We’ve all had experiences when a day feels like it lasts forever. It’s like, “It’s only 3:00. It’s amazing,” or a day like saving time where you’re like, “I feel like I just got up and now the days almost over.”
We’ve had those experiences where time itself doesn’t ship but are experience of it changes for a variety of reasons. When it comes to gender, this is what’s so fascinating, and it’s not so much that I research those, but there are fascinating researchers out there. They write these amazing white papers that nobody sees. That’s part of my role, as I read those amazing white papers and I help other people to it. What some of these researchers found is because we have these very traditional of gender roles, we have these cultural expectations about who we are, what we should do, and how we should spend our time.
We have this programming. These movies that run in our heads. For women, the movie is, “I better put other people first. If I’m a caregiver, that’s my role. That’s the most important thing. If I take time for myself, I’m selfish. I’m a bad person.” For men, the movie that runs in their mind is, “I better get a good job. I better support my family. I better make a lot of money because that’s where I’m going to show my success and status.” Even if you may be aware of them, you may not be.
We’ve all got these like messages consciously or unconsciously knocking at the door of our brain all of the time, if you will. What was fascinating as these researchers found that, say, a family could be sitting around at dinner table. It could look from the outside like everybody’s having the same experience and yet when you asked people how they felt about it. Men would often feel like, “I’m amazing because look at me. I am home having dinner with my family. I have put my family first. I have left the office and I’m amazing.”
They would be feeling this great sense of pride that they were sacrificing if you will their identity to put their family first. If you asked a woman like a mother, how she was feeling it was often like, “I didn’t do enough at work. I’m a terrible mother. The bread is burned. I didn’t do this. I’m not spending enough time with my children.” You are feeling like garbage. It’s interesting this one researcher just said, for so many women, the way we think about ourselves and the way we think about ourselves in time is just polluted. It’s called contaminated time because we are just so hard on ourselves from the get-go. A lot of it is because of these unconscious messages that we don’t even recognize.
That we’re doing. That’s the same difference the same true for when we have leisure time. That’s why we double time flogging.
It’s even more. There was a fascinating study and I read about it my first book. My first book is what led to my second book. It looked a lot at leisure time, which in the United States, as a whole because we tend to be a very work focused culture. We don’t give a lot of credence to leisure or play or time off. We tend to think we value busyness and productivity. If you have a weekend, when you didn’t hold the laundry, bake bread, do this and do that, and take your kids in million different places and workout twice a day, then you feel like a total loser.
That sense of leisure and reflection is not something we value in the society. You’ve already gotten those messages coming in. There was this one fascinating study that I wrote about in the first book that asked women all around the globe about leisure time. What they found is that men feel like they get leisure time. Golf is a perfect example of that, like, “I’m going to go all day. I’m going to walk around and hit a ball and be with my buddies and drink beer.”
They feel that they’re old and that is just part of being alive. Whereas for women, it didn’t matter what country women were in or what profession they were in. I consider, if you’re an at-home parent, that’s a profession because it’s a lot of work, whether you’re paid or not. It didn’t matter what women were doing. It didn’t matter your race, your religion, and your socioeconomic status. Women felt that they did not deserve leisure time and they had to earn it. The only way to earn it was to get through the end of this endless to do list that as we all know never ends.
Regardless of their race, religion, or socioeconomic status, women often feel they do not deserve leisure time. Share on XI have experienced that and that was a lot of what I wrote about in the first book that like drove the second book. Women’s time also tends to be very interrupted throughout history. Women’s time is far more interrupted whereas men have more protected time. When you think about it, like the secretary would be always interrupted to protect the boss, the man’s time.
You’re right. It’s precious time.
A friend of mine said, “We treat men’s time like diamonds and women’s time like sand. It’s just not valuable. Their time is valuable.” Women have always had this interruption. What we know from peak human experience to get into that flow state requires long stretches of uninterrupted time. That’s very difficult. Women tend to not have it and if they do have it, they tend to feel guilty about it. I’ve seen myself do this. You’ll get like a little bit of a stretch of time and like, “What am I going to do? I could read a book. I could play the piano and go for a walk. I better clean up the junk drawer.”
You go to the next task, then you add five more things onto your task list. Part of what my work is, I like to say I work at the intersection of personal transformation and systems change because we’ve got to understand the waters that were swimming in and begin to make different choices. Even in how we think and that can help us be part of making larger, bigger change.
Why We Are Glorifying Busyness
Beautifully put. How the heck did we get here? How do we start glorifying busyness? Is it because we’re addicted to adrenaline? Is it because that’s how we show our worth? How do we find ourselves here as a society in general?
It’s such a good question. I would say it’s uniquely but it’s a peculiarly or particularly American trait.
This is what I was going to ask, too. How does it compare? I’ve worked with a few other countries and it does not seem they don’t have this to this degree.
Not to this degree. Some of it is I would say there is a speed up with technology, and there is more time pressure that people around the globe of feeling but there’s a real difference in the United States. Part of it is you think about, we’re an immigrant culture. There’s a restlessness. People come here for a better life. You’re going to make your life better for your kids, so you work hard. That was the American bargain.
You would work hard. You’d reach the “American dream.” If you didn’t, at least your kids would. That’s what’s fueling a lot of resentment and anger. That’s not the case. That’s not happening, and that’s part of what I explore in the second book. To go back to that sense of like, why busyness. There is a restlessness in American culture to begin with. It’s interesting because there was a time in the ‘50s or even the ‘60s, people would come home for dinner. You do. You work 9:00 to 5:00.
I love my mom but she’d go up on a coffee clock and you were left on your own. We got locked out of the house when we got home from school. Somebody would call Protective Services now but that’s what you did. It’s like, “I lost track of time. I was playing bridge.” There was time. It was different, and certainly, that’s a middle-class experience. It’s not universal. What ended up happening is there’s been a ratcheting up of expectations and you can see that in the time you stayed starting in about the 1980s. This was long before we all had smartphone in our pockets. There was this expectation that at work that you would work long hours.
This was this ideal worker myth.
This ideal work began to take hold. You see it in the data and the 1980s. There’s something that happened and nobody knows why. There’s a couple different theories. Since we’re talking about women, one of the theories that I find very interesting and intriguing is that women entered the workforce in mass in the 1970s. Now, when you look at the data, there’s been so much stigma around that like mean, bad working mommies. They’re selfish and abandoning their children.
If you look at the data, that’s the time when the economy started to change and good jobs started to go overseas because they’re so expensive here. The reason they’re so expensive is because we don’t have universal healthcare. When you expect an employer to pay for your healthcare, it makes your job expensive compared to like Mexico or the global South. The middle-class started to be hollowed out. Good job started to disappear and wages started to stagnate.
You needed a second earner to go into the paid workforce to maintain the status full of your family. That’s a big part of what I’m trying to do, help people see that myth of the mean, bad working mom was just that. It was a myth, because if women had not gone to work, data shows that far more families would have fallen into abject poverty if women hadn’t worked. I bring that up because it’s important to have that historical perspective to reclaim the past in order to be able to reclaim the future, if you will. I’m sorry I’m going way off.
This is interesting. It’s important to have the comprehensive context because so often, all of this happens in response, to the situation at hand and to the health and livelihood of your home of your tribe.
What ended up happening is women entered the workforce in mass in the ‘70s. Think about it, by the ‘80s, you’ve been in the workforce for ten years and you’re ready for promotions and to compete. One of the theories about why we got so busy and we’re overworked came from, is that leaders and they’re still, largely men, largely white men who are in 70% of all C-suite jobs are. Far more men are still in power. hat ended up happening is you move the goal posts and you make it harder for women who are still hearing most of the care responsibilities.
You make it almost impossible for them to complete because if I’m supposed to put in long work hours and I’m expected to be the primary caregiver, you just can’t. You were pulled impossibly in two different directions. That’s part of what I explore is. It’s, how can we change work cultures, so that you get back to what’s essential, which is doing good work rather than the performance of work, which then keeps men in power.
Women who have care responsibilities find it almost impossible to accomplish their tasks because they are stuck in long work hours. Share on XHow do you change work? How do you change cultural expectations around care? How do we value it? How do we share it more fairly? How do we shift public policies, which are so completely not only punishing punitive for families and caregivers? How can we shift public policy, work place practice and cultural attitudes to get us to that more egalitarian future, where there is the opportunity to live a full human full-hearted life?
How To Go Beyond The Grind
For those reading, who are trying to figure out, how do I make my work culture and my place be healthy and just a reciprocal give-get in one sense? What are one or two things steps that these leaders could take that would help this workplace shift take place? Is it to go beyond flexible hours? What would you suggest?
I would say two things. If you’re a leader, I’ll tell you, there’s more that you can do, but for everyday folks, which most of us are let’s start on the personal level because that’s where we live, at where you are. Start where you are. What I would say is like, take a pause. Take time to pause. It seems impossible. You’re like running in all cylinders. You have no time. There’s research that shows that if you stop and take even three deep breaths, your cortisol levels drop. When you do that and you get out of that fight or fright flight, freak out, panic, or anxiety frame of mind, you can begin to see a little bit bigger picture.
A behavioral scientists call it tunneling. When we feel that scarcity of time and running around in a panic and busyness, and we got to answer all these emails, got to get to meetings, the slack channel is dinging and the kids need this. When you get in that freaked out frame of mind, there’s research that shows your IQ drops thirteen points. Think about a tunnel. You narrow your vision and you can only see a few steps ahead of you in the darkness. You don’t know where you’re going. You’re just groping along in the darkness.
That’s where those three breaths. It’s learning to pause and interrupting that cycle of busyness can help you begin to get outside the tunnel and ask questions. Do I need to do this to me? Who’s telling me this? Who’s voice is this? Is this what I need or is this what I’m expected to do? It’s going to take a while, but get into the practice of interrupting that busyness and asking yourself questions. Is this what’s most important to me in this moment? Think about your to-do list in a very different way.
One of the most transformative things somebody ever told me is your to-do list is a brain dump. Get it all out of your head, write it down, and put it in your notes. Whatever you do, whatever app you use, so that you don’t have to expend energy thinking about it trying to remember, but then don’t do the next thing and think, “I got to do it all. I better do it all by the end of the day.” From that dump, pick one thing. What is the one most important thing to do that day and schedule time to do it.
I was part of a research project looking at overworked and why were people were feeling so busy and overworked. It was fascinated. We talked to people and was like, “I was running around all day. I was busy all day and I never made time or didn’t get to that one thing I needed to do.” They end up taking work home or working over the weekends, then they get tired, resentful, and exhausted. The work feels like a slob.
Figure out what that one thing is, and put it in your calendar. Make sure that people don’t schedule you into meetings over that time. We tend to assume that the work is going to get done and it often doesn’t. Create that space. The last thing I’ll say in terms of personal transformation, again, I love doing this work because I get to learn as I do it because I’m learning as I go. Another behavioral scientist told me, the best thing to think about in terms of your calendar.
We have these busyness expectations, we tend to think, “If I cram my calendar filled with stuff and I’m back-to-back-to-back in meetings. I’m amazing.” We get an adrenaline charge out of it, and yet at the end of the day, you look back and you’re like, “What did I do?” You’re not quite sure and you’re like, “Did I produce anything? Did I enjoy anything? Is any of this aligned with my sense of purpose?” Oftentimes, it’s not. Again, take that pause. Do your brain down, pick the one or maybe three things, then treat your calendar not like a pantry that you got a cram filled with stuff so that when you open the door, it all falls down on you. Treat it like an art gallery.
What is your one thing? Hang it on the wall. Make sure there’s white space, so you prepare for it beforehand like I did before this episode. I breath and prepare. Spend time in that moment. How many of us go to a meeting and we’re answering emails? Your half listening and half writing an email. You’re nowhere. You’re not doing yourself any favors. You can’t multitask or tasks switching. Your taxing your brain too much and people can tell you’re not there.
Be fully present in what you’ve committed to, then make sure that there’s time. There’s white space afterwards to process and follow up on whatever you need to do, then take a breath and go into the next painting. That’s what I would say on a personal level. That begins to slow the busyness down and begins to help you get clear on what your priorities are.
I would say, in a busyness culture, especially for women. It’s very important that you communicate. That you show your output, your value, and you communicate it. Only because you’re not there at 8:00 at night and you’re not the one that sending emails at 11:00 at night, do not apologize for that. Do not make excuses for that. Show like, “This is important to our team. These are the deliverables we agreed on and I made progress on all these.” Don’t make it about time. That’s an old factory model of thinking. Make it about what you’ve done and the value so that people can’t argue. It’s like, “She wasn’t here late at night, so she’s not committed.” It’s like, “Look at this amazing thing that she did. She’s amazing.” Begin to change the frame around you that way.
I can remember it was my first job at grey advertising. I remember there was this one account supervisor. You would always see him walking meandering throughout the halls all day long, then he would stay then, and he’d finally sit down. It took him forever to write this letter, which then I eventually had to write the letter. He was always like, “I’m burning the midnight oil. You’re doing that because you’re walking away the day. I took it as, you’re wasting time. That was my first glimpse into this sick twisted, vantage point of, it’s like, “No, you’re literally inefficient at what you’re doing.”
The True Power Of Leadership Belief Mindset
It’s true and we reward the wrong things. We tend to think, “If you’re a busyness leader and your CEO, thinking about profits, certainly you must be making good decisions.” You’re not. I got to tell you one of the most shocking things and reporting my most recent book, was the power of leadership belief and mindset. It had nothing to do oftentimes with evidence or data or even experience. It had everything to do with like, “I worked this way, so everybody else should.”
Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life
It’s this adherence to the status quo because it’s familiar and you see that in all of these arguments about return to office, no more flexibility, and I need to see you if you’re going to be working. What that is? It shows a real lack of imagination, trust, and an inability to communicate. It’s a old style way of working for the 21st century. It’s all about what we believe. This is what I would say.
You’re saying, what do you do? That’s the individual. Now, if your team leader or if you are a leader and you have some organizational role. There is a lot that you can do. If you’re the CEO, you can do an awful lot to set the tone. I spent time in Iceland looking at the short workout hours movement, which I have to say, I was a real skeptic of it first, because I tend to work too much. I take on too much on my plate. That whole chapter on workaholism that I struggle with workaholic tendencies for a variety of reasons.
I was like, “No, there’s a way you can do it.” I came away convinced looking at successful work redesigns, successful short work hours movements and what they do anybody could do. It doesn’t matter that it’s Iceland and their gender equality is amazing and only have four hours of sunlight. That’s not the point. The point is, there is a process you can go through. You can do it as an individual and as a team leader. Again, first you start with the pause, and take a deep breath.
You’ve got all these status post systems that you’ve been doing. It’s like status quo way of working. What everyone had to do to move to shorter workouts is get clear on what is your work. What is most important? What creates the most value? I began to think of work in three ways and that’s the center. That’s where we should be spending our time, our focus, and where we get our sense of meaning identity and fulfillment when you’re doing that value added work.
There’s a second concentric circle around it that I call the work around the work and that’s where we get to into tunneling. It’s the meetings, the emails, the slack, and the Asana. All this stuff that should be directing you to doing more of that. It should be helping you to do that work, but oftentimes, it’s like a merry-go-round and we get stuck there. It doesn’t support that deeper work and then there’s a final concentric circle. I call it the performance of work, like your boss walking around. Maybe you’ve seen it.
My husband used to talk about this guy at the newspaper where he used to work years to go. He was like, “This guy he was always running around slamming doors and looking busy and hairy.” Nobody had any idea what he did because he was performing busyness. If you were in an ideal worker culture that rewards long hours and looking busy and the appearance of busyness, you’re going to reward that person who appears busy and puts in long workouts.
This is where it’s important as a leader to go through that process of like, what’s our work? How do the systems layer up so that we can focus on that work? How do we measure it so that I know you’re doing good work? I can trust you to do that good work and it doesn’t matter when, where, or how you do it because this is the output that I want that or we all want. This is the expectation and the standard that I want you to meet, and this is the deadline.
If you can meet that, that’s work on a 21st century. It’s not sitting in a chair. It’s also important. I know we’re talking in a professional setting, but also two thirds of those jobs are done by women. It’s important that we transform hourly work if we care about gender equality. There’s a way to do that as well. Focus on what’s important. Reward it. Pay it well. Have regular hours. Not these irregular nutty schedules. There’s a way that you could also include more control and stay over your schedule. If you have to go into a place, you might not have location flexibility but you can have time flexibility. There’s a way to make work better all across the board.
The Ideal Way To Redesign The Modern Workplace
I love that. As what you described, if you could redesign the modern workplace from scratch. What would it look like? With all of that in mind.
It would be output oriented. It would be focused on your performance and the output. It would not be about input, time, manner, or place of work. It would be a lot about trust and communication. The most important thing is to make it human-centered. Human beings are not widgets. They get sick and need paid time off to care for people. Those are rights. Those are not fringe benefits. When you trust and believe in your people, that’s when you’re going to get innovation and amazing work.
When you trust and believe in your team, innovation and amazing work will happen. Share on XIt’s interesting I was talking to a lot of people who look at how to make crummy jobs. They got a lot of crummy jobs. How to make crummy jobs better jobs? A lot of what they say is, you get what you expect. If you treat people like they’re going to not want to work and they’re going to cheat you and are lazy. You might get that. If you treat people like, “This is a great job. I’m going to treat you. There’s a reason why you’re here. There’s a pathway to advancement. I’m going to connect you to the purpose of why we’re here so you understand.”
If you’re cleaning a hospital room. You doing that is vital for these patients to be able to heal. Your job is important. What about when about designing an effective and equitable work for the 21st century. There’s a wonderful philosopher and she wrote a book. It’s all about the protestant work ethic. We tend to think it’s like, “Work until you drop. You’re going to get your reward in the next life,” which is the protestant work ethic that we’ve adopted in the United States and in the UK.
At the same time, there was this different protestant work ethic or work ethic that was forming. People just ignored those writings. What those writing said, they called it the equality of Collins. That all jobs had value. It was like our old work had value, whether it was paid or unpaid. It was very feminist in the sense but it recognized the value of care work it and the value of what we do to make a home, to raise children, and to care for elderly people or disabled people.
That’s a beautiful and important work. They imagine that society was this very intricate clock and every gear had value. Every gear deserved to be treated well and to not have a toxic boss. Have a floor that you wouldn’t fall underneath. That’s what I think about is, how can we build both, not only effective but equitable and make those opportunities far more available to far more people.
I’ll work there.
Me, too.
Escaping Anxiety And Enjoying Life
I was asked folks this. What advice would you give your younger self knowing what you know now?
That’s such a good one. Don’t worry so much. I was so wracked with anxiety. Not a lot of people are. Maybe I was just programmed that way, but I do and I still. I worry too much. Enjoy your life while you’re in it, because I got to the point where I would look back. It’s like, “That was such a nice time. Why was I so round up with worry and it wasn’t enough and I wasn’t enough at the time.” That’s what I would say. Breathe and be in the moment. Let it be enough.
Be Aware Of The Present
I will say the three deep breaths is a family favorite of mine and it does a great job in keeping you here and present. When you start future tripping, you don’t even know. You only know what you know then. You’re not even there yet. There’s all these other things that could happen or not. More often than not, half those things never even pop up. Where do you see the greatest opportunity for women moving forward?
I want to acknowledge that this is a very difficult time.
Agreed.
There’s a lot of discouragement and even despair. I have been despairing. You read Project 2025 and it’s very despairing. It’s very much wanting to recreate a world that never existed like the Leave it to Beaver Family. If you look at the data, that was only true for maybe a decade or two, after the second World War and only true for white families of the middle-class.
It’s not how most people have lived throughout human history. This is where it’s important. People who control the present, control the past. If you control the past or memories of the past, you can control the future. The most important thing is to be aware of the fullness and the complexity of the present and the past, then work together for a much different fuller, wholehearted, and open equitable future. The real opportunity now is embracing complexity, the truth, and continuing to tell it. Not being gaslit, even at a highest level.
Be aware of the fullness and complexity of the present and the past. Use them together to build a wholehearted, open, and equitable future. Share on XThat’s what I was going to say, adding truth to power and trusting each other. The more we all, but especially women and with women can help lift other women, and not slip back into that situation that those of us who did grow up in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s early workplaces, you’ll get there. You will, or you’ll end up somewhere else but wherever you end up, you’ll be prepared for it. Don’t take away from someone else. Maybe when someone does get elevated, lifted, and promoted, see that as, “That’s a reflection of what’s possible for me.” As opposed to, “They got my seat.”
It’s that scarcity mentality and sadly, that is what has pitted women against each other. The sense that there’s only one or that the ladder is so narrow. There isn’t enough room. The most important thing is don’t buy into that. That’s a myth. It’s a lie, and it doesn’t have to be the way it is. The way things were or the way things are is not have to be the way things will be. That was what’s so exciting about some of the reporting that I’ve done.
I focus on bright spots and change agents, and there’s a lot of very cool stuff happening out. It doesn’t get necessarily picked up in the mainstream press because everybody’s so whipsawed but you know what it is out there. Look for those places of hope and inspiration. Do not sink into the spare. Learn from each other. You’re right, the more, the more. There isn’t a zero-sum game. When we all do, well we all do better. Keep that in mind.
The Power Of Compassion
Everyone, rest up, dig in, read these other two books, then we’re going to go for it again. Brigid, thank you so much, both for making the time here and bringing this shinny bright light on everything and, frankly, helping us all put the flog down and little bit of a reality check and if nothing else to take a moment to pause and take those three deep breaths.
The last thing I would say, somebody once to asked me, what’s your favorite time management tip? I got lots of them. I love them, but you know what my favorite one is? Compassion. Be compassionate. We’re going to make mistakes. We’re going to fail. Pick yourself up and begin again. No judgment. You can’t love and care for other people unless you love and care for yourself. That’s a message women need to hear.
Be compassionate. We will make mistakes and we will fail. Just pick yourself up and begin again. Share on XThat is a lovely note to end on because I’m going to need to practice that later on.
Me, too.
Thank you. I appreciate your time and your wisdom.
I’m working on the wisdom, but happy to share the time. It’s been wonderful to be in community with you.
Take care.
—
I don’t know about you, but there’s so many takeaways from that conversation with Brigid. One thing that stuck out, it’s fascinating to me how the different ways that men and women experience time and leisure time and in some ways woman think of time is contaminated. It’s so beautifully put that men treat time like diamonds and women treat it like sand.
Brigid’s suggestion that we take a look at a calendar and we treat it like an art gallery, where we hang one beautiful piece or one beautiful project and we give it space as opposed to cluttering it all over the place and jamming up the entire wall. The notion and the practice of asking yourself, is this what I need to do or is this what I think I need to do? That alone is going to clear a lot on my calendar. Finally, the notion of taking a pause and taking three deep breaths. Take three deep breaths and jump back into your day. Thanks for making time to spend time with us. Until the next episode.
Important Links
- Brigid Schulte Website
- Brigid Schulte on LinkedIn
- Brigid Schulte on Facebook
- Better Life Lab
- Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time
- Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life
About Brigid Schulte
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.