“One person said, ‘I was at the office last night until 11 and my boss didn’t tell me what to do. So, I just stood at the copy machine and made blank copies to look busy.’ People are dying from overwork! And it’s not like all of that overwork is making people more productive, creative, or earning them more money. It’s just making them miserable. And that’s a huge lesson we can learn from,” said Brigid Schulte, New York Times Best Selling Author, Journalist and Work/Life Advocate.
Workplaces have demanded more and given less to employees for decades. Being available and busy, has been the unwritten rule for advancement, whether you care for the sick, stock shelves or run board meetings. But it’s often at the expense of mental and physical health. And the culture of overwork, continues to penalize anyone who’s less available. Which disproportionately locks Mothers, hands-on caregivers, and anyone who can’t devote all of their time to work, out. Brigid examines this entrenched part of our culture, and how to change it, in her newest book, Overwork: Transforming the Daily Grind Into a Quest for a Better Life.
Overwork is Killing Us
Brigid worked as an English teacher in Japan, after graduate school and became fascinated with the culture of Japanese karoshi. Which literally means, “death by overwork.” She explained, “In the West, occasionally we’ll hear about some horrific death of someone who worked so many hours, they couldn’t take it anymore. But it’s constant. Everybody’s working those hours and there are so many quiet deaths you don’t ever hear about. Like the strokes, or people who get so depressed, they just can’t face Monday morning.”
Because Workers Have Been Lost in the Equation
Many of us feel our relationship with traditional work break, after having kids. But it’s not only unfriendly to Moms or even to women. Brigid said, “We’ve moved from stakeholder capitalism, where organizations focus on the people who work there, and communities they’re in, to shareholder capitalism. Where they care about making money, to make the shareholders happy, which tends to be a very small and elite group of people. It’s why we have such widening economic inequality, political division, and ill health. MIT economist David Autor said, ‘without better public policies, we are on track to have a society of servers and the served’ and that’s dangerous.”
Inflaming the Mental Health Crisis
Brigid shared that in Japan, despite stronger public policies and caregiver support than in the US, many workers are conditioned to believe there’s “one road” to success. A specific path, in the form of their careers and education, they can’t divert from. A cultural influence on the suicidality and depression, in addition to sheer exhaustion. She explained, “There are so many places in Japan where it’s typical to stay at work really late, take a taxi home, shower and then turn right back around to get on the subway and go to work. Sometimes after maybe an hour or two of rest. And it’s impossible for the body to withstand that for very long.”
There’s a Disconnect Between Employers and Workers
We have our own version of being ‘worked to death’ in the US. Workplaces have been a leading cause of stress, and stress has been a leading cause of fatal illness not only suicides, for quite some time. According to the American Psychological Association’s latest ‘Work in America’ survey, “ …55% of workers strongly (21%) or somewhat (34%) agreed that their employer thinks their workplace environment is a lot mentally healthier than it actually is. And 43% reported worrying that if they told their employer about a mental health condition, it would have a negative impact on them in the workplace.”
But Organizations Can Curb Excess
In the past four years, we’ve seen glimmers of hope. Like growing acceptance for mental health support from employers. And in some industries and roles, increased worker flexibility. Brigid found many examples of organizations creating more sustainable paths to productivity. A key theme from her research for the book, was to eliminate “waste” or what she likes to call, “stupid work” that doesn’t really add value.
She explained, “There can be a lot of waste in the way work is organized. For instance, without clear job descriptions, people don’t have a sense of what their tasks are. We also have a lot of stupid work that’s performative. ‘Look at me I’m in the office late, aren’t I amazing?’ And then during the pandemic, it was ‘look at me, I’m emailing you really late at night aren’t I amazing?’ This performance of work doesn’t further your mission or outcomes.”
By Creating Specific Guidelines for Each Role
One of our challenges to a better future, is that post-industrial-era work, has revolved around the concept of ‘hours’ worked. Which can still make sense for certain jobs. But even in shift roles, where coverage during a specific time frame is critical, there are underlying responsibilities. Workers deliver more than just hours. And that value can become the basis for how their work is measured, defined and compensated. Job specs, that detail impact and specifics, lead to more thoughtful performance evaluations, compensation reviews and manager conversations.
So, Employees Know When Work is Done
Brigid explained, “Workplaces can be very hierarchical. So, if you’re junior, you can’t leave until the more senior person leaves. But if you don’t know what you’re supposed to do, you kind of sit around until somebody tells you what to do. So, there’s all of this ambiguity that makes it hard to say, ‘I finished my work for the day’ which reinforces this culture.”
The lack of clarity, combined with the power imbalance and shaky economy, means many people are afraid to rest or even appear idle. And between the ‘Motherhood Penalty’ and gendered leadership divide, many Moms lack the psychological safety to push back.
To Reestablish Healthier Boundaries
A large percentage of the workforce changed jobs during the Great Resignation, which hasn’t exactly ended, in many industries. Turnover, and strategy pivots, have led organizations to heap more onto exhausted people. Often, without proper training or onboarding. Parenting is also more complicated, than it was pre-pandemic. And our support systems, like childcare and eldercare, have been destabilized. So, predictable shifts or clear job roles, including the tasks, and outcomes that define what it means to be ‘done’ with a project, are critical. To end overwork, people to need to safely reset boundaries between work and life.
And Include New Voices
We discussed how diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) work is becoming another casualty of the uneven economy. And the desire for some leaders to return to how things ‘were.’ Although new voices are often overlooked in traditional org structures, we need fresh thinking to innovate work norms. Brigid said, “some wonderful people I interviewed for the book said, ‘ you know it’s not like there’s a cabal out there of CEO’s plotting to stay in power. It’s just an echo chamber. They’re all alike, and they all end up talking to each other, usually on the golf course.’ Which is why it is so important to listen to diverse perspectives, in those positions of power. Or by bringing workers onto your board, like they do in some European countries.” Amen!
Organizations have incredible influence, responsibility and opportunity, to promote worker health. Let’s continue to revise how the workplace ‘works’ for employees in every role and industry. Reducing overwork is an important part of solving the mental and physical health crises we face, while improving creativity, happiness, and access to financial wellbeing.
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Many thanks to the talented Brigid Schulte!
Check out Brigid’s amazing new book, Overwork: Transforming the Daily Grind Into a Quest for a Better Life. Learn more about her work on her website, and follow her great adventure on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and Goodreads
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About Brigid:
Brigid Schulte is an award winning journalist and bestselling author. She was a staff writer at the Washington Post and Washington Post magazine for nearly 17 years, and part of a team that won the Pulitzer Prize. In addition to the Post, her work has appeared in, among other places, the Atlantic, the Boston Globe, The Guardian, Slate, Time, CNN, The Toronto Globe & Mail and Quartz. She has been quoted in numerous media outlets and has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs including NBC Nightly News, Good Morning America, BBC World News, and NPR’s Fresh Air, Morning Edition and On Point.
Brigid’s first book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play when No One has the Time, about time pressure, gender and leisure, was a New York Times bestseller, named a notable book of the year by the Washington Post and NPR, and won the Virginia Library award for literary nonfiction.
She has spoken all over the world about time, productivity, the causes and consequences of our unsustainable, always-on culture, and how to make time for Work, Love and Play by rethinking how we work so that it’s effective, sustainable and fair, and reimagining public policy and cultural narratives.
She is currently the director of the Better Life Lab, the work-family justice and intersectional gender equity program at New America, a nonpartisan think tank.
She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with her husband, Tom Bowman, a reporter for National Public Radio, and their two children. She grew up in Portland, Oregon and spent her summers with family in Wyoming, where she did not feel overwhelmed.
