How to Overcome Work-Induced Overwhelm | Brigid Schulte

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Jonathan Fields: [00:00:18] So do you ever feel like the culture of overwork and burnout has just become so normalized that we've lost sight of what truly healthy, sustainable work-life integration even looks like that the constant pressure to prove our worth through relentless hustle is just slowly chipping away at our wellbeing, our relationships and our humanity. If so, then this conversation will be an eye-opening awakening. My guest today, Bridget Schulte, argues it's time, we reckon, with the personal and societal costs of our always-on culture, obsessed with endless productivity at all costs. Bridget is an award-winning journalist, author of the best-selling book Overwhelmed Work, Love and Play When No One Has the time, and the director of the Better Life Lab at New America think tank. Her reporting sheds light on the health impacts of chronic work stress, which studies now point to as the fifth leading cause of death from her years chronicling this crisis. Bridget brings a multifaceted perspective on why we've arrived at this burnout epidemic. Exploring economic inequality, lack of worker protections, toxic work cultures, and even the lingering effects of an overbearing work ethic. But this conversation also inspires hope. So let's dive in to rethinking work on more sustainable human terms. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED. Hey, and before we dive into today's episode, a quick share. So if you're a coach, a consultant or a leader, and you would just love to stand out more in 2024 and beyond, with a powerful new credential and a set of results-driven superpowers, we have got something for you. With nearly a million people now discovering their profiles, the Sparketypes have become a global phenomenon. People want their work to light them up, and oftentimes they would love some help along the way. Which is why we developed our certified Sparketype advisor training. As a certified advisor, you will discover cutting-edge tools that spark profound work-life client transformations. Stand out with a highly unique credential and skill set in a crowded market. Find ease and flexibility with templated engagement flows. You'll become a part of a global network of change-makers, and you'll rack up 40 ICF continuing education credits. Our fall cohort is enrolling now with visionaries just like you, and we would love to invite you to uplevel your capabilities as a coach or consultant or leader by becoming a certified Sparketype advisor. To learn more about the fall training and see if it's right for you, just click the link in the show notes now or visit sparketype.com/pros.

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:04] I think an interesting starting point for us is really, you know, we are sort of living and working in a culture these days where there are certain assumptions that are made about, you know, the way that we quote should work. And I feel like a generation or so of history now that is starting to show us that those assumptions may not be all that well for all that good for humanity. Um, yeah. So take me into this a little bit here. You know, the notion of, I feel like the phrase workaholics was being tossed around a lot for a chunk of time, but I hadn't really heard that phrase all that much anymore. But you're kind of bringing it back in an interesting way.

Brigid Schulte: [00:03:45] Well, you know it's interesting because I there is a phenomenon like a work addiction that is workaholism. And I do have a chapter on that. And I have gone to plenty of Workaholics Anonymous meetings. I struggle with workaholic tendencies myself, you know. I think that, you know, that's something that's particularly very salient for other reasons. And those are the other reasons that I really wanted to explore in this book. You know, you can have those internal compulsions to, you know, whether you don't feel good enough or you feel like you need to achieve or prove something. Those are internal drivers. But we live in a society where there are so many external pressures to reward that, that it can drive that kind of workaholism. Even if you don't have those internal drivers, because you just feel like that's just the way work should be done, you know? And I think it's really important to think about work. There is no such thing as an average. You know, we've got such a widespread of like economic inequality. And so when I was looking at work, the experience of work is really different depending upon what kind of work you do. So, you know, in a lot of the reporting that I was doing, I was finding that people who have knowledge, work or, you know, do work that they say that they love or that they're passionate about, they tend to overwork in one job. And that's really been ratcheted up, ratcheting up in the last couple decades. A lot of structural reasons for it. You know, you see, just like we've seen this past year, massive layoffs in jobs that were once considered really stable. So there is this sort of precarity and fear that's driving that overwork for knowledge workers, college educated and beyond, you know, the layoffs in media and finance and the tech sector. And so a lot of people are driven to overwork, to say, look at me. Don't lay me off. I'm amazing. You need me. So it's it's fear-driven to try to show that they're indispensable. But on the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, really, in the last 40 or 50 years, we have created just a slew of what I call crappy jobs. You know, it's important work, but the work no longer pays enough. There aren't enough hours. The schedules are unpredictable and thinking of hourly workers, retail workers, care workers, service workers. You just can't. They're overworking in, you know, several part-time jobs or jobs and gigs and side hustles because there isn't one job that's big enough to support a human life anymore. So you've kind of got these pressures to be very work-focused and work devoted and work driven for different reasons, but hitting people all across the socioeconomic spectrum.

Jonathan Fields: [00:06:29] Yeah, I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me. And I think when we look back over the last five years, really also we see this divide really showing up in the most extreme ways where these, you know, like folks who were categorized as, quote, essential workers, these were the people who are saying you are essential for the functioning of society, for the well-being of all. And they're out there and we're saying, like, we need you to keep working. And yet the compensation for those jobs, the benefits, the dignity often that was afforded them generally before this window of time in particular, and then during, you know, it doesn't match up. It just doesn't. Like you say, we're capital E essential. And yet everything else around that label just doesn't support this proclamation. And yet we've got to show up and do this work like somebody has to do this work. And it's I feel like there were so many people's heads spinning around these concepts. And, you know, during the course of the pandemic, and as we emerge from that, I feel like there was a hot minute of reckoning, and then everyone just kind of wanted to forget about it. Yeah.

Brigid Schulte: [00:07:36] No, you know, you hit on something that's really important. We saw what had been invisible for so long. I mean, think about it. You know, I worked in newspapers for most of my career, was at the Washington Post for many years. We didn't have a labor reporter. For decades, most major media outlets didn't have anybody covering workers or work or labor. So all of this was invisible. Nobody really was paying attention until the pandemic. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, what do you mean? We haven't raised the minimum wage since 2009? What do you mean? It's $7.25? How can anybody live on that? Wait a minute. Restaurant workers get $2.19 an hour, and then they're supposed to make up tips on top of that, I think people had forgotten what that was like. And I think what you do see is after the pandemic, you're right. It was a hot minute. We were banging pots and pans and clapping at people, and I think some of that urgency is gone. But what you do see are sort of like these lingering effects where you look at surveys and polls, where people support for worker voice and unions is higher than it's been in decades. So, you know it. Change is always two steps forward, three steps back. It's slow. It's unpredictable. It surprises you. But I think that that's a lingering thing that will be really interesting to see where that goes.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:00] Yeah. I'm so curious in following that myself. And you brought up the notion of unionization also where it's interesting because you hear two different stories and sort of like popular culture about unions these days. Also, one is they've never been more powerful, never been more effective. We're seeing these giant new collective bargaining agreements in different industries. And the other is they've never been weaker. And you kind of look at that and you're like, okay, so where's the truth here?

Brigid Schulte: [00:09:22] Well, the truth is it's both. You know, union power has really dropped in decades. I think the latest, you know, it's been stuck at like 6% of the civilian workforce. But, you know, belongs to a formal union. And even with all of the stories about, you know, all the different unions, Starbucks and Amazon, and that just fell and strike tober, that felt like there were a lot of stories out in the media. When you look at, you know, the total jobs created over the year, there were more non-union jobs created than, than than jobs that were unionized. So we're still it's sort of like it's very small, but there is sort of a movement. But but again, you know, put it in perspective. It's it's really a drop in the bucket. What has really taken precedent in sort of our national narrative is this kind of right to work. You know, let's trust business. They know best. Let's trust the market. Let's give all the money to the 1%, and they'll create jobs and it will trickle down and it will make everything better for us. And we're still in this fever dream where we think that's true or that's going to happen. And there's just more and more economic data that's emerging that shows that that's absolutely not true. And it's really part of what is making life really miserable for a lot of people. Because you'd mentioned we've been talking about economics, but I think the other thing that's really important to talk about is health. One of the things that struck me the most is coming across work stress and health studies.

Brigid Schulte: [00:10:54] And this one meta-analysis of more than 200 work stress and health studies over several years. They found that simply the way we work is so stressful that it's become the fifth leading cause of death, you know? And like, why are people not screaming in the streets about that, you know? And it's basically they looked at what they call ten stressors or psychosocial stressors. So it's not like falling off a ladder or, you know, breathing coal dust, which is what we used to think were sort of job hazards. It's work family conflict. It's not having health insurance, it's being unemployed. It's having a toxic boss or feeling like you're putting out more effort than you're getting reward back. It's those things that pretty much everybody faces every day. And then that leads to either acute acute stress, you which can end up in like heart attack or stroke in the moment or over time, you just get beaten down, you're burned out, you're tired. You don't feel like working out. At the end of the day, you don't feel like making a healthy meal. So over time, that could lead to cardiovascular disease or diabetes or, you know, so there's all sorts of ways that work has become so shaping of our experience of life. And that's a lot of what I wanted to write about in the book is how did that happen? What was it? What is it costing us? And then how do we get our lives back? How do we change this?

Jonathan Fields: [00:12:14] Yeah, I mean, we really it is so interesting when you when you sort of list out those different criteria from that study and it's, it's not the sort of like the big acute things that we think about. It's the chronic things that build over time. And it's like, you know, will I feel this and I can deal with that. And then you pile it on the next and the next and the next and the next, and then all of a sudden your health is falling apart, your relationships are falling apart. And you're wondering, you look around and you're like, there's nothing big and terrible going on, but it all piles on. And you write about this in the book that this Japanese concept of karoshi, which is horrific and how, you know, and I think a lot of people may have heard about it or read about it or seen stories about it as and said, oh, like, isn't it a terrible thing that that's happening over there? And now it's not just happening over there.

Brigid Schulte: [00:13:01] Right. And I think that, you know, so I call the chapter American Karoshi, because we're having some of that very same thing happen here. The difference is we don't have a movement like they do. They're a victim. Families and labor lawyers and young people and fathers who don't want to work that way anymore. They want to be able to see their children and be participating. You know, so they've pushed to have laws where you actually have to track it and companies have to like, you know, give you time off and you go to depression schools to, you know, to to kind of relearn how to say no. And there's all sorts of pressure now to track it and try to try to change that. And we don't have that here. You know, we don't have the same sort of policies that, you know, it's so funny, this MIT economist David Autor, he said that, you know, in the United States, he has we have what he calls cowboy capitalism, you know. Oh, individual, you know, it's pick yourself up by your bootstraps. The individual is, you know, can figure everything out. And we don't need policies. The market knows everything versus cuddly capitalism like in the northern European countries. And he's, you know, where there's much more of an understanding that we that we work better together, that there's a cooperation that comes with, with both work and living and living well, you know, and he was funny.

Brigid Schulte: [00:14:23] He said, you know, if I had a lot of money, I'd probably want to live in the United States. If I didn't have a lot of money, I probably wouldn't want to live here, you know? So that just really shows you kind of like how we've set things up. But, you know, we haven't really changed our work policies since 1938. You know, we don't have anything like there's a European work time directive on, you know, this is how many hours you should really work and you shouldn't work beyond that. And a lot of those places have built work-life balance measures into their productivity measures. I talked to this one woman in Denmark. She's an American and worked all out like people do and came in early and late. And, you know, and when it came time for her performance review, she was actually dinged. And they said, we need you to go home and have a life, you know, because you're going to burn out and then you're not good to it. You know, you're no good to us.

Brigid Schulte: [00:15:12] And so there are companies here that do that already, but we don't have any of the policies that would encourage that. We're one of the one of the few advanced economies that doesn't even guarantee paid annual leave. You know, you don't get paid vacation unless your employer sort of allows it. We don't have paid family medical leave. We don't have paid sick days. And so when you have a sort of a, you know, if what you value as a nation shows up in your policies. And those are our policies, it's, you know, and you look at safety net policies, it's all about like, you know, you're just not working hard enough. Work harder, you know. So we have this very work first work focused policy structure that drives all of that. And really, what I'm trying to show in the book is that that's not the answer anymore. Everybody's working hard. That's not the answer. It's the systems that have to change. It's the organizations that need to rethink what work is, and it's the individuals who need to come with that awareness that the way that they're they're swimming in these waters and the waters are pretty polluted. And it's it's time for new water.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:14] Yeah. I mean, that makes so much sense to me. And when you do look at, you know, the studies that come out on a regular basis, you know, that's sort of like the World Happiness Index is the Nordic countries are pretty much always clustered at the top. Last one I saw, the US actually dropped down out of the top ten. I think it was ranked 26th. And so much of that is is it's interesting, right? Because you do tease out this idea in the book, and you just shared it about this tension between this notion of, you know, the of of the individual as the driver of success and also the individual's unique thriving as one, being as the ultimate pinnacle. Whereas when you look at all the countries where people are actually doing better, like and not just doing better financially or owning a bigger home, but actually living better lives, healthier, you know, like more, more deeply connected to other people. They it's it's much more about the collective. It's like we don't exist as a vacuum, as one being, like, we've all got to be a part of this. Yeah.

Brigid Schulte: [00:17:10] You know, one of the things that I loved learning about, I mean, and that's one of the beauties of being a reporter and, you know, and a writer and getting the opportunity to write a book is that if you have a question, you get to just dive in and learn about. It was so cool. And I, you know, I learned that, like, the Protestant work ethic that we think is sort of behind all of this drive, drive, drive and work till you drop. You know, there were actually two Protestant work ethics. There were two strains of thought and the conservative one. This work till Till You Drop is the one that sort of took over in the United States. But there was another one that that had sort of like a nobility of every calling, like every job had value. And, you know, sort of this view that we were all part of this very intricate clockwork. We all had a gear, we had a role to play, and that every world was valuable, but that the point of work was to work together, to do something good for the world, you know? And so then that meant you didn't have toxic or tyrannical boss bosses. You, you know, you were not exploited. You got plenty of you had good working conditions. So, you know, both of those traditions started at the same time. It's like, why can't we reclaim that, that more progressive or hopeful tradition, you know, and I think one of the things that was so cool about reporting is learning about the wellbeing economy movement. You know, why do we measure our success and our health based on growth like economic growth or GDP. When you know, it'll measure, you know, the profits of a coal industry, but not all the pollutants, you know, and it'll measure, you know, all we do for paid work, but none of the unpaid work that we do giving care, you know, which is incredibly important and, you know, incredibly valuable work. And so that was really cool to see that there are sort of movements coming along to say there are other things to measure what what health and what success look like. And it and it depends a lot on human well-being. So sure, measure GDP, measure growth but also measure child poverty, you know measure gender equality. You know, measure the things that make life worth living.

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:18] Mhm. So how do we start to move in this direction? You know it seems like we've got multiple stakeholders with seemingly different motivations. But I think that I think it's really not different motivations. I think when you look on the surface it is, but underneath that all we want to flourish as human beings. We want to feel alive and well and good and connected. We just have different beliefs about what's going to get us there. But it seems like this really is. And you lay this out, you know, like beautifully like this is not sort of like a one person or one group or one needs to change this like we're talking about. We're talking grassroots. We're talking workers rising up. We're talking leaders within organizations. We're talking more largely, you know, those who create, you know, like societal culture but also policy. How do we even begin to wrap our heads around how to step into this? What you describe as very rightly so, is a wicked problem in a way where our headstone's been, we actually feel like, okay, there's something that we can do, right, to at least get the ball rolling.

Brigid Schulte: [00:20:21] Well, and I think that's the important thing is like in all of the you know, when I first started reporting it, reporting this book, it felt so big and most people I talked to just felt hopeless. Like, oh, there's nothing I can do. I don't know what to do. And then as I started reporting and I really focused every chapter on people, mainly because I needed this, you know, I reported a lot about the problems. And then I was super depressed and I went to write my book proposal, and I'm like, I don't I need to know what the answers are. You know, I need to know what some hope is. I struggle with this. And so I really kind of shifted the lens of my reporting to like, well, who's doing something interesting? And I think that's what gives me hope. And honestly, it's like any change, you start small, you know, you start with your own suffering, your own pain point, you know, and then is there something there that you can change in your own life? And then does that give you some energy so that then you can kind of like, you know, start talking to other people and find that peer network and support each other. Um, you know, for leaders, they need to get out of their echo chamber. You know, they talk to each other and they all kind of, you know, people who who rose to power in these kind of workaholic and let's face it, pretty, you know, monocultures. Um, you know, they need to start talking to people not just at the C-suite, but like, you know, all throughout organizations. And we need to start, you know, really listen to asking and listening and talking to each other and seeing each other, you know, talk to the cashier as you're, you know, in the grocery store checkout, you know, what's their life like? What do they need? Um, you know, I think start small with with what you can do with where you are. You know, that's always the best way to start with change. And there's lots to do. You know, if you're a if you're a leader, if you're a middle manager, there's you have so much power and creativity to make enormous change and then tell people about it. You know, if you've made change in your life, tell people about it. You know, it shrinks the change. It makes it seem more possible. It kind of gives us hope that changes, you know, is right or is, you know, is possible. And it's something that we have agency over.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:32] Yeah. So let's take sort of like that that middle there. Leaders within organizations. Because I feel like to a certain extent they're the ones that have levers that ripple out in all directions, like they're the ones who can change policy within an organization that will affect individuals in the company. They're also the ones that probably have the greatest access to policymakers that can influence policy. So like, these are people that are really they have these these multi-sided levers. But also, you know, like I was going to say notoriously, but I'm not I'm I'm not going to shame leaders like leaders I think are often they're human beings, and often they're doing the best they can also. And they're struggling with all the same things. And yet, you know, everyone who's in a leadership position, who has somebody who is above them anytime they want to bring any kind of change to those people who might resource it. The question is always going to be what's the business case for this talk? Talk to me about this a bit.

Brigid Schulte: [00:23:30] Yeah. There's a great business case and I and that's what's exciting is to see that over and over in the book that these are not these changes are not just nice to haves. They're not just like for wellbeing to make you feel good. They're, you know, they really have a there's a business imperative behind it. And when you're thinking about your long term sustainability, you're thinking about your innovation. And you know, kind of what's going to get you to the next level. These are the things that you need to do, which is, number one, understand that the way that we're working, particularly in knowledge work, thinking that long work hours is, is equated with good work or the ideal worker that is just wrong. It is just wrong. It may have been the way that you as a leader came up, you know, and it's what you're comfortable with, you know, you can see that with all these return to office fights. I need to see you. I need to make sure that you're working and I need to see that you're working. There's all sorts of other ways to work. You know, there's all sorts of other things that we need to measure, you know, rather than are you physically there or are you physically in front of a computer? Can I count your hours like a factory worker? We need to really shift from an input culture like that to being an output performance and impact culture.

Brigid Schulte: [00:24:44] And when you do that, not only do you make life better for your workers and you, um, you also make the work better. I was really struck by like the short work hours movement. I went to Iceland and saw it. I just wanted to see how did they do that? 85% of the workforce there now has shorter work hours than they did several years ago. How did they do that? And you know, and the productivity is is either at the same rate or higher in many places, their well-being has gone up, stress levels have gone down. And interestingly, the gender equality is better because as work, as you know, paid work hours have come down, more men are spending time at home and then women who had a lot of care responsibilities. And so we're working part-time when full-time hours came down, they're part-time hours became full-time. So now there's more gender equality at work and at home. And people are a lot happier, you know? And work is getting better. When you talk to people from the four-day workweek movement, they'll often say that figuring out how to move to shorter hours is really a like an excellence mission in disguise, because what you got to do is figure out, what am I really doing, what is my work, what's my priority, and then work backwards from there? How do I streamline the processes to get there? How do I rightsize the people? You know? With all of our penchant for layoffs, we've just got so many people doing more and more with less and less.

Brigid Schulte: [00:26:09] They get rid of people, you know. So the books look good for Wall Street every quarter, but you haven't rethought the process, like, what are you really doing? And it's so interesting when you talk to people who've gone through a work redesign or gone through a shorter work hours movement, the first thing that they'll say is like, gosh, you know, we never really thought about why we work the way we did. It's just the way we did it. So we always just, you know, so they never question it. And so that's part of what what's exciting is that just by asking those questions like why the five whys? Why are we doing it this way, you know, is there a better way to do it? You can get to shorter work hours. You can get to better wellbeing, you can get to better equity, and you can get to better business.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:53] Yeah. I mean, I think that's where it all begins, right? I also wonder whether in the context of especially the larger an organization gets, often the metrics that people are measuring success by are unique to the department, and they never actually look for the overlap to realize, like, oh, wait a minute, you know, absenteeism or injury or this, you know, or a certain amount of stress levels like affects this other thing which affects this other thing. You know, there's no sort of synchronization of all of this data to actually, truly understand, um, what makes for the best quote, bottom line outcome. And, and I love that these experiments are being run now, like from the four-hour or the four-day workweek. And, you know, a couple people that I know that run companies, and they've tested this out for six months and they're like, oh, this actually works. Yeah. You know, and they're like and surprised, delighted and surprised simultaneously. And then you look and you look at industries like medicine where they have known for, you know, like generations how absolutely brutal the training is to become a generalist, let alone a specialist or a highly specialized surgeon. There are laws and policy changes that have been made that have been instituted. And still, if you talk to people who are actually like in it on a day-to-day basis, it's pretty brutal. Yeah. Um, and they were talking about not just productivity. We're talking about life and death. Yeah. You know, and yet there's an entire massive industry that even with, with deep oversight and legislative change still functionally on the ground, has resisted this. And they're the ones that are actually, you know, like front and center, seeing what happens when you do this to yourself.

Brigid Schulte: [00:28:41] Right. No. You know, that ideal worker culture, when you talk to people in medicine, they often talk about the Iron Man culture. So it's the ideal worker, sort of, you know, taken up to the nth degree, you know, that there is this sort of macho, I'm amazing. I don't ever need to sleep. Look at me. You know, that there is this, this expectation that excellence requires sort of superhuman ability to stay awake. And yet you look at the reality. One in every two physicians is experiencing at least one symptom of burnout. Suicide rates are among the highest in, you know, in the health professions like doctors and nurses. And when you look at the structure of like what's driving a lot of that overwork, you know, so some of it is honestly it's understaffing. People are just overworked because there aren't enough people, because as hospitals have become privatized and then the profits are become more important than the well-being of people, you know, it's almost like the structure is exploiting that, you know, the dedication ethic, you know, you know, the doctors are buying a bill, a bill of goods, you know, because there's all sorts of research. And I'm sure you've seen this, that when you're overworked and you're tired, you know, you make mistakes, you have fuzzy thinking. It takes you longer to do stuff. You know, the workaholics research, the workaholism. Research shows that those longer work hours are actually counterproductive to productivity and innovation. And you're right, with life and death decisions. I mean, no wonder I went in for shoulder surgery a year ago and I had like three different people coming, and it's like it's the right shoulder, right. And like writing on me with Sharpie because there have been so many mistakes. I mean, how many, you know, tired doctors have operated on the wrong shoulder like, whoops. So, you know, it's interesting how, um, you know, a lot of this is like, we just need to snap out of it because there's lots of research to show that the way we're doing things is really bad on a whole host of levels.

Jonathan Fields: [00:30:38] Mhm. So let's say somebody's listening to this conversation and they're nodding along. They're like yeah this makes total sense to me. And I'm feeling this I am in this right now. I'm at a job. I've been there for a while. I have some agency in the job. I've got a little bit of social currency behind me, but I don't feel like, you know, and I would love to try and do something to feel differently. I'm not in sort of like enough of a leadership or management position where I feel like I can do something larger. But what would be your invitation to that one individual who's listening in that situation? For them to basically say, okay, I can wake up tomorrow or this week or this month and do. One thing that maybe gives me a little bit of agency and a little bit of movement towards a different way of working. Yeah.

Brigid Schulte: [00:31:21] So I like to think about these as sort of like, here are some things you can do to put on your oxygen mask, you know. And then once you've got the oxygen mask, you can look larger to see, you know, can you, can you work with organizations or in a larger level. But we all have to start where we, you know, kind of sit where, you know, kind of where we stand. And so what I would say to that one individual is really think about boundary management, you know, and go through your own honestly, go through your own work redesign process. So just like what I was saying, organizations need to do, people can do that themselves. And it's not just about work, but think about in your own life what is most important to you. And you know, when you think about like the the three great arenas of a good life is meaningful work, time for love and care and connection and joy, play and leisure. You, you know, you need all three of those, you know, to have a full and rich life. So think about your life in that bigger sense, what's really important to you, and then work backward from there and then think about like, okay, so how do I organize my day? How do I organize my calendar to really make sure that I'm making time for the most important things in my life, the most important things that give me meaning or joy at work? You know, no job is perfect and everybody's kind of got scut work.

Brigid Schulte: [00:32:38] They've got to do, I do. We all do. But how can I like, you know, minimize the scut work and focus on what gives me joy. And, you know, you have some agency over, you know, can you can you time chunk, you know, or, you know, can you have meetings that you hate at a certain time when your energy is low? Can you start off when your energy is high, doing something you really care about? You know, if you're a morning person, like block that into your calendar. I think some of the some of the best advice I ever got was from a behavioral scientist. He said, you know, because we have this always-on kind of workaholic culture, we tend to value people who are really busy and can just do a lot of stuff and seem like they're really busy, you know? And that's also so counterproductive. You know, you get to the end of the day and like, you know, you've been running around but you don't know what you've really done. You know, you're not really clear whether it was important or you even cared about it. And frankly, nobody's watching. Nobody's watching you as you're busy. So he said, you know, think about what your priorities are.

Brigid Schulte: [00:33:36] And then instead of thinking of your calendar like a, like a pantry, that you're just going to shove all sorts of stuff in on and like, get to the end of the day and, you know, kind of beat your chest, like, look at me. I'm amazing. Look at all this stuff I did, you know, think about the few things that really matter. Think about your calendar as if it were an art gallery, and choose what you're going to look at and pay attention to very carefully, and make sure that there's white space before so you can prepare. When you're looking at the art, when you're in the moment that you're fully there, and then make sure there's white space whitespace afterwards. So you can process and so that you can think about what comes next. If there are follow-ups, you can do it and then move on to the next piece of art. So you know, there we all have those pressures to overdo and overwork. And so there are some of these skills that we can develop. And I think also find a network of like-minded people, find peers, find a group. You know, pushing against the status quo is really difficult to do on your own. So make sure that you have support so that you know that you're not alone because you're not.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:38] Mm. Thank you so much. That feels like a great place for us to wrap up. Excited for people to dive in. And of course learn more with your book. Thank you.

Brigid Schulte: [00:34:46] Thank you so much.

Jonathan Fields: [00:34:49] Hey. So I hope you enjoyed that conversation. Learned a little something about your own quest to come alive and work in life, and maybe feel a little bit less alone along this journey to find and do what sparks you. And remember, if you're at a moment of exploration, looking to find and do or even create work that makes you come more fully alive, that brings more meaning and purpose and joy into your life. Take the time to discover your own personal Sparketype for free at sparketype.com. It will open your eyes to a deeper understanding of yourself and open the door to possibility like never before. And hey, if you're finding value in these conversations, please just take an extra second right now to follow and rate SPARKED in your favorite podcast app. This is so helpful in helping others find the show and growing our community so that we can all come alive and work in life together. This episode of SPARKED was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Production and editing by Sarah Harney. Special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this episode. Until next time. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is SPARKED.