Episode 92 | Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life

Episode Notes:

Dr. Laura welcomes Brigid Schulte, journalist, think tank program director, keynote speaker, and author of the best-selling book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time. Brigid is currently the Director of the Better Life Lab and her latest book Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life, focuses on how our lives can improve by examining overwork.  She and Dr. Laura discuss what contributes to overwork and how we can make meaningful changes in work in terms of policy, gender equality, and cultural attitudes and behaviors. 

The notion of overwork is not exclusive to Western cultures and in researching Over Work, Brigid spent time in Japan and other countries in addition to studying American work attitudes. In Japan there is a word for when people die from overwork: karoshi. Brigid wants to understand what drives people to overwork and how change can be made at a cultural level. She describes the symptoms and ultimate results of overwork with Dr. Laura and their discussion examines why all work should be good work, rewarded with a liveable wage and dignity in whatever job is being done. This episode digs deep into why we value working too much instead of valuing the work itself and how it contributes not just to our personal gain but to the common good and shared prosperity.    

“I argue that we need to think much differently about what work is, that work is not only what we do for pay, it is also all of the unpaid work of care and home that women have mainly done for generations … We need to consider that work. But we also need to be thinking about the contributions we make to our communities, to our society, and thinking about reclaiming the sense of why we work, not necessarily for personal enrichment or GDP growth or the stock market.” Brigid Schulte

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