make sure that we're supporting that most important work? and then they completely got rid of the stupid work. there was no more performing work, you know, there was no more pretending to be busy and then getting kudos for it. because if you were no longer rewarded for just simply being a button, a chair or a presence or sending late night emails, and you were really focused on what was most important about work. the work got better. a reminder that afterwards airs every sunday evening at 10 p.m. eastern time. well, thanks for joining us on about books, a program and podcast produced by c-span booktv. booktv will continue to bring you publishing news and author programs and a reminder that you can get this podcast on the c-span. now app and you can also watch online anytime all book tv programs at booktv dot org.

hi, richard. i'm so happy to be here to talk with you today about your new book. it's about all the ways are over working culture harms us and also about the ways a potentially fix it. it's a deeply reported book with a ton of research and talk to a lot of people for it. but i think what struck me about it is that your character in it

as well and maybe to kind of kick us off, can you talk about the personal place that you wrote this book from? what about your life made you want to write it? yeah, sure. well, first of all, it's so to be in conversation with you. i'm really excited to be here. your work has been really great as well. i'm excited to have this conversation. so this book really it's really a book of journalism it's a it's sort of a journey, if you will, of me as a journalist asking. questions and looking for answers. but it did start. my first book was called overwhelm work, love and play when. no one has the time. that was very much a it started out of own experience trying to understand why it so difficult to try to combine work and family. i had a job as a journalist, had two small children. you and everyone that i talked to, it seemed like was so impossible. why? and so i finished that, which was another sort of journey

book, really trying to understand a lot time, time, pressure, gender roles, intensive work, intensive parenting, why we make no time for leisure this country. and i got to the of that process and i have to i'm very driven by equity, you know, as as a as a woman, as someone who has care responsibilities, i want to try to understand why is it so difficult for all to have access to a good life, to have meaningful work, to have the time that they for care and connection for love, for joy? and why? why is it difficult for really all us to find time? you know, to put away that sense that we always have to be productive and busy? why is it so difficult to have time for leisure and joy and. you know, sort of like asking those bigger questions of like, why are we here? what we doing? and i realized that so much of sort of the pain and the misery

not just for women, not just for for people with care responsibilities or honestly, workers with disabilities or workers with color of color. you know, where i think that the the disadvantage is felt acutely but really for all of us i began to see that it really originated in our work culture the way we think about work, the way we organize work, particularly in the united states and, the way we actually do it. and i did look broadly across globe, but i was very focused on the united states where we have not just a hard work culture. i think we all believe as humans in hard work that there's a value in that. but we have it's morphed into an overwork culture where work is starting to squeeze out time for for the other great of life and sort of capturing more and more of our identities and really looking at, at why that is, what drives it, what the costs and consequences are.

and then how do we move beyond and why is it so important? we do not just now, but as we think about a future of work. right. right. you know, speaking of that line you mentioned between work hard, work and overwork and one of the moving chapters you have in your is about workaholism, which i guess it's like a word that a lot of us use colloquially, like, oh, i'm such a workaholic. but in the book you talk about how it's a very serious condition. it's a medical diagnosis. so you go and meet people out of work, colleagues, anonymous meeting who are desperately trying to overcome their addiction to work. at what point does your job end up become an addiction that kind of, you know, impairs and potentially ruins your life because it feels like that's a fuzzier line than we we it to be. that's such a good question. and it's really true. you know, i, i put a lot of work hours and i love i do and very passionate about that.

it's my job to try to make sure try to ask those questions and, you know, how do we make a good life available to all people? you know and a lot of us, regardless of what of job you have so many people that i spoke to for this book i with care workers and they have such pride they take such they have such a sense of meaning in what they do. they know just exactly what music their clients like or how to fix their hair or where to take them on walk or what to do when they're upset. i spoke to retail workers, you know, and they take such pride in what they do and how they stock shelves. and, you know, so i think that we have this sort of false that the only people who find meaning in their work are sort of educated kind of more the professional class. and that's that's not true at all. if you go all the way back to studs terkel, that's one of the things that really shines through in all of those all of the interviews that that he did so many years ago is we all find meaning and purpose.

you know, many of us do in in in the work that we do. and so so the question is, where is the between? good, good enough work? you know, what's difficult is if you're not working in a factory or you're not working in sort of set hours, which even retail workers and hourly workers aren't anymore with so much unpredictability, it's hard to know, you know, if your is to write great journalism or try to change the world at a nonprofit. it's to know when to call it a day. so work hours can stretch longer. and so i really looked a lot at the research between the difference between work engaged meant when you were really passionate, interested in your work, and then you're able to unplug from it, you're able to still say, yeah, maybe i wanted to accomplish today, but it's over. and i'm going to do i'm going to spend time with family and friends. i'm going to do something. i enjoy doing. you have you have you have the

ability to unplug work. but for workaholism, it's often driven by it's driven by a feeling of sort of not enough ness. and there's this sense that when you've stopped working, it is like an addiction. you it's very difficult to unplug from if you if you aren't working, thinking about it, you're worrying. you're like, you should be working. and so it's very difficult to. enjoy time for other areas of your life. it's talked many, many workaholics and they said vacation is the hardest time for, you know, having having time off and away from work. so i think that's what's important to remember is there is a line and it tends to be you know, there are internal drivers to workaholism or overwork, you know, where you can feel they can be positive. you know, you're excited, you're curious. i would say curiosity. a lot of my work, devotion,

work, so to speak, you know, want to learn things, you know, they can also be very negative drivers. you know, that feeling of inadequacy or fear. but we live in a culture and this is what so many workaholics told me. we live in a culture that so values and rewards long work hours that they were rewarded for the very things that were causing them pain that were them, from having a healthy relationship or being able to do anything outside of work. and so that's where the problem comes is, you know, when you're not able to unplug and then you, you live in a culture and you work an organization where people think that's amazing. right, right, right. yeah. when you drink too much or, you know, you have a gambling addiction, it's so clear that that's a bad thing. but it's not immediately clear that, you know, being addicted to work is a bad thing. i mean i mean, i think you know, it's one of those cliches in job interviews, like when somebody asked you when the interviewer asked you like, what's what's

your one flaw? and i feel like a lot of people say, like, oh, i'm a workaholic right. and, you know, that should be a bad thing. because the other thing is looking into the research long work hours, you know, we tend to think that it makes you a better worker, you know, and you're right, we reward that. oh, my goodness. if you come in early and you stay late and you work through lunch and, you never take a vacation. i mean, i've worked in newsrooms where you would get emails. oh so-and-so never take it. you know, they work for the last five or six weekends. aren't they amazing? you know, so you get these messages. that's the best way to work. but if you look over time, the research is really clear that the longer you work, it becomes counterproductive to both productivity. you get tired you kind of make fuzzy. you know, you're becomes fuzzier. it takes you longer to make decisions. you're not always clearheaded about them, you know. so it's it's not only counterproductive to productivity but you certainly cannot creative and innovative when you burned out and crispy

around the edges. you know, the research is really clear that if you look at neuroscience. if you look at sort of the science behind innovations or the aha moment that happens when we are well-rested, when we are feeling relaxed, i mean, there's a physiological reason we have our best ideas in shower, you know, where we're rested and the water feels great and we're sort of in this daydreaming mode. and so i think that's what's really important for, you know, the larger culture recognize that we need to stop rewarding the behaviors that are not only hurting people and they're individual lives, but are also really antithetical to if you to run an efficient, effective business, you know, if you want to have employees who don't work themselves into the ground, that those long work hours and work holism, they're not good for anyone. yeah, i mean, you talk, you know, the importance of culture

here. i think in the book you make a funny observation that was it italy of all places that's done the best research workaholism. yeah. isn't that amazing. you know, it's like the place that you would think, oh, you know, you have lunches with cappuccino or whatever. but i think what's interesting, too, when you talk to the handful of workaholic workaholism research in the united researchers in the united states, you know, they all say that they've struggled trying to get attention and rewards for their work because it's not seen as a problem in the united states. it's again, it's something that's seen as almost a price of entry. you know, it's almost expected in many professions. yeah. i mean, the book you go to a lot of different countries in europe. you go to iceland, you go to scotland. you just about italy. in this example was it. i mean, i'm sure you've been to europe before you started writing this book, too.

was it kind of wild to go there and just experience how differently people think about work? there compared to how we think about work here in the u.s.? well, and to be and to be fair, i also went to japan, which has a very very different view of work, more akin to the us. and so i wanted to experience different cultures who had different of work, and i wanted to really look closely at gender equality, at health and well-being you know, and also at class mobility. what was this doing to workers across class and gender and? you know, some of the things really astounding. and i think in japan that the whole idea that long work hours really don't was so clear because i would talk to people would be like 11:00 at night and they'd still at the office and they would be doing sort nothing. they'd be sitting around and you'd ask, well, you know, why are you there?

and they said, well, my boss expects me be here. i can't leave, you know. and this is a country where know young people are not having children. they're talking about having an aging. they are not very productive. when you look at the number of hours they put in and you talk to researchers there and they call that waste, you know, it's you're wasting a lot of time just physically either being at work or, you know, kind of hanging around your computer and spending late night emails. and it's sort of what we have here in sort of long work hours and busyness cultures in the united states as well. the researchers there it waste i ended up calling it you know the performance of work or stupid work so you know and what i what i realized and and to get back to your point of like why i went to different countries i realized that i began to think about work in three ways. they're sort of the core work that we talk about where we get a of meaning. we're doing things that we're interested in, we're developing

skills that you're really connected to the value of what you're doing, the meaning and fulfillment part. and then there's then the next concentric ring is what i call the work around the work. it's the emails and the meetings and the logistics and the planning that should go to help support that meaningful work. but oftentimes becomes the work. that's what you spend whole day doing, running to meetings and you're not quite sure why you're there. and you know plowing through and an inbox that never, ever seems to to be under control or answering messages. and then i began to think about work, that sort of final concentric concentric circle. i it the performance of work. so when are in a culture that rewards busyness that that cares more if look productive than if you really are or that values the long work hours the input of what you're doing rather than the output the output you know what are you creating? what are you actually doing

what's the performance? what's the what's the impact in the world that you're if that doesn't matter, you know, then you have a whole lot of people running around trying to look important and busy and sort of performing work that isn't work at all. and that's what i saw in a lot of us. that's what i saw a lot of in. and the reason i went to iceland is because they have a short work movement there. it's not a four day workweek, but they from 40 to 32 hours and they made that available to 85% of the population. so it wasn't just for elite, professional desk workers. you people who sit behind computers. i went there and i spoke to childcare workers, to nurses, to police officers, you know, as well as to travel agents and, you know, factory, you know, people work in factories and things like that. and what was so interesting is for them to be able to get 32 hours at the same rate of pay,

they had to completely rethink what work was and. the first thing that they did is got really on that first circle. what the meaningful work, what creates most value, how do prioritize that and they work on that second circle you know all of the meetings and logistics and planning like what are the processes that we can make to streamline it, to make sure that we're that most important work. and then they completely got rid of the stupid work. there was no more performing, you know, there was no more pretending to be busy and then getting kudos for because if you were no longer rewarded for just simply being a button, a chair or a presence or sending late night emails, and you were really focused on what was important about work. the work got better and it was interesting to the architects of the other shorter work hours movements. they wanted. do it for wellbeing, to bring people's stress levels down and increase health. and that's happened. and they also wanted to do it for gender equality and that has

also happened because as men's paid work hours come down, they they're spending time sharing unpaid work of care and home, which we all know that around the world women are still spending anywhere from 2 to 10 times more more time doing the unpaid work of care and home. and they're not able to put in those long work hours, long work hours cultures. so those long work hours cultures, they up creating more of a monoculture over time because, you know, people with care responsibilities that you simply can't put those kinds of hours. and so that was one of the things that actually became really enraging after a while that were rewarding wrong things and then were really disadvantaging so many people, you know, and we live in an era where you need to work to survive. it just felt so unfair. and then what we're doing is because leaders tend to believe that that's what you've got to do. that's the best to work. they end up rewarding who work

like them. so you end up just sort of reconfirming a kind of a corporate monoculture over and over and over again, you know, making sure that men and people with no care responsibilities are the ones that will always be in charge. and, and it just doesn't have to be that way. right. i mean, when go to iceland, i think you go in with quite a bit of skepticism. yes. you know, experiment in this, you know, tiny little country would have any lessons for us here in united states. you know, the world's largest after. you went there. did you feel differently about the skepticism you had going into. yeah, that is such a great question because. i really did. because, again, i struggle with my own, you know, with my own work, overwork. you know, when i was writing book, i also had a full time job. you know, i basically were to do two jobs and all of my unpaid care work with my kids and my mom and, you know, so it was it

was too much. and sometimes i was thinking i would to work a shorter work out workweek, would i do that? and so i began looking in the us, the uk, where some pilots were starting. but i have to be really honest, i, i saw a lot of them the time i think they've changed now. but when i was reporting the book, many of them were smaller, kind of techie, you know, kind of male dominated. and i began to really worry. it's like, well, if, if that's the only, you know, if those are the only workers who are going to benefit from shorter work hours, that just felt, you know, kind of more gender inequality, you know, you'd have like, you know, high, high, highly paid men surfing on fridays, as you know. and then all of the women doing so much of the care work and the, you know, childcare and home care and nursing work, so many of them work days a week that just felt like that's not that didn't feel like an answer that didn't feel like something i wanted to try to explore that

we could learn from. and then a friend of mine said, well, you should go to iceland because. they have made it available these short work hours available across, all sorts of industries, you know, to 5% of the workforce. so i was skeptical because i struggle with my own work hours. i was like yeah, just kind of show me, show me how you really do this. but i was also because you're right, you know, i even say that in the book. i know we're not iceland, you know, because is it's very small, it's homogenous it's, you know, it's a very unique of place. and the united states is so vastly different. we were enormous and we're enormously diverse, you know, and there's a lot dynamism here. there's a lot of economic inequality here that, you know, we have all sorts of issues that we need to work on. but i think what i up coming away with was it's not like we're iceland. we shouldn't be iceland. we'll never be iceland. you know, we are united states, you know, but what we can learn is the process we could in that sort of a universal, whether

it's through public policy or through, you know, organizational change, the process that they went through, get to those shorter, more effective hours and then the culture change they went through to reward what really important and to things like equity and human well-being rather than endless growth and gdp and, you know, kind of outsized profits for ceos as well. frontline workers, wages have stagnated really since 1971. you know, there are processes that we can learn from that i thought were really valuable. and that's what i really focus on in that chapter in you able to convince your employer to implement a four day workweek. well, so so i run a nonprofit, you know, and so as program director, i have a lot of autonomy within within my organization work at new america. and so really, ever since i got there i mean, that is one thing

that i will say is that even though i have struggled with long work hours over my, you know, over my career, i have always thought to work very flexibly. so i have always had more of a sense of choice and control over my time. and so that's what i give to my team and flex disability is our default. so i try to do is make our objective lives and our goals very clear. the deadlines, the standards very clear. we have a lot of transparency, regular on ones. and so then where do you do that work when do that work or how you do work becomes far less important. are you doing excellent work? you know, in the time that we need it and in taking of your own health and and responsibilities at the same time. so i have always a measure of flexibility not only to my own work habits and work life, but to my teams as well.

and you know one of your chapters is about reading mining work where you talk about some very promising experiments that generated great results, but they still didn't end up they just kind of fizzled out after a few years. it's something i've been thinking about a lot as a workplace reporter these days because companies are trying so hard to their employees to come back to the office even though there's so much research showing that it's great for employers and employees and you know i've just been about like it's almost like there's this force of gravity separates us back to the status quo every single time. and i think you kind of show that in the book, too, like, what do you make of that? like, why why is it so hard for companies to. so i want to say two things about that, because you're absolutely right. i write about what would have been it wasn't creative innovative work redesign intel

and i go through the process of how you know they really talk to the people found what their pain points were designed a really creative way to address it and it worked well for people their wellbeing for equality it worked well for the company. they didn't have to like lay people off and and rehire them the next month you know, it sort of one of those a win win win situation. and what i'll say about that is what i found with so many work redesigns and you're seeing that with the return to office fight with you know all of the covid and the experiments and how some people embraced it and others others didn't. it really comes down to the power of what leaders and i think that was of the things that most struck me. all of the reporting that i did in this book. and it's why it's not surprising that we have these return to office fights, because if you have leaders who who grew up a certain way of working and that's the way they were

successful, many them that's the only way they know how to work and so they believe the best way to work and and so i think that's what you see over and over again is that you would see these wonderful work, work redesigns and there would be evidence data to show that they were better on a whole of measures, better for the company, you know, far less turnover higher profitability, more productive. and when there was a leadership, a new leader would come in and say i don't get this. it's not the way i like to work. i'm uncomfortable, we're not doing it anymore. and so they would it. but the second thing that i want to say, and this is what i think is most important right now, is that covid was like a grand experiment on a grand scale. i mean it was a horrific pandemic. we lost a lot of lives. we were forced to so many things about the way we work the way we live, the way we care, the way we go to school. but forced us to do things that we didn't think were possible. and we did.

and people showed that they could be incredibly productive in very trying circumstances. all of a sudden, the hourly, the the service workers who have been sewing visible for decades became essential. and we saw their plight and like, oh my, why? why do people you know, why are we putting up with the fact that so many people are in such poverty wages? you know, why are we putting up with the fact that we've got companies, we allow to give their workers such unpredictable schedules? so there were things that we saw. there were things that we tried. there were things that we did and the pandemic lasted long enough that many have started to stick. you and you've written about this people to you know as you saw death all around you and in real struggle people to think about their own lives and did work mean or what do i want out of my own life we sort of broke some cycles that we had been

where we just took for granted that you know yes hard work is good to overwork must be better. and so i'm just going to go, go, go, go, go. and busyness be good. and we started to kind of begin to question. of those status quo realities. we started to question some of that inertia. and so what i will is that even though, you know, amazon is the most recent return to office back five days a week, and there's others that that have come out, but there are a host of other smaller companies, other companies who have made the commitment to doing something differently. they may not be getting the headlines. they may be getting the all of the attention, as you're right, the the research is so clear that if you want the most productivity, if you want the most sense of satisfaction out of workers, but also middle managers and managers is some kind of hybrid is so much more it gives people so much more of a sense choice and control and

flexibility in both the time manner and place of their work and that i think that there is more lasting power. and i think that's what's to remember is that before these work redesigns, we're sort of trying to push against a very powerful inertia and status quo. and now, you know, there are there sort of cracks in the concrete. and i and i and while there are some want to snap back to 2019, i think that's to be very difficult to do. and it sounds like you might be much more of an optimist than i. i mean, as you're you're talking about this, what i'm thinking is like, is a new wild that it takes you know the largest global pandemic in a century to actually make these changes happen like it's just so sad that like you evidence isn't enough to change the way that we work. you know, i.

i couldn't agree more. it's it's astounding, especially when you, you know, i think it you you listen to business leaders and all sound so rational, like, oh, we want to make the business case and we these goals and objectives and on and on and and then the way people act or is sometimes so divorced from reality and it is astounding. but to me it comes back the power of, well, first of all, who's power and what they believe. and so when you look at some of the most effective either it's short work short work movements or work redesigns. it's like, you know, the process is you know, you kind of stop and you figure out, okay, what's that core work? that's most important? but then, you know, you get out of that c-suite bubble and you and you start asking people, what are your pain points? what are you struggling with in your life? you know, what would make your work and life and play better?

how how could we co-create together what was so interesting is like going to iceland or some of these other work redesigns, you know, it's like they had leaders buying from the top, okay, something needs to change. we don't know how. so we're going to turn it over to teams we're going to turn it over to the people closest to problem. we're going to ask we're going to listen to then you come up with, you know, one child care center that i spent with in iceland. the director. okay, we're going to go to short work hours. i don't know how we're going to do it. so she said, i turn it over to my team and i tell, i told them, we can figure this out. you're going to have to do it. and so they went through their days in 15 minute increments and really had to think. okay, what's the most important thing here? giving quality care? how do we do that? what are the are the processes that we need? and they threw those, you know, really fine, fine. going through their schedules with a fine tooth comb, figured out how to do it, you know, and were happier.

the kids were happier, parents were happier. you so so there's a lot of that can come from redesigning and transforming work when you put humans put humanity and well-being along with productivity and profits you put that in the center, you're not just, you know, doing your job to make a lot of money for a handful of shareholders is sort of what's happened, particularly in the united states in the last several decades. and it's interesting. i want to go back to, you know, what you said about japan and i grew up in so that that really hit close to home for me and you know you talk about the most extreme manifestation of is currency which in it's death by overwork i've always known that this was a thing because i grew up in japan but i found it so moving. read about the intimate of the people who literally work to death and the families that they

left behind. can you talk about what happened? mina mori and what her family did after her death? yeah, that was just there are some stories that that, you know, that as you report some people that you spend time with, they just they just get inside your heart, you know? and this is one of those that that i just sit with that i live with that, you know. and i wanted to go to japan for very reason. it's like we the west, we hear about, you know, the occasional currency death that seems so unusual and so outrageous. and people tend think, well, that's just over there. that's a different culture that could never happen here. and i wanted to go and really understand that. is that right? is that the samurai culture? and i found that that's that wasn't the case at all. and actually, if you look here in the united, we have a lot of what i call currency, but we don't recognize it. we don't track it the way the

japanese government does. we don't a word for it, but we have as much work stress and demands of long work hours in many of the professions that they do. japan, we have the same, you know, we have similar people. you you know, similarly, you have people who have acute, you know, acute reaction to stress, whether it's a cardiovascular event or a stroke, you know, and then the long term chronic stress, you know, that can lead to cardiovascular disease or obesity, diabetes or a shortened life lifespan. so i think that's of the first things that i think is important, is i didn't find an outlier in japan. i found the same that we have here in the united states that are born of cultures where long work hours are valued sort of at face value, that that's the status quo. that's sort of a leader belief rather than based on evidence. and in a culture that becomes so entrenched, it's hard to try to push back against it.

and so that's what i really learned in japan, was i spent some time with families and just being so humbled by these families who have suffered such and they are so determined that they don't want anyone to go through what they've gone through or their loved ones went through that are leading the fight to change laws. that's why japan tracks is because of the the corrosive act and families they have been pushing for decades to change laws to make sure that there's a white paper that comes out every year to work on the court systems that you can you can push to get punitive damages so that that could, you know, try to influence corporate culture. they are working you know they are working really to try to change the culture and what i'm what i was so struck by is. you know we can talk about, you know, whether the return to office, whether there is hope or not or, you know, am i

optimistic or should be more cynical? what keeps them going is hope. and so i guess if they hope that things can change, i can have that hope as well. and the story with me now, mori, she was a young woman very close to her family. you know, had been doing been doing art classes, but then found a company that she really wanted to work that had all sorts of different things that she thought this could be place where i could learn, i could go start somewhere small. and one of the easy careerist restaurants, but then i could move into other places. and so she felt really hopeful that this could be the start, you know, kind of like a really brilliant career, a wonderful life that she wanted to have. and so she and her mother had actually been watching a documentary on kenosha. and the mother was very worried and she was worried about this particular company that had a

very bad reputation. and, you know, it said basically she really valued valorize ised and rewarded long work hours. you know, 24 seven work til you die. that's the way you've got to work here and mother was very worried and said to her daughter, you know, i don't want you to work that way. and the daughter, don't worry, you know, i'll leave before ever gets to that point. but what ended up happening is that she got caught up in that overwork culture. one of the things that you have to do in japan that, again, these these families fighting against is called service overtime, that you're expected not only to work your long hours but then put in service overtime, you know, late nights and weekends volunteering at different places. it's it's part of the culture there. and what ended up happening is after two short months, nina mori became so exhausted that she ended up taking own life.

you know, in the hours before her death, she had gone to a store and bought and an alarm clock and different things. so her mother doesn't think that she meant to take own life, but that she was just so delicious and exhausted from work but also with feeling so broken, so, so hopeless and, helpless. and i think that's what's so powerful about the families is that want to take those the you know just that horrific tragedy turn it into something a force for good. and the other thing that i'll say about, you know, fighting against that kind of culture, you know, young people who are also involved saying we just want a good life. you know, we don't want this to be our only future, our only option and it's also young are actually fathers of any age, sort of a fathering movement saying, you know, we don't want to be those of, you know, fathers who never see their children, who work all the time.

and that's what's expected us. we want something different. and so what i what i find hopeful in that is that, you know, we can talk about effective work. and i do talk about that because trying to sort of get into the hearts and minds of of leaders. but it's so much so of where the drive for transforming work comes from is really from the of people who just really want to have they want to have work. but as one part of a very rich and full life. yeah, it's interesting to hear you talk about how a lot the momentum is coming from young people in japan because i wonder if that's actually happening here in the united states as well. when i when i speak to gen z workers, i'm always really struck by how clear their priority seem to be, how much they reject the kind of ways that we used to work before and how willing they are, speak up and out about these things to

their bosses, which is something for me as a millennial, i never would have considered doing at beginning of my career. yeah. or me sort of the tail end of the baby boom and beginning of gen, gen x. you know, i came into the workforce in the 1980s right after sort of like the first wave of women en went into the workforce. and let me tell you, i was told you have to work twice as hard, be three times as good. you're a woman. you'll never accepted. so i think that's part of where some of my long work hours came from. is that message that you don't and you're going to always be a struggle, always going to be a fight, you know? and i think what's sad is you get to this point where a lot of a lot of people, women who have worked that way, a lot of them at great personal sacrifice, you know, and you see this regardless of gender, you get into power and you feel like it's almost like a hazing ritual. well, if i had to go through it, well, then you better go through it.

and what i want to tell everybody that stop, it wasn't. good. you know, and even people who to go back to 20, 19, 2019 wasn't good. let's stop the stuff. d'alger for 2019, you know, work still wasn't working for a lot of people. and you know, again, was working for perhaps a handful very high power male workers, as you know. so i think that the getting back to the generations, i think two things about that and one is that when you look at surveys over time, what's interesting is that every young generation wants what z wants. now they've wanted a good life. you know they've wanted good work, but they haven't wanted work to squeeze out everything else or, eaten them alive, you know. and then it's interesting, you know, ten years ago it was like, oh, millennials, that will save us. and i remember to leaders at the time shame on you you shouldn't expect the people to be the ones doing the hard you need to

create the systems and the culture and the organization where everybody can then have that work life balance, you know, and it's not about lesser work or being soft or not hard core, it's about doing good. but then being able to go home at the end of the day and have a good life know. and, and i think what's different. and then you've hit on it again. think covid and the disruptions of covid were were so devastating and yet so powerful and potentially lasting is that you do younger people who are more willing to say, you know, i don't i don't buy into this and i will walk away over time. what ends up happening sometimes is they get sucked into that inertia and that culture, and then you end up acting that way because you feel like you have no choice. but i mean, that's an question and we'll see. yeah, you know after all this reporting you did that, took you all over the country and all over the world, i wonder if you

ended up doing anything differently, your life personally, if there were lessons that you kind of ended applying in your own life? i absolutely. oh, my goodness. you know, and at the end of the book, that's why i have these sort of appendices, because i know we we're all looking for the five ways to do this, the ten ways to do this. you know, i listen, i love that stuff. and so at the end of the book, i do have four individuals. i want people to feel they have a sense of agency. you know a lot of this can feel so enormous. you know, congress hasn't raised the minimum wage since 2009. you know, outrageous. but sometimes that feels like outside of what i can do on a monday, you know, you know we don't have paid family medical leave in the united states. we don't invest in care, child care or care infrastructure. that's big stuff. you know that that's worth fighting for over time organizations. there's a lot that organized nations can do. you know, changing culture, changing work practices is, you

know, really focusing on human well-being, seeing humans as an asset rather than a liability be cut, you know, so laying people off so that your books will look good for wall street so that you can satisfy your shareholders which is a lot of what happens. you know, which is really short sighted and very damaging to people. so there are there's a lot that we can change at that policy level, the cultural level, the organizational level. but, you know, that will take time. what i say is there are things that we can do in our own lives right, right now. and it's almost like putting on your oxygen mask that's. what i want people to think of, because if we only the problems for ourselves, we're not helping. it's like nobody wins till we all win. so think about that's the way i like to think about is like, all right, how can i get more oxygen, bring some more of time and reason into my life? how can i live more of a fuller, good life? and then how can i then, you know, use that energy to to work

some of these larger changes. so just a couple of things that i'll share with you. i learned i learned so much from behavioral science during this entire reporting trip that was, you know, this reporting journey was just so, so fascinating, you know, and how important systems changes and and all of that but in terms of what the individual do, you can go through your sort of work excellence mission like like they did and work redesigns or in iceland you can spend thinking in your own life what's most important to you? what is the work that you really want to do? and i define work in the book very broadly. in my view, work is that is not free time and so work is you do for pay. it's the unpaid work of care. it's how you make your home, you know it is volunteer in the community. it is being part of civic life. all of that is work. all of that is good work and.

it needs to be valued. you are the three principles that i talk about defining. good work are meaning fairness and cooperation. so thinking work in that bigger way in your own life, thinking about those principles of fairness and meaning and and really understanding there is no such thing as pulling yourself up by your bootstraps that was always sort of came from a joke you know, that we are part of communities and that we need each other you know that we care is a human fundament fundamental. you know, human activity. it's how we survive well as what gives us sense of meaning. so think in your own life, what is important to you in? your work, you know, in your care and in what gives you a sense of joy and then how do you make time that? and then backwards from work back work backwards from there. you know, in terms of the way you spend your time, you know, think about what drives you

internally rather than a lot of those external pressures that will will always you know will be you to work more. you're not doing enough. you can never be enough. so some of that is turning down turning down the volume on those external pressures, getting much more clear spending with yourself, figuring out what's important. and then, you know, one of the smartest things that i've heard from, one of the behavioral scientists is like thinking about your time, you know, recognize your time and attention, are your two most precious resources. so how will you deploy them? how will you spend them in a way that helps helps you with your internal driver of your own to get to your own priority. and so one of the ways that that i like to think about it, this behavioral scientist me is like rather than thinking about your schedule like a pantry that you just cram with a bunch of stuff, you know, because that how a lot of our busyness cultures if you value people running around sort of breathlessly and all the time

you're going to cram your calendar with back to back to back meetings and you're going to plow through your inbox and you to the end of the day and wonder, i was busy. i don't know what i did all day, you know, which is what happens a lot. so he said rather than kind of thinking about your calendar in a way that might be externally rewarded and think about it again from your own internal driver and think about your calendar is more an art gallery. so what's most important to you? and choose a handful of those things and hang them up on the wall. and make sure there's white space before so that you can prepare for them and then when you're engaged with, that beautiful piece of art be fully present, you know. so that means don't go to a meeting and answer emails and sort of half listen and and send sort of half written emails that you're not really paying attention to anything. that's really a waste of time and spends an awful lot of brainpower so be fully focused on that and then have white space after that whatever that

is that you've chosen to spend your time and attention on. so that you can follow up, you can process, can think and then choose. so what's the next thing you're going to go to? and then when you build some of that white space in, you know, it's sort of cuts down on that, you know, breathless busyness, running around on the treadmill. because the other thing from behavioral scientists that science that i found so fascinating is that when when we have that feeling, busyness and time scarcity and we're running, running, running, we get into a situation they call tunneling, you know, that that we literally cannot see very far ahead the distance. it's like we're we're stuck in a tunnel. and so then you just go to the next thing you can see sort of right in front of you. and so then you'll always be in kind of code red and answering kind of firefighting. so you won't have that sort of the time and the bandwidth to kind of get outside the tunnel and see the bigger picture and

work on those systems and work on the processes. you know, individually or for your team that could lead to a better result. so much misery. hmm. yeah, i love all that. those are, you know all great tips. but like you say know you didn't write a self-help book. so much of your book is about the systemic changes that we need to change or over work in culture here in the u.s. and also in the world. but don't know like when the solution is something is large. something like like a call to pass universal basic income. it just the reaction i always have things like that is just like that. that is just far away from where our political system is today. like that is just so that feels so unrealistic that then all of these like individual tips that you just talked about i'm just i just kind of get to a point where i'm like, oh, like what's even the point? like, if we get these big things

what's even the point of like trying little things and then i'm kind of like, what's even the point of any of it at all? and i think, it's pretty easy for me to get to this place of pessimism that is that. yeah, well i think the first thing to recognize is that, you know, talking about universal basic income or universal basic services, that is sort of that's more of a future conversation, a future of work conversation. i mean, my god, if we don't even have maternity leave in the united states, we're definitely not ready for universal basic income, but we can have those conversations now. we can start having discussion and kicking the tires of things. you know, i guess where i go back to is change you know things are always changing you know where we where we have been for good and for ill. you know where we were 20, 30 years ago. when you think about you know,

where were in the 1970s compared to where we are now. you know, there is change there has been progress. and so i, i look at it as a continuum and change can come in surprising. you know, look at marriage equality. for the longest time, people couldn't think that it was i didn't think it was possible. and then very quickly, it became the law of the land, you know, so the same thing with the reverse with roe v wade, people that, you know, having control your body and your reproductive systems, the law, and then all of a sudden it wasn't so change can be can be surprising can happen in all sorts of different ways. and so i think where i come from is like well what's the point of being pessimistic you know yes these are big changes but so is climate change. you know, so is anything that's worth, you know, if you want to make it if having a good life if having that available on an equitable basis, you know, to not just the lucky few if those are sort of things are worth

fighting for, then it's worth fighting for. and taking the time that it's going to take to get there. even when you know what the answers are. and so what do is you start small and if that's a pilot here, you know, and then share your stories, you know, when think about one of the one of the stories that i write about in the book, you know, are retail, hourly and service workers who were having all of these horrific schedules and they didn't know when they would work or how long they would work or they would work at all. they'd have to on call at all times. so they couldn't arrange childcare. they couldn't go see a doctor, you know, they had no lives of their own. and these were really poorly paid jobs. and so many workers just thought, well, this is just the way it is. there's there's no other there's no other choice. and then they got together and started sharing their stories, started sharing their pain started with their suffering. and they saw that they weren't alone they came together and they have they to have

reasonable, predictable schedules. and now, that's the law of the land in oregon and in several states or in several other cities. many other organizations have have, you know, have now committed to that. and people's lives are mature, different, you know. so that's where i get hope from. you know, iceland, they went bankrupt in 2008 and it was from sort of the ashes of that catastrophe that they realized, huh, maybe focusing on success, sort of a measure of gdp growth and less growth and huge profits. the handful of the few, maybe that's the right way to go if. we want to have a quality of life. maybe we need to think more about, you know, how do you measure quality of life and well-being and maybe those should be the measures of the success of a nation. so i guess that's what i say. it's like, of course, these are difficult problems. you know, it isn't easy, but there are answers there and

there are people the hard work. and i think that's what i wanted to highlight in the book. so, you know, so if you're pessimistic, see? well, look, here's the here's a in the gloom, here's a bright spot, here's something that we can learn from. how did they do it? could we do it here? because that's where change comes from, is seeing that it's possible, you know, and not being so afraid of it and then trying something even if it's small and letting it letting burble out from there. yeah. i mean, i when you know you're a reporter, you decide to dive really deep a problem. you can come away with two responses. sometimes you away with this deep pessimism and this like deep understand ing of just how hard changes and how it's almost certain that things are going to continue to be the same way. and i think like a second response, you can sometimes have is, you know, a sense of optimism, ism to not just hope, but i think and optimism that

things can and might actually get better which it sounds like you had more of the latter response after finishing the book. yeah absolutely very optimistic. i'm very hopeful. and a lot of it is because of, you know, the change agents i follow and tell their stories. and also i was very influenced by this dutch historian named john lucas then, and he wrote a book called the story work. it's this massive tome. he goes the way back to pre-history and he writes about humans and the way work in a relationship with work. and one of the things that he writes that just so stuck with me, he said that throughout human history, there's never been one right way to work. we have organized work in an infinite number of ways. and it's always changing. and so i think that's what gives me a lot of hope is so much of the way we work comes down to the stories of what we choose to believe and can choose to believe. different stories. and there already are good

examples out there and. that's what gives me a lot of hope. well, i'm getting the to wrap this up here. i think one of the most moving details that i learned in your book was from mina morris family. they decided take the settlement from her, her employer. they created a fund for other victims of carol. she they named it nozomi, which in japanese means hope. and that's kind of the feeling that i took coming away from the book as well so bridgette thank you so much for writing this book. it was great to be here with you today and thank you for everyone for tuning in. so great to be with you