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 ow we we're all looking for the five ways to do this, the ten wa tdo this. you know, iisten, 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. mview, 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 wld 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' 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 bookas 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