>> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including charter communications. >> charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers. and we are just getting started, building 100 thousand miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. announcer: charter communications suppos c-span as a public service, along with these other telesion providers, givg you a front row seat to democracy. >> next on book tv's other interview program "after words cost journalist brigid schulte explores how to better align workplace culture with the needs of american workers. she is interviewed by business insiders's chief correspondent. "after words" is a weekly interview program with relevant guest posts interviewing then others about their latest work. host: hi brigid schulte

eight, i am so happy, to be here today to talk about your new book. it is a deeply reported book with a ton of results. you talked to a lot of people for it. i think what struck me about it is that you are a character in it as well. may take to kick us off, can you talk about the person a place that you wrote this book from? what about your life made you want to write it? guest: sure. first it is great to be in conversation with you. i am excited to be here. your work is really great as well. so i am excited to have this conversation. it is really a book of journalism. i journey if you are of me as a journalist asking questions and looking for answers. -- a journey, if you will, of me as a journalist asking questions and looking for answers. my first book was called

"overwhelmed: work, love, and play when no one has the time," and it started with me trying to understand what it was so difficult to confine a job in the family. i was a journalist with two small children. everyone adopted that it seemed so impossible. so i finished that book. sort of a journey book trying to understand a lot about time pressure, gender roles, intensive work, intensive parenting. why we make no time for leisure in this country. i got to the end of that process . and i have to say i am very driven by equity. equality. as a woman, as someone who has care responsibilities. trying to understand what it is so difficult for all people to have access to a good life. to have meaningful work. to have the time that they want for care and connection, for love, for joy, and why is it so

difficult for really all of us to find time to put over that sense that we always have to be productive and busy. why is it so difficult to have time for leisure and joy and fun. sort of like asking the bigger questions of why are we here? what are we doing? i realized that so much of the pain and misery, not just for women, not just for people with care responsibilities -- honestly, workers with disabilities. workers of color where i feel like the disadvantage is felt so acutely. it really for all of us. i began to see it 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 do it. i did look broadly across the globe, but i was focused on the united states where we have not just the hard work culture. but i think we all believe as humans in hard work, that there is a value in that.

but it is more and overwork culture. where work is starting to squeeze out time for the other great arenas of life, and capturing more and more of our identities. really looking at why that is. what drives it. what the costs and consequences are. . and how do we move beyond it, and what is it so important that we do not just now, but as we think about the future of work. host: great. speaking of that line you mentioned between work, hard work, and overwork, one of the moving chapters in your book is about or -- is about worker-holism. inheook you talk about how it is a serious condition. an actual diagnosis. even the people at the alcoholics anonymous meetings who are desperately trying to overcome their addiction to work.

at one point does licking your job end up becoming an addiction that potentially runs your life? feels like that is a fuzzier line than we would like it to be. guest: that is such a good question, and it is really true. i have put in a lot of work hours. i love what i do. i am passionate about that. it is my job to try to ask those questions of, how do we make a good light available to all people. a lot of us, regardless of what kind of job you have, so many people that i spoke to for this book -- i spoke with care workers. they have such pride, such sense of meaning in what they do. exactly what music their clients like, or how to fix their hair, where to take them on a walk, what to do if they are upset. i spoke to retail workers. they take such pride in how they stock the shelves.

i think that we have this false idea that the only people who find meaning in their work are sort of educated, or more of the professional class. that is not true at all. that is another thing that really shines through in other interviews that -- did so many years ago, is that we all find meaning and purpose. many of us do in the work that we do. and so, there is a really thin line between good, good enough work. what is difficult is if you are not working in a factory or you are not working set hours, which is in a retail workers and hourly workers aren't anymore, with so much unpredictability. it is hard to know if your job is to write journalism. or to change the world at a nonprofit. it's hard to know when to call it a day. so work hours can stretch longer. i looked a lot at the resort --

research between the difference between work and engagement. when you are passionately interested in your work. but you are able to unplug from it. if you are able to still say yes ox i wanted to accomplish more today, but it is over and now i will spend time with family and friends and do something i enjoy doing. you have the ability to unplug from work. but the workaholism, it is often driven by fear. by a feeling of sort of not enoughness. and there is a sense that when you stop working, it's like an addiction. it's difficult to unplug from work. if you aren't working, you are thinking about it or worrying, feeling like he should be working. so it is very difficult to enjoy time for other areas of your life. i talked to many workaholics, and they say vacations is the hardest time for them, you know,

having time off away from work. that is what is important to remember, that there is a line, and there are internal drivers to worker-holism or overwork. it can be positive. you are excited or curious -- i would say curiosity drives a lot of my devotion to work, so to speak, given that you want to learn things. but they can also be very negative drivers, that feeling of inadequacy or fear. but will leave in a culture, and this is what many workaholics told me. we live in a culture that values and rewards those long work hours. they were rewarded for the very same things that were causing them pain, keeping them from having healthy relationships, or being able to do anything outside of work. so that is where the problem comes. it is when you are not able to unplug and then you live in a culture or work in organizations where people say "that is amazing."

host: yeah, when you drink too much or when you have a gambling addiction. [laughs] it is so clear that that is a bad thing. but it is not immediately clear that being addicted to work is a bad thing. it is one of those cliches in job interviews, like when the interviewer asks you what is your one flaw? a lot of people say "oh, i am a workaholic." [laughter] guest: that should beguest: a bad thing. the other thing is looking into the research. long work hours, we tend to think that makes you a better worker. and we reward that. oh my goodness, if you work through lunch and you never take vacation. i worked in those rooms where we would get emails, so and so worked the last five or six weekends, that is amazing. you get these messages that that is the best way to work. but overtime, the research is really clear that the longer you

work, it becomes counterproductive to both productivity -- you get tired. if you make fuzzier. it takes longer to make decisions. you are not always so clearheaded. it is not only counterproductive to the productivity, but you cannot be creative and innovative when you are burned out and crispy-fried around the edges. the research is really clear. if you look at neuroscience, if you look at start of the science behind innovation, or the an aha moment, that it happens when we are well rested. when we are feeling relaxed. there is a physiological reason we have our best ideas in the shower. [laughs] you know, when we are rested and the water feels great and we are in this daydreaming mode. that is important for the larger culture to recognize, that we need to stop rewarding the behaviors that are not only hurting people and their individual lives but are also

really antithetical to if you want to run an efficient business. if you want to have employees who don't work themselves to the ground. that those long work hours and alcoholism are not good for everyone. host: you talk about the importance of culture here. in the book, you made if an observation that -- was it italy of all places, that has done the best research on the workaholism? guest: yeah, isn't that amazing? [laughter] but i think it is interesting to do this when you talk to the handful of workaholism researchers in the united states, they will say they have struggled trying to get attention and rewards for their work. because it is not seen as a problem in the united states. again, it is something that is seen as almost the price of entry.

it almost expected in every profession. host: for the book, you go to a lot of different countries in europe. if you go to iceland. you just talked about italy in this example. was it -- i mean, i am sure you have been to europe before writing this book, but was that kind of wild to go there and experience how differently people think about work there compared to how we think about work here in the u.s.? guest: and to be fair, i also went to japan, you know, which has a very different view of work that is more akin to the u.s. i wanted to experience different cultures that had different experiences of work and really look closely at gender equality. at health and well-being. and also at class mobility. what is this doing to workers across race, class, and gender.

some of the things were really astounding. in japan, the whole idea that long work hours really don't work was so clear. i would talk to people. it would be 11:00 at night and they would still be at the office and they would be doing sort of nothing. sitting around. he would ask them, why are you there? they would say, my boss expect me to be here. i can't believe. this is a country where young people are not having children. they are talking about having an aging society. they are not very productive when you look at the number of hours they have put in. you talk to researchers there, they call that waste. you are wasting a lot of time physically either being at work, or kind of hanging around your computer and sending late-night emails. what we have here is a long work hours and the busyness culture in the united states, the researchers there called it

waste. i ended up calling it "the performance of work." four "stupid work." dash for -- or stupid work. i realized that i began to think about work in three ways. there is the core work we talk about, where we are doing things we are interested in. developing skills. we are connected to the value of what we are doing. the meaning and fulfillment parts. the next concentric ring is what i call the work around the work. the emails, the meetings, logistics and planning that should help go support that meaningful work but often times becomes the work. what you spend your whole day doing. running to meetings and you are not quite sure why you are there. plowing through an inbox that never ever seems to be under control or answering messages. then i began to think about work in that sort of final concentric circle. i called it the performance of

work. when you are in a culture that rewards busyness. that cares more if you look productive than if you really are. that value in the long work hours. the input of what you are doing, rather than the output. you know, what are you actually creating? what are you actually doing? what is the performance? what is the impact in the world that you are having? if that doesn't matter, when you have a lot of people running around trying to look important and busy, instead of performing work. it isn't work -- trying to look important and busy and sort of performing work. it is not work at all. that is what i saw in the u.s. and in japan. the reason i went to iceland is because they have a movement there. they moved from 40 hours to 30 hours and make that available to the population. it wasn't just elite professionals, desk workers,

people who stayed behind computers. i went there and spoke to child care workers, nurses, police officers, as well, to travel agents, factories, people who worked in factories and things like that. and what was so interesting was for them to be able to get 1032 hrs at the same rate of pay, they had to completely rethink what work was. the first thing they did was get really clear on that first circle. and what was meaningful work. what creates the most value. how we prioritize that. then they work on that second circle. all the meetings and logistics and planning, what are the processes we can make to streamline it, to make sure we are supporting that most important work. than they completely got rid of the stupid work. there was no more performing work, no more pretending to be busy and getting kudos for it. if you are no longer rewarded for simply being a butt in a

chair or a presence or sending late-night emails. it focused on what was most important about work. the work got better. it was interesting when talking to the architects of the shorter work hours movement. they wanted to do it for well-being, trumping people's stress levels down and increase health. that happened. -- to bring people's stress levels down. and for gender equality. and for gender equality that also happened because men's work hours have come down. we are sharing the work for care at home which we all know around the world, women are spending anywhere from two times to 10 times more during the unpaid work of care at home. and they are not able to put in those long work hours in long-work hours cultures. so those long-work hours cultures end up creating a monoculture overtime because people with care responsibilities, you simply cannot put into this kind of hours. that was what became really

raging after a while. we are rewarding the right things and really disadvantaging so many people. we live in an era where you need to work to survive. it just felt so unfair. and then what we are doing is, because leaders tend to believe that that is what you have got to do, that that is the best way to work, they end up rewarding people who work like them. you end up reconfirming kind of a corporate monoculture over and over again. making sure that men and people with no care responsibilities are always in charge. it just doesn't have to be that way. host: great. when you go to iceland, i think it'll go in with quite a bit of skepticism. this tiny country would have any lessons for us here in the united states, you know, the world's largest economy. left there

-- lector: did youhave any skepticism going into it? guest: i really did. i struggled with my on work and overworked. when iasriting this book, i also had a full-time job. i was trying to do two jobs, and all my unpaid care work with my kids and my mom. it was too much. sometimes i was thinking, i would love to work a shorter work week. how would i do that? so i began looking in the u.s. and the u.k. were some pilots were started. but i have to be really honest, i saw a lot of them at the time -- they may have changed now, but when i was reporting on the book, many of them were in a smaller, kind of techy, male-dominated firms. i began to look and say if those were the only workers who would benefit from shorter work hours, that just felt like more gender inequality. you know, you would have

these highly paid men serving on fridays, and other women doing so much of the care work and the child care and home care and nursing work. so many of them worked seven days a week. that just felt -- that didn't feel like an answer. didn't feel like something i wanted to try to explore that we could learn from. then a friend of mine said you should go to iceland, because they have made it available -- these short work hours available across all sectors of industry, after 85% of the workforce. so i started -- so i said show me how you really do this. i was also skeptical because you are right, iidn't say that in the book. i ow we are not iceland. you know, because it's very small and homogenous. a very unique kind of place. and the united states is so vastly different. we are enormous and enormously

diverse. there is a lot of dynamism here. a lot of economic inequality here. we have all sorts of issues that we need to work on. but i think what i ended up coming away with was, it's not like we are iceland. we shouldn't be, we will never be iceland. we are the united states. but what we can learn is the process. that is sort of universal, whether it is through public policy or through organizational change, the process that they went through to get to this shorter, more effective hours. and then the cultural change that they went through to reward what was really important, and to center things like equity and human well-being, rather than endless -- and gdp and kind of outsized profits for ceos while workers wages have stagnated really since 1971. there are processes that we can learn from that i thought were really valuable. that is what i really focus on in the chapter. host: were you able to convince

your employer to implement a four-day work week? guest: so, i run a nonprofit program. as a program director, i have a lot of autonomy within my organization. i work at new america. ever since i got there that is one thing i will say, is that even though i have struggled with long work hours over my career, and i have always sought to work flexibly. i have always had more of a sense of choice and control over my time. that is what a gift to my team. flexibility is our default. so what i tried to do is make our objectives and never goes very clear. the deadlines, the standards very clear. we have a lot of transparency, communication, regular one on ones. so where you do that work, when you do that work, or how you do that work, becomes far less

important than are you doing excellent work? in the time that we need it. and taking care of your own health and care responsibilities at the same time. so i have always brought a measure of flexibility not only to my homework -- to my own workplace, but to make teams, as well. host: one of your chapters is about redesigning work, where you talk about some very promising experiments that generated great results, but they still did not end up blasting. they kind of fizzled out after a few years. it is something you have been thinking about a lot as a workplace reporter these days, because companies are trying so hard to get their employees to come back to the office, even though there is so much research that shows that it is good for employers, and employees. i have just been thinking about like, it's almost like there is this force of gravity. [laughs] that brings us back to the

status quo every single time. i think you show that in the book, too. why is it so hard for companies to change? ? guest: you are absolutely right. i write about -- it was an incredibly creative, innovative work we designed at intel. i go through the process of how they really talked to the people, found out what their pain points were, and designed a really creative way to address it. and it worked well. for their well-being. for equality. it worked well for the company. they didn't have to lay people off and rehired in the next month. it was sort of one of those win-win-win situations. what i will say about that is what i've found with so many work designs, and you are seeing that with a lot of that return to office sites, all the equipment deceptions and experiments.

how some people embraced it and others didn't. it really comes down to the power of what leaders believe. that is one of the things that most struck me through all the reporting in this book. what it is not surprising that we have these returned to office fights. because when you have leaders who grew up in a certain way of working and that is the way they were successful, many of them, that is the only way they know how to work. they believe that is the best way to work. so i think that is what is the over and over again, these wonderful work of redesigns and there would be evidence and data showing it was better for the company even, at less turnover, higher profitability, more productivity. and when there was a leadership change, they would come in and say, i don't get this. it's not the way i like to work. we are not doing it anymore. so they would kill it. this is why i think it is most important right now, is that

covid was like a grand experiment on a grand scale. it was a horrific pandemic, we lost a lot of lives. we were forced to change so many things about the way we work, the way we live, the way we care, there will be go to school, that it forced us to think that we didn't think were possible. and we did. people showed they could be incredibly productive in a very trying circumstances. all of a sudden, the hourly, the retail and service workers who had been so it is almost four decades, became essential. we saw their plight. like oh my god, why are we putting up with the fact that there are so many people who are in such poverty wages? why are we putting up with the fact that we have companies -- we allow them to give their workers such unpredictable schedules? there were things that we saw and tried ended. -- and did, and the pandemic

lasted long enough that many things have started to stick. you have written about this. you saw death all around you. and real struggle. people began to think about their own lives and, what do i want out of my own life? we sort of broke some cycles that we had been in where we just took for granted that yeah's hard work is good, but over work must be better. we started to begin to question some of those status quo realities, to question some of that inertia. so what i will say, is that even though amazon is the most recent return to office, back five days a week, and there are others that have come out. there are a host of other smaller companies, smaller companies who have made the commitment to doing something differently. they may not be getting the headlines, they may not be getting all of the attention,

but you are right, that research is so clear that if you want the most productivity, if you want the most sense of satisfaction out of workers, as a middle manager, and managers, some sort of hybrid setting gives people more of a sense of choice and control and flexibility in both the time, manner and place of their work, that i think there is more lasting power. that is what is important to remember, that before lease work redesigns were trying to push against very powerful inertia and status quo, and now there are cracks in the concrete. and while there are some that want to snap back to 2019, i think it will be very difficult to do. host: mm. sounds like you might be much

more of an optimism than i am -- optimist than i am. i am thinking, isn't it wild that it takes the largest global pandemic in the century to actually make these changes happen? it is so sad that evidence is not enough to change the way that we work. guest: i could not agree more. it is astounding, especially when you -- you listen to business leaders, and they all sound so rational. like are we want to make the business case and we have these goals and objectives. and then the way people act is sometimes so divorced from reality. it is astounding. it comes back to who was in power and what they believe. when you look at some of the most effective work redesigns,

processes, you kind of stop and say, what is that core work that is most important? but then you get out of that bubble and you start asking people, what is your viewpoint? are you struggling with in your life? what would make your work play better question mark how can -- better? how can we co-create something together? going to iceland or other work redesigns, it is like they had leadership buy-in from the top, something needs to change but we don't know how, so we will turn it over to teams, people closest to the problem. we are going to ask you and then look at what you come up with. one childcare center i spent time with an iceland, the director said i did not a how to go back to the work hours, so i turned it over to my team. so they went through their day in 15 minute increments and say,

what is the most important thing here? how do we do that? what other processes we need? and going through their schedules with a fine tooth comb to figure out how to do it, and they were happier, the kids and parents were happier, so there is a lot of goodness that can come from redesigning and transforming work when you put humanity and well-being, along with productivity, you put that in the center, you are not just doing your job and making a whole lot of money for shareholders, which is what happens in the u.s. the last several decades. host: interesting. i wanted to go back to what you said about japan. 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 appeic, because i know ww're all looking for the five ways to do this,he 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 veryroadly. 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 servi works o 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, younow, 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 >> weeknights this month, we are showingore presentations of american history tv series congress investigates, exploring the impactegacy of the significant house and senate investigations. tonight, w highlight950's investigation inther communist infiltrated the government that led to the censure of senatorarthy. watch tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern on c-span.c-span now, our free mobile video app or online at c-span.org. >> c-span's washington journal, our live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics and public policy, from washington and across the country. saturday morning, we talk about

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fifth congressional district. they participate in a debate. they touch on a number of topics, including housing costs in the district, and a state llot measure intended to imove on mental health services. lori chavez-deremer and his considered one of the most dangerous in the incumbent cycle, and her race was rated a tossup. >> first, republican incumbent, lori chavez-deremer, elected to oregon smith congressional district in 2022, in 2004, elected to in 2004 she was eleco the happy valley city council and then as mayor of happy valley in 2010 and 2014. the democratic challenger is representative janelle bynum. she was elected to the oregon house of representatives four times. 2016, 2018, 2020 and 20