As work weeks get longer and leisure time shrinks, people are becoming sicker, more distracted, absent, unproductive, and less innovative.
Brigid SchulteThe big message is that we need to reimagine and re-engineer how we work - what does work mean and how do we measure what's good? The second thing we need to reimagine is our relationships - who does what and why? One of the biggest things that has helped me and my husband is coming up with a common set of standards about what it takes to run our house, what is a fair way to divide tasks, and how are we going to keep each other accountable?
Brigid SchulteWhat often matters more than the activity we're doing at a moment in time is how we feel about it.
Brigid SchulteThere are new studies showing that young men and men with more progressive views of what a father should be - which is not just a helper and fun parent, but actually a partner - are beginning to feel more work-life conflict than mothers are. They're trying to do what women have been doing for 30 years, and they're having a very stressful time of it - a harder time at work because we still expect men to be on 24-7, working 40 years straight.
Brigid SchulteWhat's happening now with technology is we live with very porous boundaries. All those little interruptions fragment our time and attention and make us feel like work never ends. It makes us feel like we don't ever have that sacred time for family or to breathe or meditate or for leisure. Time is contaminated for everyone. I'm hoping that as we get used to these technologies we'll get smarter about how we use them and also how to shut them off.
Brigid Schulte