OG Tuesday Issue #212

💼 Job Search: Read this if you want a job offer—not a scam.

⚖️ Equity: The leisure time split among married working couples.

🤱 Culture: Tired of being a working mother…and feeling guilty for it.

🗣️ Mentorship: Your mentor match in heaven could be just a group job chat away.

One TA Subscriber wants support getting through overwhelm: My biggest struggle right now is feeling disengaged with work. I am no longer passionate about what I do, and feel overwhelmed by the amount of projects thrown at me.

We’re so sorry you’re feeling this way. (Cue the group hug.) No matter what anyone else may tell you, what you’re going through is hard, absolutely not your fault, and nothing you need to feel bad about at all.

Something else to keep in mind: Don’t let the feelings of overwhelm tempt you into throwing more ideas and action at the problem. Right now, you probably need to take a breather and regain your strength, energy, or as author and journalist Brigid Schulte might call it, power.

“Time, I was learning, was not only money, as the saying goes. It was power,” writes Schulte in Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play when No One has the Time.

“When you are overwhelmed, when you can neither predict nor control the forces shaping your time, when you don’t even have time to think about why you’re overwhelmed, much less what to do about it, you are powerless.”

Schulte has also written multiple books about getting through the thorny tangle of overwhelm and burnout surrounding so many of our modern work lives.

• Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play when No One has the Time
• Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life

She recently did a podcast interview with Bossed Up about her newest book, Over Work. We’ve included some key points below in the Productivity section.

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Schulte’s interview with Bossed Up demonstrates that she is so over the whole idea of overwork. It also features some jaw-dropping insights from her years of studying this systemic issue.

Most importantly, Schulte shared her vision for what we can all do to work toward solving this problem. After studying the efforts and victories of many different change agents, she feels strongly that a three-pronged approach would be ideal for making progress.

1. Individual solutions: Instead of throwing more energy at work, individuals can spend time considering factors that are both controllable and within their control.
2. Organizational change: Many examples from Schulte’s studies show that leadership mindset is an incredibly powerful agent of change away from the trend of busyness.
3. Policy and attitudinal change: The greatest possibility for change exists in this area. However, change is frustratingly slow. Schulte’s policy change wishlist includes greater support for caregivers, more affordable childcare, stronger federal care infrastructure, and potentially rethinking all our economic systems and measures of value.

Here are a few other key takeaways about the state of overwork:

• Individual workers pulling up their bootstraps and working harder is NOT going to help anything or anyone—except the employers actually benefiting from the fruits of all this labor.
  • Schulte says this attitude is so harmful and also out of touch with reality.
  • This Economic Policy Institute sheds some light on the actual reality: individuals are working harder than ever while employers are failing to commensurately increase their compensation. In other words, individuals aren’t just working harder than ever; they’re also working harder than people were decades ago while earning less for each hour they put in.
• Pay rates and job structures are trending away from wages and salaries high enough to realistically live given rising costs of living.
  • Nearly half of U.S. workers are classified as low-income.
• The pressure to spend time working harder naturally takes time away from a variety of unpaid work, including caregiving and civic volunteering that is critically important to get done.
• Workaholism and worker exploitation are already bad, and they’re compounded by people doing so much work that imparts very little meaning or sense of value.

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“Nurture relationships with those who will speak your name in a room full of opportunities.”

— Alyson Reidy, Sr. Manager, Talent Development

⭐️ Want to be featured? Share your best career advice here.

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📖 Feeling overwhelmed? The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control might just be your next read.

🛠️ BambooHR is a total game-changer for HR teams.

📝 Get your life in order with this to-do list notepad (and yes, it comes with stickers).

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