Brigid Schulte Quotes & Sayings

Grit isn't something you're born with, Carter says. It's something you can learn and exercise, like a muscle. If you're a parent, you can teach grit. How? Let your children struggle. A little challenge, a little anguish, even, is good for them. When children learn to resolve their own conflicts, without Mom or Dad swooping in to the rescue, they build grit, self-confidence, and the creative problem-solving skills that lead to higher academic achievement.14 Teach them to try new things, she says, to take risks, follow inklings, see if they turn into passions, work hard, maybe master something, maybe make mistakes, but love the journey itself, not the reward. — Brigid Schulte

As work weeks get longer and leisure time shrinks, people are becoming sicker, more distracted, absent, unproductive, and less innovative. — Brigid Schulte

Time studies find that a mother, especially one who works outside the home for pay, is among the most time-poor humans on the planet, especially single mothers, weighed down not only by role overload but also what sociologists call "task density" - the intense responsibility she bears and the multitude of jobs she performs in each of those roles.6 — Brigid Schulte

What if not just women, but both men and women, worked smart, more flexible schedules? What if the workplace itself was more fluid than the rigid and narrow ladder to success of the ideal worker? And what if both men and women became responsible for raising children and managing the home, sharing work, love, and play? Could everyone then live whole lives? — Brigid Schulte

Busyness is now the social norm that people feel they must conform to, Burnett says, or risk being outcasts. — Brigid Schulte

Time-use researchers call it "contaminated time." It is a product of both role overload - working and still bearing the primary responsibility for children and home - and task density. It's mental pollution, one researcher explained. One's brain is stuffed with all the demands of work along with the kids' calendars, family logistics, and chores. Sure, mothers can delegate tasks on the to-do list, but even that takes up brain space - not simply the asking but also the checking to make sure the task has been done, and the biting of the tongue when it hasn't been done as well or as quickly as you'd like. So it is perhaps not surprising that time researchers are finding that, while "free time" may help ease the feeling of time pressure for men, and in the 1970s helped women a little, by 1998 it was providing women no relief at all.15 — Brigid Schulte

The United States is the only advanced economy that doesn't guarantee workers paid time off. Nearly one-quarter of all American workers get no paid vacation, — Brigid Schulte

In his studies, he usually finds men do one and a half things at a time. Whereas women, particularly mothers, do about five things at once. And, at the same time, they are caught up in contaminated time, thinking about and planning two or three things more. So they are never fully experiencing their external or their internal worlds. — Brigid Schulte

The brainless rushing about makes us feel time starved, which, he writes "does not result in death, but rather, as ancient Athenian philosophers observed, in never beginning to live."6 — Brigid Schulte

Our perception of time is indeed our reality. — Brigid Schulte

The World Health Organization found that Americans live in the richest country, but they are also the most anxious.2 The average high school kid today experiences the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient of the 1950s. — Brigid Schulte

I think that was one of the biggest revelations is that leisure is really in the eyes of the beholder. — Brigid Schulte

I take solace in knowing that some of the steps I took can help other people. — Brigid Schulte

What this intensive mothering culture tells us is valuable is at discord with what really is valuable: Love your kids. Keep them safe. Accept them as they are. Then get out of their way. — Brigid Schulte

Because this is how it feels to live my life: scattered, fragmented, and exhausting. — Brigid Schulte

You are definitely onto a rather large problem," Csikszentmihalyi told me. He has found discrepancies for women, not only in the actual opportunity to have time for flow but also for allowing themselves to get there in the first place. "When I lecture about flow, in the question-and-answer period, there is always the same question: 'But doesn't one feel guilty when you are in flow because you forget everything except what you are doing? Isn't that giving up on the rest of your responsibilities - giving in to total involvement in what you are doing and not caring about anything or anyone else?' That question, almost 100 percent of the time, is asked by a woman. It's clear that it's much more difficult for women to feel that they can get immersed in something and forget themselves, forget time, forget everything around them." Csikszentmihalyi — Brigid Schulte

In the Middle Ages, the sin of sloth had two forms," he said. "One was paralysis, the inability to do anything - what we would see as lazy. But the other side was something called acedia - running about frantically. The sense that, 'There's no real place I'm going, but by God, I'm making great time getting there. — Brigid Schulte

The prejudice is against men and women - assuming men stay at work. That's the reason why we don't have enough women in the halls of power - the prejudice is pushing women to go home. — Brigid Schulte

What often matters more than the activity we're doing at a moment in time is how we feel about it. — Brigid Schulte

As long as you're pushing men to stay at work, you're pushing women to stay home. — Brigid Schulte

I have trashed the to-do list to help my brain. — Brigid Schulte

Researchers have found that the way people feel about the stress in their lives is a far more powerful predictor of their general health - whether they're more likely to be depressed, anxious, smoke cigarettes, or overeat - than any other measure. — Brigid Schulte

I'm a big believer in education. If people learn the truth, they'll see the benefit if they have gender neutral policies. — Brigid Schulte

I'm optimistic. I really believe people in power want to do the right thing. — Brigid Schulte

A gift, like a good friend drawing a personal road map out of the crazy busy swirl of our overloaded lives. — Brigid Schulte

It's incredibly painful to think back to the time I had to come back to work. I was so, so needed at home. Like the vast majority of people in America, I couldn't take unpaid leave. — Brigid Schulte

The stuff of life never ends. That is life. You will never clear your plate so you can finally allow yourself to get to the good stuff. So you have to decide. What do you want to accomplish in this life? — Brigid Schulte

We work to have leisure, on which happiness depends. - Aristotle — Brigid Schulte

The best thing a society can do is ensure its children are taken care of. — Brigid Schulte

Think about the farmer," Akil tells me. "The farmer can't control and predict very much either. So why is that any better or worse than being on Wall Street? As a farmer, if there was a freeze that destroyed your crops, that might've stressed you, but it wasn't your fault. But as a knowledge worker, you're expected to be in charge of everything. And when things go wrong, it is your fault. The thinking is, you could have planned more, or you should have anticipated what went wrong. That combination of having a lot coming at you and of shifting away from physical work - which does help cope with stress - and not even being able to say, 'It's not my fault, I surrender to higher forces,' whether you believe it's weather or God - that's been taken away." * — Brigid Schulte

But the majority of mothers work - and are responsible for taking care of the kids and home. And more fathers are spending more time doing child care and housework, and still working long hours. That work-life conflict is weighing on everybody. — Brigid Schulte

Multitasking makes you stupid - dumber than getting stoned. — Brigid Schulte

What if I hadn't worked so hard? What if ... I had actually used ... my position to be a role model for balance? Had I done so intentionally, who's to say that, besides having more time with my family, I wouldn't also have been even more focused at work? More creative? More productive? It took inoperable late stage brain cancer to get me to examine things from this angle. - Eugene O'Kelly, former CEO, KPMG — Brigid Schulte