Brigid Schulte joins the podcast roundtable to share her journalistic findings on “stupid work.” She helps managers and their teams tell “a better story about work.”

Your communication with a team doesn’t just convey instructions. It does stuff.

That’s an insight from communication theory. But it’s also a persistent insight from this week’s podcast conversation with Better Life Lab’s Brigid Schulte, author of the recent book Over Work, a journalistic investigation of job addiction and its causes. For her, managerial communication can generate a lot of what she calls “stupid work.”

When your team does Stupid Work, you can be sure there are two factors at play. They will have internalized various work ethics. But they will also feel the external pressure of your organization’s culture and (quite possibly) your managerial communication.

It's possible for managers to be very pleasant people. “Thanks for what you do!” and “Appreciate you!” and “Wow, you’re up at 5:30 sending emails!” But the weird thing about compliments like those is, they mean well but do harm.

Managerial communication like that generates an enormous amount of what Brigid calls Stupid Work, intensive labor that’s marginal to the core work of an organization.

In this week’s podcast, you’ll hear some frank confessions of work addiction from our team. But Brigid’s journalism will help you do more than treat your overwork. She will also help you tell an entirely new story about work itself.

I’m pleased to share this week’s podcast, because I think it could make a difference for you and your team. Here’s one good way to get ready: jot down one thing your higher-ups say to you that tempts you into Stupid Work. Hit reply or comment below!

Table of Contents

0:00 — Craig comes in tender: why this week’s problem isn’t “out there.” Plus the number behind the episode: a 2026 workforce report finds nearly half of workers now describe themselves as workaholics.

2:30 — The system we’re recording inside: automation reshaping scheduling, algorithmic performance tracking, and middle managers left to translate .

3:20 — Brigid Schulte enters the studio. Where does the line get crossed between commitment and compulsion? On the “ideal worker” cultures that reward presence, busyness, and the appearance of productivity.

6:15 — “It is the only addiction that is rewarded.”

7:10 — Is this an American problem?

8:45 — LaShone asks the middle-manager question: you’re absorbing pressure from above and handing it down. How do you interrupt that?

11:45 — Craig on the scripts that circulate at work. Brigid goes to Japan for karoshi and to Iceland for shorter hours, and finds the same root in both places: ambiguity about what the work actually is.

15:50 — Generations and boundaries after COVID. Where the “young workers want flexibility, older workers don’t” story holds up — and where the data says it doesn’t.

19:50 — Faithful leadership when you don’t control compensation, staffing, or policy. Your sphere of influence, why rested people do better work, and the six-week arc where the overworkers lose their early lead. Plus a term for what happens next: the productivity cliff.

23:00 — A better story about work — “beyond lunchtime yoga.” Brigid on the change agents who gave her hope, including a family reforming the culture of medicine after losing an ER doctor to burnout.

25:10 — Mode/Switch! Stop stupid work. Brigid’s three concentric circles: the real work, the work around the work, and the performance of work. Why we spend our days in the outer two.

27:35 — Roundtable: Can a mid-level leader misdiagnose work addiction in someone else? Are there workaholic seasons? LaShone on self-awareness and naps, Madeline on “I’ll just make a little progress here,” Craig on why “stupid work” is too close to laugh at. The better questions we might ask each other instead of “How’s work?”