Summary of Brigid Schulte's Overwhelmed

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 I am always doing more than one thing at a time and feel I never do any one thing particularly well. I am always behind and always late, with one more thing and one more thing to do before rushing out the door.
#2 I have a lot of anxiety about my life getting lost in this frantic flotsam of daily stuff. I worry that I’ll die and realize that my life got lost in this frantic flotsam of daily stuff.
#3 I had been part of an internal work group at the Washington Post researching why so few women were reading the newspaper. I had been tasked with getting the time-use data showing how busy and time-starved women are, particularly mothers.
#4 The idea that women have more leisure time than men is false. Women have at least thirty hours of leisure time every week, but men have more leisure time than they did in the 1960s, even though more women are working outside the home.

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Sociology
• General officer
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 16 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822511361
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Brigid Schulte's Overwhelmed
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I am always doing more than one thing at a time and feel I never do any one thing particularly well. I am always behind and always late, with one more thing and one more thing to do before rushing out the door.

#2

I have a lot of anxiety about my life getting lost in this frantic flotsam of daily stuff. I worry that I’ll die and realize that my life got lost in this frantic flotsam of daily stuff.

#3

I had been part of an internal work group at the Washington Post researching why so few women were reading the newspaper. I had been tasked with getting the time-use data showing how busy and time-starved women are, particularly mothers.

#4

The idea that women have more leisure time than men is false. Women have at least thirty hours of leisure time every week, but men have more leisure time than they did in the 1960s, even though more women are working outside the home.

#5

I was shocked to find that not everyone had the time to do the things they wanted. I asked friends and family members, and they said they were too busy or their husbands or children kept them busy.

#6

When I read that some social scientists thought the time crunch was a yuppie kvetch, I asked a friend who works with working-poor immigrant families if I could come to one of their monthly meetings.

#7

The ancient Greek philosophers believed that true leisure, free from the drudgery of work, not only refreshed the soul but also opened it up. People in the modern world are so caught up in busyness that they have lost the ability even to imagine what leisure is.

#8

I had started keeping my time diary in the little black Moleskine notebooks because my time was too unruly to shove into the orderly rectangles of the time diary template John Robinson had given me. The notebooks dutifully chronicle such embarrassments as the late bills and the time spent on the phone in crisis management mode because I put something off too long.

#9

I was writing in my black notebooks about how I felt like time was flying by. I was constantly worrying about money, and I was missing out on my kids growing up before my eyes.

#10

Robinson’s research shows that Americans feel they have less time, but when you look at their diaries, they actually have about the same amount of free time as people in other countries.

#11

Over the past few decades, researchers have been collecting time diaries and analyzing them to see what people around the world are doing with their time. Some of these findings are obvious, but others reflect what different cultures value or the forces that shape their lives.

#12

I had intended to type up the contents and analyze them myself first. But it was such a laborious process that I’d only made it through one week. I pulled out the sheets of neatly typed paper for the week of September 29 through October 5.

#13

I found that I typically worked more than fifty hours a week, and I slept an average of six hours a night when you factored in longer weekend sleep time. I spent almost every waking hour multitasking.

#14

In Paris, I sit through a conference full of time researchers who discuss how many working parents feel they don’t get everything done in a day that they want to. In Canada, a survey of more than thirty thousand workers and working families found that nearly 90 percent reported moderate to high levels of role overload.

#15

The IATUR program, which is an online course offered by the University of Michigan, discusses the rising levels of role overload for both women and men. They explain that our perception of time is our reality.

#16

The overwhelm is not just about getting Mom a gift certificate to a spa to calm down. It’s about sustainable living, healthy populations, happy families, good business, sound economies, and living a good life.

#17

The feeling of being overwhelmed is on the rise, and it is mostly women who are experiencing this. The reason for this is that when women began working in a man’s world, their lives changed completely.

#18

In the United States, the time strain is intense. Nearly 40 percent of American workers report feeling overworked, and they work among the longest hours and most extreme hours of any industrialized country.

#19

Even mothers who have opted out of the workforce to take care of home and children feel pressed for time.

#20

The Netherlands has one of the lowest rates of time pressure among working mothers, but the majority of them work part-time, which adds to their role overload.

#21

The split in workers’ time began in 1938, when the U. S. government passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. This law created two classes of workers: hourly and salaried. The law didn’t limit the number of hours workers could work a week, but it did protect hourly workers from overwork by mandating that employers pay them overtime after forty hours.

#22

Working parents have been combining hours at work and at home for years, and the effects have been felt by everyone.

#23

The gendered division of labor is the amount of time spent doing housework and child care by women versus men. Men spend more time at work than women, and this is why they still earn more money.

#24

In America, mothers have spent more time taking care of their children than mothers did in the 1960s, even though so many more are working outside the home. Mothers tend to choose careers that do not require them to be on the career fast track so they can reduce or flex their time.

#25

Men tend to enjoy longer, unbroken periods of time to themselves, whereas women’s leisure is more fragmented and chopped up into small, often unsatisfying bits of ten minutes here, twenty minutes there.

#26

The have it all conversation often leaves out the fact that if it’s left up to women, they can’t have it all. Men must change their behavior, and cultures must change to support parents.

#27

John Robinson, a time expert, believes that making time for leisure is the key to the good life. He believes that if you can’t have fun in Paris, then there’s something wrong with you.

#28

The start of the leisure class is with men. Men have always been more associated with exploit, high-status activities, while women have done the uneventful, industrious, and boring work.

#29

The history of leisure for men is well documented.