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?”

Courtney Ellis joins the Mode/Switch to help managers lead through exhausting change. Listen to learn how your language choices affect your team's trust.

(And how to try birding at work!)

I have to admit, just seeing a goose puts me in control mode.

Hey, who ordered these stupid birds to show up? Also, the shoreline’s covered with poop. This beach needs better management!

If you're leading as a manager in the middle of an organization, you know this bind. Your senior leadership’s calling for big, loud, squawking changes. You didn’t choose them. But here you are, standing in the poop, explaining all the things to your team.

But poop-making and squawk-making, as it turns out, are an unavoidable condition of organizational leadership.

This week's Mode/Switch guest, Courtney Ellis, has spent years studying how birds, and the rest of the natural world, help us handle disruption not by achieving control but by practicing preparation, curiosity, adaptation, and resilience. Those four postures are central to her latest book, Weathering Change, and they shape the conversations of her podcast, The Thing With Feathers, about birds and hope.

Understandably, Gen Z cohost Madeline Witvliet asks in our intro, Why have a bird enthusiast on a work-culture podcast?

It’s a fair question. Courtney joins our intergenerational team to show how the natural world provides metaphors for improving trust at work, especially in seasons of disruptive change. (Her reference to starling flight patterns is worth the pod, btw.)

Courtney’s insights recall Lakoff and Johnson’s point about “the metaphors we live by.” Our metaphors aren’t just decorations for speech. They’re shapers of action.

For me, the surprising move in this episode is that birds suggest behaviors that are indispensable for leaders and their teams in the exhausting and changeful middle spaces of organizations.

For example, if you don’t know what a hummingbird’s torpor has to do with mid-level leadership, I encourage you to give this pod half an hour and find out!

This episode of the Mode/Switch builds on an ancient teaching, “Consider the birds of the air,” so you can cultivate team reliability.

Approximate Episode Timestamps

0:00 – 3:00 — Cold open: we introduce our intergenerational team, name this week’s topic (Changing Our Relation to Change Itself), and situate things in the context of exhausting organizational change.

3:00 – 24:00 — Main discussion with Courtney about what to do when changes mean, “The journey is too much for you.” We discuss why constant change makes us believe in a myth of control. We explore the limits and possibilities of adaptability, discussing change happening to vs. with us. Courtney shows how nature metaphors unify teams, support stasis, build equity, and cope with digital exhaustion.

24:00 – 27:00 — Mode/Switch: Courtney recommends a birding exercise you can do at work with your team.

27:00 – 33:00 — Roundtable wrap-up: LaShone talks about why “getting a grip” is so hard today. Emily waves a white flag at senior leaders. Madeline tells a story about starting her new role. Craig asks for prescriptions for leaders. We conclude with a book recommendation for leaders wanting to build trust in times of change.

What this episode will help you do in times of change:

1. Replace control with curiosity. Instead of trying to hold everything still, you’ll learn how to ask what’s actually going on for your team and for yourself.

2. Normalize rest and micro-recovery as equipment for living, not for indulgence. You’ll learn about the indispensability of torpor and stasis for pacing work well.

3. Build the trust that makes flexibility possible. We discuss concrete moves (floor visits, one-on-ones, self-disclosure about stress) that help you cultivate team trust.

4. Advocate upward and pace change deliberately. Courtney and the Mode/Switchers discuss tactics for middle managers to bring senior leadership into direct contact with affected teams in order to pace change better.