Stress
is shrinking your brain. If you’re living in the parts of the West, especially America, culture
and policy that glorify work achievement and idealize the nuclear family result
in a lot of time stress. There is hope. Brigid
Schulte explores the problem and the hope for something better in Overwhelmed.
Time stress especially falls hard on women. Schulte
researches this issue in some detail. I’ll admit that I skimmed some of this
part—I’m a man and I have no children. Even so, I think it is a worthy topic.
Men and women both need more sanity and space in their lives, and it is clear
to me that women suffer more from “contaminated” time.
The idea of contaminated time caught my attention. This is time, usually
intended for leisure,
when we are thinking of other things that need to be done, usually some kind of
work.
Leisure is not just about having time to not work, it is about how you feel. If
you’re distracted or stressed out by worrying about work, you’re not really
experiencing leisure.
Schulte takes a broad approach to her subject. In part she explores
American child care policy,
even interviewing Pat Buchanan
on his role in shaping it. She visits The
Netherlands to see how they approach work, family and play. She talks to
experts in psychology
and leisure along the way.
I’ll admit I came to the book looking for answers for my own sense of
being overwhelmed. The tough answer is that culture and policy change slowly,
so the stressors are not going away anytime soon (though Schulte’s book
suggests cultural and policy changes that might help). In the meantime, you can
make choices about how you live, work and think about things. Here are some
tips I gleaned from the book that might help with those choices.
-Realize that life is short.
-Decide what you want. Make it a top priority.
-You cannot make time. You can only choose how to use the time you
have.
-Believe that you can make your life better.
-Be grateful.
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