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How long does it take to read Overwhelmed?

Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time

Brigid Schulte

Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte takes about 6 hours 45 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 6 hours 45 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2014. 368 pages, about 101,200 words.

14 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 11 hours 15 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 6 hours 45 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 13 minutes

The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

"Can working parents in America--or anywhere--ever find true leisure time? According to the Leisure Studies Department at the University of Iowa, true leisure is "that place in which we realize our humanity." If that's true, argues Brigid Schulte, then we're doing dangerously little realizing of our humanity. In Overwhelmed, Schulte, a staff writer for The Washington Post, asks: Are our brains, our partners, our culture, and our bosses making it impossible for us to experience anything but "contaminated time"? Schulte first asked this question in a 2010 feature for The Washington Post Magazine: "How did researchers compile this statistic that said we were rolling in leisure--over four hours a day? Did any of us feel that we actually had downtime? Was there anything useful in their research--anything we could do?" Overwhelmed is a map of the stresses that have ripped our leisure to shreds, and a look at how to put the pieces back together. Schulte speaks to neuroscientists, sociologists, and hundreds of working parents to tease out the factors contributing to our collective sense of being overwhelmed, seeking insights, answers, and inspiration. She investigates progressive offices trying to invent a new kind of workplace; she travels across Europe to get a sense of how other countries accommodate working parents; she finds younger couples who claim to have figured out an ideal division of chores, childcare, and meaningful paid work. Overwhelmed is the story of what she found out"-- "This book asks whether working mothers in America -- or anywhere -- can ever find true leisure time. Or are our brains, our partners, our culture, our bosses, making it impossible for us to experience anything but "contained time," in which we are in frantic life management mode until we are sound asleep?"--

Subjects: Sociology, Eltern, Lebensqualität, Marriage & Family, Time management, Working mothers

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