--- title: Brigid Schulte's Overwhelmed Reviewed by Lev Grossman description: A new book on being overwhelmed offers that advice and more to solve the problem of running out of time canonical: https://time.com/22983/be-more-danish/ author: Lev Grossman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-03-13T10:09:43.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T06:44:39.673Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Brigid Schulte's Overwhelmed Reviewed by Lev Grossman og:description: A new book on being overwhelmed offers that advice and more to solve the problem of running out of time og:url: https://time.com/22983/be-more-danish/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Brigid Schulte's Overwhelmed Reviewed by Lev Grossman twitter:description: A new book on being overwhelmed offers that advice and more to solve the problem of running out of time twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Be More Danish by [Lev Grossman](/author/lev-grossman/) ## Lev Grossman Mar 13, 2014 10:09 AM CUT by [Lev Grossman](/author/lev-grossman/) ## Lev Grossman Mar 13, 2014 10:09 AM CUT “This is how it feels to live my life: scattered, fragmented and exhausting. I am always doing more than one thing at a time and feel I never do any one particularly well. I am always behind and always late, with one more thing and one more thing and one more thing to do before rushing out the door.” Just reading the first chapter of _Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time_, by journalist Brigid Schulte, may be cathartic: as bad as it is–and God knows it’s not good–at least you’re not the only one. _Overwhelmed_ is Schulte’s attempt to not merely survive but also unpack and analyze the quintessentially modern and increasingly universal experience of feeling utterly unable to cope. Putting her own crowded life (two children, thriving career) on the slab for dissection, Schulte tries to figure out how we got here and how we can get out of it. She consults life coaches, neuroscientists, anthropologists and time analysts who pepper their conversation with evocative phrases like task density and contaminated time. (Schulte coins time confetti to describe how her days consist of meaningless multitasking snippets.) She’s a detective in a murder mystery: Who killed America’s leisure time, and how do we get it back? One possible answer: be more Danish. Mothers in Denmark average two hours more daily leisure time than their counterparts in the U.S. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/22983/be-more-danish/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/22983/be-more-danish/"},"headline":"Be More Danish","datePublished":"2014-03-13T10:09:43.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T06:44:39.673Z","description":"A new book on being overwhelmed offers that advice and more to solve the problem of running out of time","url":"https://time.com/22983/be-more-danish/","keywords":["Books","review"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Lev Grossman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/lev-grossman/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/22983/be-more-danish/","name":"Be More Danish"}}]}] ```