[Greatest Hits] Work Is Eating You Alive. Bree Groff Has a Prescription.

A Subtraction Session is a real conversation. We discuss subtraction at work in someone else’s life and ideas, not only mine (or yours). This August, I’m bringing the best ones back while I get ready for TEDxSanDiego (live Aug 27).

My conversation with Bree Groff is one I still think about (and hear from you about) on the reg. Worth a rewatch, or a first watch!

Bree Groff — author of Today Was Fun and the Substack What Work Should Be — and I showed up on Substack live together a few months ago. I had a notion I’d love Bree when I saw the cover of her book, and confirmed it when I heard her on The Good Life Project.

Then, we talked and she confessed that the (a?) primary satisfaction of writing the book had been meeting great new people. At which point, I deemed our love and appreciation mutual.

Anyhow, in that spirit, tune into our conversation. It was fun! We also managed to talk about UTIs, not in a TMI kind of way, just honest.

If you need any more enticement to watch our conversation, know that it’s not all laughs. Bree came to this book through grief.

In 2022, with her mom facing a terminal diagnosis and her father already living with Alzheimer’s, she found herself in a cancer center, looking around at a room that existed entirely to protect human days — and got a text from a friend saying they couldn’t wait for it to be Friday.

“We are really getting it wrong,” she thought.

That clarity became a book. One that I strongly encourage you to read, if you plan to work even one more day in your life, or care about someone who does.

We covered a lot of ground: the performance tax you’re paying at work, what it actually costs your body to skip lunch and hold your bladder through back-to-backs (yup, here’s where I had to mention UTIs), and how “being palatable” is draining energy that belongs to you.

But the part I keep coming back to is this: Bree’s not inciting a workplace revolution. She’s asking for 10%.

“Try and be 10% more comfortable in your own skin,” she said. “Usually nothing bad happens.”

The entry point? Socks. Specifically, colorful, themed, or otherwise meaningful ones that subtly signal to everyone around you: you could let a little more of yourself out too.

It’s subtractive logic at its best. Stop performing. Drop the candy coating. Roll into a culture that actually has room for humans.

“The fastest way to have a better day,” Bree said at the end, “is to make someone else’s day.”

Go watch the full conversation. And get the book — at least one copy!