How to battle work intensification

It’s not just you. Work has gotten harder over the past few decades. A CEO offers advice on how to make your job more manageable.

Excerpt:

"It’s not just you—work kind of stinks right now.

If you’re struggling to get something done because too many people were involved, getting hung up by emotion and conflict in your workplace, or just swaying under the weight of too many tasks in one day . . . congratulations! You’re experiencing work intensification—the gnarliest trend we don’t talk about enough.

Researchers in Europe have been looking at this phenomenon for many years. They pin it down to three things happening, often all at once.

First, workloads are simply too heavy—too many tasks in too little time. Every job has a version of this. You might be invited to too many meetings or asked to pack too many warehouse pallets in an hour.

Second, work is too interdependent—it takes too many people to get any given task done. When Jamie Dimon famously complained about a single decision needing 14 committees for approval, interdependence was the issue. 

Third, workplaces have become emotionally challenging. For example, since COVID-19, rudeness toward frontline workers has increased—and folks are feeling it.

To better understand how this issue was affecting workplaces, in April 2025 consulting firm Anthrome Insight partnered with Patrick Hyland, an organizational psychologist. We surveyed 1,000 workers ranging from entry-level employees to the C-Suite levels in five different industries. Our findings were striking.

A quarter of respondents always or often felt overwhelmed and half felt overwhelmed at least some of the time.

Over half (62%) were experiencing task overload.

Over a quarter were getting whacked by bureaucracy and a lack of priorities.

Almost a third were dealing with angry coworkers, bosses, and/or customers."