Just do it

liz

There’s a line I hear a lot when I talk to folks who’ve reached out to me because their working situation feels untenable and it is harming their mental health. They’ll say to me, “I have to find a way to work less.” It’s usually accompanied by a tone of resignation (ironically) that their current style of working is the only option available to them. They have a decidedly fixed mindset about how and when they work.

To be clear, in these instances I am talking to senior-level, privileged people with substantial financial resources who are not in the position of having to choose between work and food or shelter.

Here’s what I tell them. It’s not about finding a way to work less and they know that. They may be upset because they want to have their cake and eat it too.

If they can’t figure out how to stop working so much, it’s because they don’t really want to. If they wanted to, they’d say no. They’d delegate more, probably to someone who wouldn’t do it right (and by that I mean they wouldn’t do the work the same way, which isn’t necessarily wrong, but most of these folks feel a need to control things).

They know that they’d be giving up power, control, and the promise of more power and control in the future. Truthfully, they already know the answer. If they wanted to stop working the way they are, they’d stop.

The questions they must ask themselves are hard and personal. What are they so resistant to letting go of? What are they afraid of? What do they really want?

This process of internal inquisition requires rigorous honesty. In these instances, there is no external force making us work this way. It’s our choice and we have to name it and claim it before we can change it.

It is very hard. I know. I did it.

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Published by liz

From history major, with side quests in Medieval Studies and chemical engineering, to nonprofit finance leader, Big 4 tax partner, technologist, researcher, and now co-founder of Divine, nothing about my career has been linear. The throughline has always been systems: financial systems, organizational systems, technological systems, and human systems. I have an MBA in Operations and Supply Chain Management and a PhD in Organizational Leadership Psychology, and I’ve spent my career trying to understand how complex systems shape people’s choices, opportunities, wellbeing, and sense of belonging. Today, my work sits at the intersection of psychology, technology, human-centered design, and digital trust. I am co-founder of Divine, an open-source, decentralized social video app built to put creativity back in human hands and replace doomscrolling with joyscrolling. Divine is part of a bigger question I care deeply about: how do we create online spaces that support safety, creativity, identity, and belonging without defaulting to surveillance, extraction, or control? At Divine, I wear a lot of hats across engineering, finance, operations, and strategy, while helping shape the app’s trust, safety, and values work. I focus especially on teen online safety, human-generated content, participatory design, and healthier relationships with technology. I am a postdoctoral alum of Vanderbilt University’s Department of Computer Science, where I worked with Dr. Pam Wisniewski’s Socio-Technical Interaction Research Lab. I continue to write, speak, and research at the intersection of online safety, digital trust, decentralized technology, and youth wellbeing. I was named a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Data Integrity in 2023. In 2025, I had the honor of serving as President of Division 13 of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Consulting Psychology. I also live with major depressive disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 2020, I took a leave from PwC to focus on my mental wellness, and I now speak and write openly about mental health, especially in the workplace and in relation to digital wellbeing. This blog, Seriously Jerk Brain, chronicles much of that journey.

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