Melissa Nicholson Intro

MELISSA NICHOLSON: Burnout doesn’t just hurt us—it devastates our families, our communities, our organizations. And the traditional solutions aren’t working. This is where job sharing completely flips the script.

Introduction

INTRO: Welcome to Job Share Revolution. The show about job sharing—a partnership between two people to bring two minds and skill sets to one full-time position. I’m Melissa Nicholson, former job sharer turned founder of the first U.S. job share company. But it wasn’t long ago that I felt like an utter failure at work and as a new parent. Job sharing was my game-changer. I reclaimed four days a week to fully engage in my life while my capable partner handled everything. Together, we achieved more than I ever could solo. Fast forward to many lessons learned to bring you the training and support I wish I’d had to change lives and the modern-day workplace. Let’s live life and slay work.

Melissa Nicholson

MELISSA: I’ve got  a question for you: How are you feeling as we head into this July 4th weekend? 

My guess? You’re craving this three-day weekend like water after a long drought, friend. Maybe you’re already planning time outside with people you love, good food, lots of nature, and—please tell me you are planning this—actually unplugging from work.

And if you’re one of the lucky ones taking Monday off too, I want you to really lean into that four-day break. Soak it in, friend. Notice how your shoulders drop when you realize you don’t have to check email. Pay attention to how it feels to be fully present with your family without that mental ticker tape of work tasks running in the background.

Here’s why I’m asking you to notice all of this: That sense of spaciousness, of rest, of being fully present in your life—that’s what job sharing feels like every single week. Not once a year, not when you finally use your vacation days, but built into your regular work-life rhythm.

If you’re new here, welcome. I’m Melissa Nicholson, founder of Work Muse and your guide on Jobshare Revolution. I job shared for nearly a decade in the crazy insande radio industry in  corporate media, starting when my daughter was six months old. It transformed my life, and now I help others create their own job shares.

Today, we’re talking about one of the biggest benefits of job sharing—how it eliminates overwork and burnout. And I mean really eliminates it, not just manages it or reduces it.

Part 1: The Cost of Overwork

MELISSA: Let’s start with some hard truths: We live in a culture that has romanticized overwork as dedication. The U.S. has built an entire economic system around the idea that more hours equals more value, that being constantly available shows commitment, that rest is something you earn rather than something you need. Or something that you deserve just by the very fact that you are a human being in this world, friend. 

But the research is crystal clear: Overwork is literally killing us.

The World Health Organization found that working 55+ hours per week increases your risk of stroke by 35% and heart disease by 17%. The American Psychological Association reports that chronic workplace stress contributes to 120,000 deaths per year in the U.S. alone.

And our Surgeon General’s 2022 report on workplace mental health warns that working parents—especially mothers—are at highest risk for burnout, anxiety, and depression.

According to Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report, 59% of employees report feeling burned out either very often or always. How depressing is that? I find that shocking but not surprising. That’s not just tired after a long day—that’s chronic workplace stress that hasn’t been successfully managed, resulting in exhaustion, cynicism, and feeling like nothing that you do matters.

You remember that languishing feeling during the pandemic. But it’s even more than that. And we have the PTSD effects of all of that. But it’s even more than that. 

As someone who coaches working parents every day, I can tell you these statistics have faces. They’re the clients who cry in our strategy sessions because they haven’t had a full weekend in months. They’re the moms who feel guilty for missing their kids’ bedtime again. They’re the professionals who used to love their work but now dread Sunday evenings. I mean, I feel like the Sunday Scaries has just become a meme on crack, right? 

Burnout doesn’t just hurt us—it devastates our families, our communities, our organizations. And the traditional solutions aren’t working.

Part 2: How Job Sharing Stops Burnout Before It Starts

This is where job sharing completely flips the script. Instead of trying to manage burnout after the fact, after it happens, job sharing prevents it from ever taking root. Here is how:

1. You Actually Leave Work at Work

MELISSA: In a traditional job share, you work three days a week and your partner works three, with one full day of overlap. During your four consecutive days off, you are truly off. Not working-from-home off, not checking-email-just-in-case off. Actually off.

In fact, if you were to check in on work on your days off, it would undermine your job share partner, so you truly, are actually off. Completely unplugged.

Your partner is holding the baton. They’re handling the urgent emails that usually aren’t that urgent, they’re managing the crisis that would normally pull you back in, and trust me, if it’s a big crisis and they need your input, they will come to you. But it happens so rarely.  They’re  moving projects forward. When you return on Monday, the work hasn’t stopped—it’s been actively managed by someone who’s just as invested in the results as you are.

I know this feels impossible, especially if you have internalized the idea that your responsiveness equals your value. When I first started job sharing, I was convinced everything would fall apart if I wasn’t constantly available. But you know what happened? Nothing fell apart. Nothing fell apart. In fact, things often improved because my partner brought fresh eyes and energy to challenges I’d been spinning on.

2. You Perform Better Because You Are Actually Rested

MELISSA: Here’s something nobody talks about: Job sharing makes you better at your job. When you have four days to fully recharge every week, you show up to your three work days with energy, creativity, and focus that you simply can’t maintain when you are running on empty.

Nobody, I’m not kidding here, nobody could operate as a job share does in those three days five days a week. They couldn’t have that focused, hyper effective, condensed kind of energy five full days. You just couldn’t maintain it. 

Plus, you’re bringing two minds, two skill sets, and two sets of lived experiences to one full-time role. My job share partners and I, we could tackle complex projects and navigate challenging, I mean really challenging stakeholder relationships in ways I never could have managed alone. 

I mean, sometimes you’ve go these two personalities and they just ping pong so well together when you’re dealing with a client or when you’re dealing with a situation. Somebody comes in with an idea or a way to handle a situation that is just perfect, and they just take it to that extra little level. 

Research backs this up: Teams with job share arrangements consistently outperform individual contributors in similar roles. They’re 30% more productive than people who work in full-time positions. We’re not just maintaining the status quo—we’re raising the bar. Big time.

3. Your Boundaries Actually Get Respected

MELISSA: In our always-on culture, boundaries are hard to establish and even harder to maintain. But job sharing structures those boundaries automatically. It organically happens due to the structure.  Your colleagues quickly learn that you’re only available on your work days. Your partner expects you to be off when you’re off—and will actually call you out if you are trying to work during your downtime. Like I said, it actually undermines their work if you’re doing that. 

Okay, so, confession time: I remember early in my first job share, the first week that we started,  I tried to answer emails on my off days because I was worried about looking uncommitted. My partner literally called me and said, “What are you doing? This is my day. I’ve got this handled. Go be with Iris, go be with your baby.”

That’s accountability. And it’s priceless.

Can you imagine if you just had someone who was just calling you and saying, “Get off of email. Stop working. I’ve got your back.”? That’s what it’s like.

4. You Can Actually Take Vacation

MELISSA: Here’s a shocking statistic: 55% of Americans don’t use all their vacation days. Americans don’t take vacation, they don’t use their vacation days. We’re so afraid of falling behind, of the email mountain waiting for us, of being seen as dispensable…we don’t take our vacation.

But job sharers? They get creative with time off in ways that benefit everyone. One of my favorite strategies I discovered very early on was flipping our schedules when one of us took vacation. If I normally worked Monday through Wednesday and took a week off, my partner would work my Monday through Wednesday that week instead of their usual Wednesday through Friday. We would flip the week.

The result? I got 13 consecutive days off—in a row—using duh, duh, duh, duhhhh…Bing bing bing. I need some kind of a sound effect here. Drumroll… only three vacation days. And guess what? Our employer only lost a team member for two days instead of five. I got a 13-day vacation using only 3 vacation days, my partner got a six-day weekend without using any PTO, and our employer only lost a team member for two days instead of five. Everyone wins. Everybody wins! Can you even imagine that? You could literally take 13 days off work, use three vacation days, and someone’s butt is not in the seat only two days out of that thirteen days off? That’s incredible. I mean, seriously. 

We never ran out of vacation because we used this amazing strategy over and over and over again. I’m so glad I discovered it in my very first job share. You know, I had four partners, but we literally had a hard time running out our paid time off. So, a lot of times it came down to the last quarter of the year, and we each would take one day off, one day every other week. So it didn’t affect anybody, but we still got our vacation. Amazing, right?! 

5. You Have Time for Actual Self-Care

MELISSA: Job sharing gives you the breathing room to care for your mental and physical health. Need therapy? No biggie. You can schedule it on your off days without using vacation time. Want to exercise regularly? You know, want to get off that baby weight? You have four days a week to make it happen. Need to process the stress of a difficult work situation? Gah…you get to leave. You have space to do that instead of just soldiering through. I mean, you work it out with your partner and you let it go, right?

This isn’t just about bubble baths and yoga—but if that’s your thing, go for it. I mean, I love a good bubble bath, but this is about having the time and the mental space to address your needs before they become a crisis. And you know what happens when something becomes a crisis in your life? It affects everybody in your realm, everybody who depends on you. Job sharers don’t have that because they have the time they need for actual, real self-care. 

Part 3: Why The Structure Matters

MELISSA: The genius of job sharing isn’t just in the reduced hours—it’s in the structure itself. The handoffs, the shared accountability, the built-in support system—all of this means you are never carrying the full weight alone.

When I think about the decade I spent job sharing versus the years I worked traditional full-time roles, the difference is stark. In traditional roles, I was constantly juggling competing priorities, always feeling behind, never fully present anywhere. In my job shares, I could be fully engaged during my work days and fully present during my personal time. 

And when life threw curveballs—because it always does, friend, it always does at the least convenient moment—I had someone ready to step in. They weren’t just ready. Like, they were enthusiastic to do it. When my father-in-law had a medical emergency, when a family member needed me for something important, when I was just having a really rough week, my partner was there. Always. Always, always, always. 

No guilt, no scrambling, no dropping balls. That’s not just flexibility—that’s revolution.

Part 4: What This Means To You

MELISSA: So, as you lean into this holiday weekend, I want you to really notice how it feels. The lightness when you close your laptop on Thursday. The deepening relaxation as Friday and Saturday, and Sunday unfold. And Monday, if you’ve got that off. The joy of being fully present with people you love.

Now imagine having that time every week. Not as a rare treat, but as a regular rhythm. That’s job sharing. That’s job sharing! 

If you’re listening and thinking, “But Mel, that sounds too good to be true, I don’t buy it,” I get it. We’ve been conditioned to believe that success requires sacrifice, that flexibility means less impact, that rest is earned through exhaustion.

But what if that’s not true? What if there’s a way to be incredibly successful while also being incredibly present in your life? What if you could eliminate burnout not by working harder to manage it, but by working smarter to prevent it?

Closing

MELISSA: If you want that kind of life—if you’re tired of running on empty, if you’re ready to just stop glorifying overwork, if you want to eliminate burnout instead of just managing it—then job sharing might be your answer, friend.

DM me on LinkedIn or send me a voice memo through the podcast app.  Join our Job Share, Live Life + Slay Work Facebook Community. Let’s talk about what this could look like for you. And if you know someone who’s quietly burning out, someone who needs to hear that there’s another way, another way to work, send them this episode. It might be exactly what they need to hear right now.

 

Remember, we’re on our gentle summer biweekly schedule, honoring the natural rhythms of life and work. So until the week after next, see you here—same time, same place.

If it’s time to start creating your plan to eliminate overwork and burnout, remember: it’s all in you. But you don’t have to figure it out alone. Take care of you, friend. If you don’t do it, nobody else will. And for Pete’s sake, grab our free guide to get started with job sharing. workmuse.com/guide. I’ll put a link in the show notes. 

Bye for now.