Self-care in 9–5 jobs

When you’re tired, you might get more done if you first take a nap than if you try to “power through” your work. You’ll also simply feel better. But does your job let you take a nap when you could use one?

As humans, we all have needs. We need sleep, food, exercise, mental stimulation, breaks from mental stimulation, and so on. And we experience these needs throughout the day.

But when we work fixed hours at a location away from home, it’s much harder to take care of these needs.

When you want to get stuff done, you might prefer to sit in a park, surrounded by trees. But you might be required to sit in a noisy open office instead.

9–5 office work can be terribly inflexible.

True: if you work from home, from a library, or from a coffee house, you’ll face some challenges too. You might find it difficult to motivate yourself to work when you could be doing something that’s more fun instead.

Then again, I’m not suggesting that we only work whenever we feel like it, on whatever we feel like doing.

But I am saying that most 9–5 jobs make it hard to take care of yourself. Does yours?

Yours,

— Peter

P.S. Maybe I should do a numbered series of “why 9–5 jobs are bad for you”. How many reasons do you think I could come up with? 😉