I’ve been working for almost 7 years and I have always had a hard time pinpointing exactly why I dislike traditional work so much. After help from my partner I’ve figured out one of the reasons. The 9-to-5 work schedule was originally created in the Industrial Revolution with physical laborers in mind. 8 hours being a cog in a factory gives you another 8 hours with your family (theoretically) and another 8 hours to sleep. Perfect!
The only problem is: It’s not 1760 and we’re still using this system even though the nature of work has drastically changed. White-collars workers are defined by someone that goes to an office and uses their brain primarily for work while blue-collar workers are more into manual labor. The human brain cannot work productively for 8 hours in a row. I read that in a scientific journal a while ago (that of course I can’t find now…), but regardless my brain cannot.
Further the modern workday is barraged with meetings and other distractions so it’s extremely difficult to have enough uninterrupted time to get anything difficult done. I believe seven years of working 50 or 60 hours a week have taken their toll on me. It’s not just the hours though. The nature of white-collar work (or at least mine) is that you literally can’t escape it because there is nothing to escape. There’s no factory to leave. I can’t leave my work at work.
My work is mental and I can’t turn it off. There’s a constant low-level stress associated with it. My brain is constantly trying to solve work problems, anticipate client needs, thinking of how to improve what I’m doing and planning for different scenarios and outcomes. I can’t turn it off. It seems like that’s not how my brain works. Constantly worrying what will go wrong next and trying to predict it and have a solution before it happens. I can’t remind my brain that it’s Saturday or Friday night – it keeps working. This might be part of why I’m good at my job, but it’s exhausting and makes me feel like I’m working even outside of work hours – even when I don’t want or mean to.
The extent that our world is a hyper-connected, 24 hour global economy doesn’t help matters. Rolling over at 4am to see my inbox has exploded and always being poised during work hours to respond instantly to a Skype, Slack etc instant messages doesn’t help matters. I’m always on alert. Each ping represents a new problem to solve (and not the fun kind…)
I don’t know if this is singular to me and to an extent my partner, but it’s helped me come to terms with the fact that I don’t feel like DOING a lot of things. I work or think about work 24/7 (even in my dreams…) and even though the people and clients I work with are nice people I still feel immense pressure (maybe more because I like and respect them…) to anticipate everything I can. I can’t turn it off. As a result I am REALLY tired like the kind of tired that might take months if not a year to fully recover from in retirement. And I need to be ok with that. I berate myself when I don’t feel like doing much of anything but reading in bed for hours when I should accept that this is a part of the process. Constant working and constant attempts at recovery. And that’s ok. I’m excited to escape this low-level stress.