People who work on a 9-to-5 schedule know how tiring it can be. Some even say that it sucks the joy out of life. But what to do when you have no choice but to work on that kind of schedule?
This TikToker brought her insight into what habits people should incorporate into their daily professional lives to make their schedules less daunting. Her video shows that while it's very hard to have a proper work-life balance, it doesn't mean it's impossible. It just requires quite a lot of mental work and boundary-setting.
More info: TikTok
TikTok user came to the rescue for those who feel that they cannot have any life beyond their 9-to-5 job by sharing some tips from her experience
Image credits: Kampus Production (not the actual photo)
"If you're working 40+ hours a week or working full-time, then in my opinion, there is no such thing as a work-life balance, it is so hard to manage"
"And for those of us who aren't doing content creation full-time and have the luxury of going off to pilates every day at 11 am, then we're going to need to stick to the nine-to-five grind a bit longer. And you're going to need some tips to keep you as sane as possible during the week."
Image credits: @ellsatthedisco
"Number one is delete Teams, Slack, and emails off of your personal phone"
"If you need to access them outside of working hours, then your company should have no problem in providing you a work phone to do so. You don't realize the damage you're doing to yourself when you're checking all of those as if they're social media apps. Like they're on the rotation of Insta, TikTok, Teams, Slack, emails.
Before you know it, your whole identity will be work. Whether you realize it or not, you'll be talking about work, thinking about work, you'll be dreaming about work. And I'm speaking from experience. I don't know about you, but I am not a CEO. And I don't have shares in my company. So, I have no business to be updated constantly or checking in on this project, and that project."
Image credits: @ellsatthedisco
"Number two is start on time and leave on time"
"Your work is going to be there tomorrow. And for the rest of the week. The time we have outside of work is minimal. So, it should be spent on you. You can't put a price on time. In my personal opinion, I would turn down overtime, so that I could have my own time at the end of the day to focus on me, whatever I needed."
Image credits: @ellsatthedisco
"Number three is make sure you're taking your lunch break away from your desk"
"Just because everyone's eating around you at their desks doesn't mean to say that you have to. I don't know about your lunch break, but mine is not paid for. So, I don't understand why we'd all feel the need to be chained to our desks when we're not even getting paid to be there for that hour. Try not to feel pressured either. If you've made a few mates at work, and they're all going to trot off and get a Leon, which costs about 13 quid nowadays, and they're all just going to sit around chatting about the work that they've done all morning and you feel like you can't be a part of that right now.
Then you don't have to do that. You can find a quiet spot, or if it's not s******* it down or snowing like it feels like it's going to London right now, then get out for a walk, listen to a podcast, reply to your mates, even, and/or scroll on TikTok, whatever you want to do. Just make sure that you've reset for the afternoon."
Image credits: @ellsatthedisco
Watch the video here
The video was posted by TikTok user @ellsatthedisco. They describe themselves as a “neurodivergent, over-sharing disco queen” in their account bio. Most of the creator’s videos are about working in the office, work-life balance, and other interesting societal aspects. The account has nearly 5K followers and over 200K likes.
@ellsatthedisco is definitely not the only one on the internet who has shared their wisdom about how to manage work-life balance when working 9 To 5. We looked through some of them.
Most advice is kind of the same as the TikTok creator gave. Some is not. For instance, some advise incorporating healthy habits like meditation in your life and ditching perfectionism. Others say we should be getting at least 150 minutes of exercise a week and planning everything ahead.
And while a 9-to-5 work day can surely be tiring to the extent that we need all these tips, we should be happy that we aren’t living in the late 19th century. Apparently, a lot of workers at that time usually were obliged to work 18 hours a day, 6 days a week. Of course, it all depended on the industry the person was working in, but a simple 8-hour work day was a very rare occurrence.
Image credits: RDNE Stock project (not the actual photo)
At the same time, some workers even opted to work as many hours as humanly possible. It was all due to low wages, which were not enough to live on if working only 8 hours a day. The minimum wage in, for example, the US was introduced only in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
And the 9-to-5 that we know so well was introduced by the father of British socialism, Robert Owen. He came up with the model, which split the 24 hours into the most productive blocks:
- 8 hours of work
- 8 hours of recreation
- 8 hours of sleep
Robert argued that this model is the best way to ensure a healthy lifestyle. We sure don’t feel like it is anymore, right? Well, times and opinions change. The best we can do now is probably try to incorporate tips we learned today into our lives. Or come up with a new model to split work hours.
Coming back to the video, let's see what people have to say in the comments. Well, most of them were preaching the creator's advice by saying how great it is. Some did not shy away from conveying advice that worked for them. Others shared what kind of work schedules they have in different countries than in the US. Or how haunted they feel by this kind of schedule.
Folks online adored the creator's advice and shared their own experiences
Image credits: AlphaTradeZone
