Fitting Work into your Life

Life can be arduous at times. Especially when we exceed limits with our jobs followed by seemingly endless domestic chores. When does a person find time and energy to recuperate from the effects of one’s daily occupation?

We know work can be taxing in two ways: 
Time Pressure – The perception one has of uncompleted tasks and that time is running out to accomplish those responsibilities.
Emotional Labor – The management of one's emotions in order to present oneself and interact with other people in a certain way while doing a job. An example of emotional labor may be working daily with customers and coworkers, while making a good effort to appear cheerful and friendly, can be especially draining when one is under time pressure on tasks.

Creating a temporary distance from the experience of work stress may help. Generating intentional detachment from a job can serve as a safeguard against fatigue. A few examples of boundary setting could be adjusting your phone for "bedtime" to avoid emails, calls and texts while you are resting. Or
just reminding yourself that your employer pays for your ‘time’ and headspace not just productivity. Work recovery is a term that means using downtime to prevent burnout. Take greater control over your life by incorporating these recuperative strategies to carve out stress recovery time in your personal schedule.

To evaluate your current state of balance,
reflect on the following three questions: 
1) How much spare time do I have for leisure?
2) How much energy do I have for recreation?
3) Do I want to continue to live this way?

The antidote to work stress is to deliberately create time off for: 
Relaxation - in each person's meaningfully specific way. Such as nature walking, meditation or reading a good book. Fun activities can temporarily aid in ‘letting go’ of concerns with distraction from one’s accountabilities.

Mastery - striving to improve a new ability, such as artistic painting, a sport like golf or pickleball, gourmet cooking or cards/board games (non-electronic). Increasing one’s skill in an enjoyable novel activity can slow down the perception of time providing a diversion from work concerns. Upping one’s ‘play proficiency’ allows for a mental vacation from the stress of managing the gravity of life.

People need more than the weekend to engage in relaxation and mastery. The Sunday scaries are the nervousness many people endure in awaiting a return to the office. This form of anticipatory anxiety relates to the impression of a return to the workplace as being ‘involuntary.’ The perceived loss of control is in sacrificing one’s life as though others are in charge of it. Suggestions to avoid work fatigue, such as having the time for relaxation and mastery tasks, can manage the sense of dread in returning to work n Mondays. 

Suggestions to manage the apprehension of a return to the office:
1.Taking care of unfinished business so it is not looming on Monday morning.
2. Planning fun activities to which to look forward during the work week.
3. Journaling to express and release work worries that plague one’s Sundays.

What about decreasing our work hours? The four-day work week or a hybrid environment may mitigate Monday morning apprehension by shortening work time. According to an article by MITSloan, the pandemic experience has altered work life and advanced us towards more flexible work plans. This growing idea allows employees to work four days without pay reduction leaving a three-day weekend. The four-day week concept has been studied since the 70’s. But recently a New Zealand trust management company experimented with this idea making global headlines. They announced a 20% gain in employee productivity and a 45% increase in work-life balance after a trial four days of work for regular pay.

The UK’s Trade Union Congress (TUC) supports trade unions to grow and assists their members to keep pace with the changing world of work. TUC asserts that a four-day working week will be possible this century if businesses share new technology with their workforce. Today, positive change such as a shorter work schedule, means a future of more flexible work situations that are more purpose driven and oriented toward wellbeing than has ever been imagined.