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Staying Healthy When Working 12 Hours a Day?
dwija asks: "I just got a new job where I just sit in one place all day and work for 12 hours at a stretch. This goes on for 4 days a week and I get 3 days off. The journey to and from my office takes up about 3 hours of my day. I am a little worried now cause i am becoming really weak and I am not as healthy as I used to be. I want to ask others on Slashdot about the kinds of weird times in which they work and what they do to take care of their health and stress."
Quit and find a new job, because if your current job is taking your health, you're actually working 168 hours a week.
And I bet your hourly pay sucks.
And it could be worse than that... if it takes years off your life, you could be "working" more than 168 hours a week.... arbitrarily more.
What you are doing is something that you are simply not designed to do. Some people may be able to do it, neither you nor I are one of them. Stop it, or pay the penalty, collected by Reality, the least lenient loan shark of them all.
Don't do the job. To sit for 15 hours a day straight isn't healthy, and no amount of isometrics or other exercise will help.
Maybe you can talk to your employer and see if you can work out a compromise. Work is like a rubber ball, if you drop it it'll always bounce back. Your health is like a glass ball, drop it too many times and it'll crack or shatter.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
I started having serious health problems - overweight, incipient type 2 diabeties, high blood pressure etc. all pointing to early CV problems.
The solution was to find a job closer to home and spend no more than 45 hours a day at work. The rest, diet, exercise, etc. became easy after I got away from the pressure cooker.
I'm working 7-days a week, 14 hours a day doing IT for the world's largest rodeo in Houston. Like you, I drive approximately 3 hours a day to and from work.
Even though both caffeine and carbs provide a short-term energy boost, I find that avoiding them completely makes me much more alert and energetic overall. The crash when the caffeine or insulin levels swing knocks me out cold.
Unlike you, my job has me running all day long, so I don't usually run into trouble until the drive home. If I've kept an even blood-sugar all day, I'm usually just fine. On days when I've had to grab a burger (or worse) for lunch, I sometimes have to stop on the side of the road and catch a short nap to stay safe. Sleeping on the side of the road, even in a well-lit rest stop, is a health risk in it's own right...
If you want to stick it out, though, I'd say keys are:
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I had a job trading currency and derivitives for almost five years. It involved sitting in an office chair for 14 hours a day, five and a half days a week. If you get the right kind of chair it isn't too bad. There is a payoff point at which you make enough money while working to make it up to yourself when you are not working. For me, the birth of my son was an incentive to find ways to be home more, working less.
Find something easier, lest you burn out and become useless. If you feel you are doing the work of two people, it's because your company is too greedy and short sighted to hire someone else. Once they ruin you, they'll just hire some naive college graduate and ruin them too.
How about you or someone else reveal the company name as 'anonymous coward' if need be, to save the souls of others, who should not be harmed needlessly.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Be sure to get out on your days off. Don't think that three days of no work equals a three day weekend where you can game for 24+ hours at a time. Take advantage of the extended time off that most of us, with jobs, dream about and go places, do stuff, and be active!
You've got to eat healty, cut out the chips & cookies and soda.
Also, you can't be working 12 hours straight, because if you don't get up to walk around for a minute every ~45 minutes, you'll go blind. Anyone who tells you otherwise is begging for a visit from OSHA.
[o]_O
There's nothing that justifies the fact you'll give away your health for money.
Move to another city, state or country. Don't put yourself any artificial constraint. There are lots of places on earth where you'll get a decent life. Move.
3 hours by car is frequently more by bicycle. However it would probably help his fitness.
Also, exercise like a bastard on your days off.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Mail order for $800.00 from Concept II
Rowing is low-impact, aerobic, and you can start
as slowly as you like. 30 mins a day while you
listen to the radio, watch TV, or just ponder your
latest bug.
The unit I mentioned above is suitable for
beginners through elite athletes.
Definite nerd appeal with a USB connection and
a wireless heart monitor. Lots of builtin
stats and uses a plug-in memory card.
Regenerative power means a D-cell lasts years.
I'm on my 2nd rowing machine (the first was
a competitor but it did last a dozen years
and thousands of kms). I'm about to hit 1000
km on this one.
No other $800 piece of exercise equipment will
dissipate enough energy (without self-destructing)
to give you a decent workout. You'd have to
drop more than $3K to get a treadmill anywhere
neare as durable. And getting on your feet to
walk/run requires a lot more motivation than
sitting down on the rower.
The two biggest things to remember are:
- Take breaks
- Get Excercise
I keep a copy of xwrits running on my workstation.When it goes off, I go run up and down an eight story staircase a couple of times before going back to work.
It's worked out pretty well for me over the years.
It sounds like you have a pseudo permacrunch schedule. I'd look into the things that people do to deal with harsh crunch times. Such as...
Use any excuse to get up and walk around. Walk around the office to talk to people F2F instead of IMing them. Walk to the bathroom. Walk up any stairs that may be around. Any excuse to move is a good one. Offer to help new people move their desks, etc.
If practical, bike to work. If necessary, park a few blocks away and bike in. I can't emphasize physical activity enough.
Assume that during those 4 days, you do nothing but work. Get enough sleep, take the time to cook all of your meals, and work. That's all you have time to do, really, before you have to start eating fast food and being sleep deprived. Any movies will have to wait for the weekend.
On your days off, exercise a lot. Devote one of your days to Dance Dance Revolution, Rock Climbing, Frisbee golf, swimming with your kids, or whatever, but you have to require yourself to spend the day being active, preferably outside, preferably with the people you care about.
Get sunlight. This can be the hardest thing if you work in the middle of an office building, come in before the sun comes up and leave after it goes down, but adequate lighting has a tremendous influence over mood. Add more lights to your desk and work area, and take your lunches outside under the sun. Open all of your curtains at work and at home.
Take up different projects or responsibilities at work. If you work on the install routine for banking software, help the office setup an intramural softball league. If you are engineering a new print head for a new type of hybrid lazer / inkjet printer, help the marketing people write promo material. This will help stave off burnout, and let you go through the necessary periods of dicking off without guilt. Studies have shown that a workforce produces the most in total if it is offtask "wasting time" for roughly 10% of their worktime. If you're working 12 hours a day, that's about an hour and fifteen minutes. And because you're working extra long, you will need extra time off of your primary task.
Move closer to work. If you can't do that, talk to your boss about telecommuting 2 days of the week. Invest some time getting to know the roadways between your home and work really well, and risk a few speeding tickets. I managed to shave 2-hours off of a 4-hour commute just by learning which highways and roadways were abandoned when, and which stretches the cops wouldn't bat an eye about speeding until you were over 150. I also avoided 6 dollars in tolls.
Find things to do in the car. Create a life diary on tape for future generations. Get lots of audio books from your local library. Carpool with interesting people. Learn to speak a foriegn language. The more intellectually engaged you can be in the car, the less the footprint of such a long commute will be.
Good luck!
The ______ Agenda
You at least have at least 3 non-work days. Although it's probably better for you to exercise every other day, my med school teacher said that exercising three days straight is better than no exercise during the week at all. So find the discipline to do that.
Secondly, find out how to commute smarter. Those 3 hours involve only you behind the wheel, then it's going to take a toll on you -- mentally and physically. Be creative on how to commute. For example, in the DC metro area, there's a growing phenomenon called slug lines, which are "unofficial meeting places where commuters catch free rides with drivers who need additonal riders to use high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes." If you don't have to drive, you can at least use that time for personal enrichment, like reading the paper, book, or listening to music or audiobooks, or you can do some work if you have a laptop, etc. That's 3 hours that you can have to yourself. If you buy an Archos AV340 and have a ReplayTV (or a networked TiVo) at home, you can even catch up on your favorite shows during the commute -- it makes the workday more bearable.
Linux at home
I used to work at a death march job. 60 hour work weeks. Lousy environment. Lots of stress. No appreciation. I was miserable and my health was probably not what it could have been. Within a few months of quiting, I felt great. Apparently I also looked a lot better because everyone I ran into kept asking questions like... Have you lost weight? You been going to the gym? Of course I hadn't been anywhere near a gym and I weighed the same as the day I quit, but leaving that horrible place made a huge difference that was visible to everyone around me.
If you're unhappy or unhealthy, and if you can't make it so you are happy and healthy (by juggling schedules or whatever), then quit. Life's too short.
I just got a new job where I just sit in one place all day and work for 12 hours at a stretch. This goes on for 4 days a week and I get 3 days off. The journey to and from my office takes up about 3 hours of my day.
You don't have to sit for 12 hours at a stretch. You work for four and then go and walk for twenty minutes. That's an hour of exercise per day. If your employer won't allow it, talk to HR and make it clear that your health is being threatened by the current working conditions. If they fire you, get a good attorney and then take a couple years off on the money that you win.
It might seem bad enough to you, but sometimes stuff like this makes you wake up and realize that you might be encountering the same issues..
What people say on the internet is very useful, even if it's taken with a grain of salt, and that's how I realized i had asthma. I thought I was just out of shape, just wheezing and feeling like I was going to pass out for like a year, until one day when I was bored... I made my way to medline, webmd and some forums to see if it was anything in particular. It soon dawned on me that I wasn't really out of shape but more along the lines of something I really didn't even think of. So I went to my doctor, and now I'm happily puffing away at my inhaler and gaining weight because of the advair. If I didn't do that, i wouldn't have known until I was in serious trouble, or decided to ask my doctor about it (which would be after being in serious trouble).
It's not being lazy so much as it is asking for advice from people I suppose he/she can relate to.
During the 3 days you have off. Or only go 2, or even 1 time a week. You will be surprised what kind of difference this will make in your general constituion over time. You will notice things like better mood, better digestion, better sleep and more strength and endurance.
Now, before you give the standard nerd excuses like "I'm not a gym guy" or "I don't want to get all big like those guys" let me tell you that there are a lot of other things you can do there besides lifting weights. There are tons of classes, swimming, sometimes there's a heavy bag to hit, etc. I do lift, personally and recommend lifting over those other things, but that's my preference. As long as you exert some energy and leave there at least a little beat, you are doing a good thing.
ft
Why can't you move closer? I can't imagine you have any commitments at home for the 6 hours you're there, other than sleep. At the least you could rent a place to sleep near work. If you're putting yourself through all this you must be making good money. Spend some of it.
Have you seen the project "Workrave". It encourages you to take a break, and gives you exercises so that you don't get too stiff.
If the answer is war, you are asking the wrong question
Prepare lunch for the next day before you go to sleep. Put in in the fridge.
Jog for 5 minues at soon as you get up and before your shower. Even if it's just around the block. Wake. Throw on shorts (or sweats if it's cold), some old socks (why dirty a new pair?), and a sweater. Go outside and run around the block or down to the corner and back. Then shower and have a good healthy (it can be quick!) breakfast. Bring the CD-R you prepared the night before with an automatic script full of the latest podcasts, TTS news, or random selection from your audio collection - hop in the car and drive. Pick up a friend, coworker, or slug on the way if you can.
Go for a jog around the building when you get to work (after your drive) and before you leave. It can be quick. They'll laugh but you're not the one with the weak legs for weekend activities!
Make good use of your lunch break. Have a sandwich while climbing the stairs to the top of your building.
Promise yourself 20 crunches and 50 pushups before the day is over (how long does it take to do 10 pushups and don't tell me you can't take 5 short breaks over 12 hours...). Set a timer.
Find some pipes in the utility closet and do 5 pullups a day for 2 months. Each month after add 2 more. Do these on a piss break.
Eat Fruit. No heavy lunches. Bring yogurt (if you're into that kind of thing - cold plain vanilla w/ sugar sprinkled on top - delish!) Eat nuts (yes - something _other_ than peanuts).
Do at least an hour or two of non-staring_at_the_computer_screen work if you can help it. Plan. Use a notepad and pencil. Make calls. Write a letter to your congressman or old friend or mother or grandparent or serviceman.
10 jumping jacks every 71 minutes. Set a timer.
Go see Jane or Mark on the other side of the building to say hi - find an excuse. Take a walk to the next building or volunteer to take things to the post box. Be back in a timely fashion.
Keep a bottle of water nearby, fill it religiously and get yourself lots of piss breaks. WATER IS GOOD FOR YOU. PASS IT THROUGH. EXERCISE THOSE NEPHRONS. Get a Brita (a BIG one) for your desk or buy those large 2 1/2 gallon jugs at the supermarket. (Spring over distilled - you lose the minerals with distilled). Water will keep you from feelingl like crap from sitting there all day, force you to get up, and keep you hydrated for all the running and stair-climing you're doing. Water is your body's oil. ESPECIALLY if you drink coffee - drink lots of water. Keep ahead of the diuretic effects. See if you can down a quart and a half of plain water three times a day (sure. go it all at once -- no pussy footin' around. Chug it!)
Take your vitamins.
Find some guys to play pickup basketball or ultimate.
Ask your boss about taking an hour to go to the gym. Give him a guilt trip about your health. Or go at lunch after eating at your desk @ 11a and having an apple and nuts when you get back. You'll probably be more productive if you actually have a chance to get up and be active.
Find a stretch regimen and commit to doing it twice a day.
Park your car not at home but down the street next to a well-lit bike rack. Ride there, drive to work. Drive back, ride home.
Have lots of sex on your 3 days off!
I work in finance where probably everyone in the industry knows full well that top bankers get paid in the 7 figures. This compensation is partly because there aren't many bankers who continue to maintain the lifestyle required to be a top performing banker for very many years. A similar case would be oil field workers (who work long hours with few prequisites other than the capacity to work very hard for a lot of hours in good oil years) but humans cannot work 40 years in these fields. The smart ones save enough to retire young or fund a different career, the dumb ones blow the cash on drugs, sex, and fun and while they have some really cool stories are completely burned out at around 40. If you are not saving enough in your current job to successfully transition into something else in 10-20 years leave now.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
You work 12 hours and spend 3 hours on the commute. That's 15 hours. I assume you don't eat breakfast or dinner at work, but you may. But let's say you don't. That leaves 7 hours.
Assume you need abouyt 6-8 hours of sleep a day. Boy, I'm surprised you lasted this long.
You'd better sit down with your boss and have a heart-to-heart. This is going to kill you. You can't do this. Either you have to get a raise so you can move closer to work, or you have to cut back on the hours to a more reasonable 8. Humans aren't machines. We need far more care and uptake and downtime to remain in peak condition.
Boeing did some interesting studies during WWII on maximizing productivity. Guess what they found? 8 hours a day for 5 days a week is the optimal number. That's why throughout the 50s and 60s the jobs were all 9-5. You get more done than 8/6 or 9/5, or what ever you are doing (12/4?) Even firefighters spend a great deal of time sitting around and relaxing and doing non-work things.
Seriously dude. You need to take care of yourself. There's only one of you and if you screw up your body, you don't get a replacement. You die.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
This does not mean that I do not get exhausted at times. I'll take the odd two or even three day weekend if I need to recharge -- on my schedule. I can come in at 10 or 11 or later or whenever I like, for the most part (unless I have an important meeting scheduled) -- my hours are flexible, so if I happen to sleep in an extra hour or 90 minutes, it's no disaster. Yeah, there are the times when I work until 2-3 A.M., or even all night (about 3-4 times a year), and a regular 8 hour day after that.
My commute is better than yours though: only 45 minutes one way.
The thing is that I have control over when I work those hours and that makes all the difference in the word. 4x12 hours a week on the clock would probably be far worse.
What do I do to relax? I take quick frequent breaks at the office, sometimes 5 minutes every 15 to 30. While I'll often be oblivious to the fact that the lunch and dinner hour have passed, I'll go and eat when I feel hungry, regardless of the time (it's rarely noon and 6:00 PM).
Now, I'm not given that much work -- I take it on: trying my best to accomodate feature requests from those that use the software I produce (mostly test automation support tools these days) request (particularly when they are useful to a wider audience), even if they arrive, well, "informally".
I'm an asshole if you get on my bad side, but will bend over backwards to help anyone who's willing to contribute at least half the work. I must be doing something right if the number of "Rene went above and beyond the call of duty to help me" emails my boss (and his) gets are any indication: it's starting to get embarassing. My "self-assessment" on annual reviews is usually far harsher than my boss's -- I don't give a shit if I "exceeded" goals: they could always have been "exceeded" more, and to rest on one's laurels is a death sentence for a software dev. Heck, I code in C# on a .NET platform precisely because I knew nothing about it a year ago. I hold my own. Being a C++ expert gets boring after a while, ya know?
I'm not a "team player": I prefer to stay at work and code up a little utility that would help a bunch of people be more productive, rather than go on "morale events". If I died tomorrow, what would leave a better impact, if globally imperceptible, on the world?
In short, I have no one to blame for my work ethic than myself.
Perhaps that's the difference: I have control over the hours I work, and if I decided that I needed a 2-3 week break (I rarely take more than one week of vacation a year), no one would likely blink an eyelid. I suspect, however, if my hours were regimented, even if they amounted to 40-50 a week, I'd be miserable.
So, I wonder, if part of your problem is misery regarding your working conditions, and a lack of control over them. I don't think anything can really help overcome that, except looking for a better job. I've been in shops like that and utterly miserable too (and not particularly productive).
While I don't always like my job I love my work. Do you love yours?
You could've hired me.
All are important. I try to drink a lot of water so I have to get up on a regular basis to pee. It helps your circulation. Plus the water is better for you than coffee.
In my case, I try to take 1-2 breaks a day to play ping-pong in our break room. I'm sure you could find something similar like stairs, basketball, flogging the dolphin, whatever.
I try to get outside for 15 minute breaks during the day. I'll take a code listing or an architectural diagram outside and work on it in the sun. Or go eat lunch outside. That 15-minute conversation you have with a buddy about ${local sports team}? Have it outside. A group of us used to take smoke breaks outside once in a while and none of us smoke.
Of course, watch your diet. Stop eating anything that comes out of a snack machine or anything that they bring in like doughnuts, pastries, pizza, etc. Buy a bag of carrots, grapes, etc. for snacks.
Sleeping is the hard part with your schedule but it's huge. Don't fall asleep reading or watching tv. That's supposed to reduce the restfulness of your sleep. Personally, I use half of an over-the-counter sleep aid pill from time to time when things are insane. It gives me about 4-6 solid hours of deeper sleep without the grogginess that a full tablet gives me. Not a great solution, but better than tossing and turning.
And here's one that'll probably set some people off. Pray. Let God run your daily calendar and you'll have time for everything you need to do.
These things really help. I'm still lacking the muscular workout, but I'm healthier than most of my coworkers.
I am in a very similar situation. I work 2-3 12-hour days a week (in a helpdesk environment, but the pay is quite allright) with a 3-hour journey. The rest of the week I follow university courses 3-4 6-hour days with a 5-hour journey. In the beginning I also suffered some health problems and I was sick on a regular basis, but now I seem to have found some kind of equilibrium.
I try to use my commuting time as efficiently as possible. I always start my morning journey with a healthy home-prepared breakfast and I read my newspaper. Then I start reading or preparing for my courses. From time to time I take my laptop with me and do some programming or work on one of my personal websites. All the while I am listening to, mostly classical, music in order to block out as much background music as possible. I try to make my journeys as comfortable as possible and I often think of a train as an exestension of my private living room.
When I get into an overcrowded train, I get a seat as fast as possible and within seconds I put some books, my newspaper, my lunchbox, etc. on the little table in front of me and on the chair next to me. Within less than a minute it looks as if I have been sitting there all day and as if I am working very hard. I am generally the last person to be bothered when no places are left. I now this may seem a bit anti-social, but I am probably sitting much more hours on these trains than all those other people.
During my lunch breaks I try to have a short walk, in order to get some fresh air. I also cycle to and from the railway station. And I go swimming once a week. The days that I am at home I try to get outside as much as possible. And I almost exclusively eat home-made meals with lots of fresh vegetables (thanks to my girlfriend, who is a great cook).
It is also of utmost importance for your mental health that you do not become socially isolated. Try to see your friends and family as often as possible. Go have a drink at least every two weeks, but preferably once a week, BUT never overdo it. You do not have time to recuperate from a heavy night spent drinking too much. Your friends will have difficulty understanding your complicated schedule (certainly in my case, I work every weekend and every national holiday: no christmas dinner for me and I only have four weekends off every year), but they will understand that you can only go out with them for a couple of hours. They will appreciate that you go out with them, even if you have to leave after two hours or so.
And last but certainly not least: try to get enough sleep. Never, or at least almost never sleep less than six hours. This means that when you come home from work, you have dinner, take a shower, watch television for half an hour tops and go to bed. It is good idea to build in some small ritual, like having a cup of lime tea or hot milk right before going to bed. I also listen to the same CD every night before going to work. I almost never lie awake past track 3. The other days you can follow a more relaxed schedule, but make sure you get six hours of sleep. I myself try to sleep for eight hours at least twice a week.
And if you do still fall sick, it is better to stay home a couple of days. Do not try to go to work half-sick. If you do, it might linger for weeks or even months on end.
3 hours by car is frequently more by bicycle
And sometimes it's pretty comparable. Occasionally in LA I've had to drive to meetings in the morning where it would have been much faster to pedal (I'm a pretty strong cyclist, but even if I weren't it would be comparable and more pleasant). From my house to downtown LA is more than an hour at rush hour by car, but I could probably do it in less than 45 minutes on a bike. In group it would be a lot less than 45 minutes.
One option that I've seen people use occasionally is to drive partway and bike partway-- find a safe parking spot about 10 miles from the workplace, and bike the last 10 miles (or whatever is comfortable). Or park about 20 minutes by foot away-- even a brisk walk like that twice a day can help a lot. Especially if it breaks up what would otherwise be 15 hours sitting on your butt.
There are books and videos available on how to exercise you isometric activites while sitting and driving. The probelem is the lack of aerobic activity. Assuming you can't bicycle to and from work the only other option is to try to add 30 mintues three or more times a week of bicycling, jump rope, brisk walking, jogging, swimming, etc. Perhaps a brisk walk on your lucnd break to and from a restaurant? Climbin up and down stairs in your building on breaks, etc? It's a tough one, but don't fool yourself into thinkg that any vitamins or health products will compensate for physical activity, good diet, and good sleep. Good luck. J. Tucker Neilson, MD, FACP
Keep on pondering, and suddenly the flower of mind will bloom with enlightenment, illuminating the whole universe.
Never watched Office Space, I take it?
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
For me it's a matter of making it part of the routine. I've been biking to work for so long (through several cities and jobs) that it seems weird to drive to work. The only time I drive to work is if I'm taking a bike to ride somewhere else afterward. The commuting got me into more serious riding and racing.
It's really got to be something that you enjoy doing and want to do anyway. If you want to do it, you can make the time.
I can't believe no one has mentioned the arcane art of meditation.
:)
A 20 minute session of "proper" meditation can reset your mind more than a good hour long nap.
There are similarities between lifting weights and meditating. When you bench your max amount, when you push with all your might, there is not a single thing on your mind except to move the bar away from you. It clears your mind. Meditation has the same effect on the mind....
Exercise is most certainly key to maintaining your health. Meditate as well to make your routine full circle