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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."
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.
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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.
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.
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.
A 4&3 is not a bad schedule. Even with 12-hour shifts.
It's the three-hour commute that's killing him.
For a lot of the last 10 years, I've worked a 3-on, 3-off, 2-on, 2-off schedule with 12s. It really isn't bad.
Look at it this way, with his schedule, he's working less than 50 hours a week. Most people work at least 9 hours a day. The employer takes an hour for lunch leaving you 40 hours. If you ever work a weekend or stay late more than twice a week, then you have gone over 48 hours.
But that commute...
It's simple: Live where you work. Get an apartment close to where you work and live there. If you have a family and are not willing to move, then quit.
Another idea is to get a hotel close to work once a week. If the pay is good enough to offset a $60 hotel room, then try it. Staying in a hotel the 3rd night of your week will feel like a dream.
What you really need to do is get some 15lb dumbells and start using them.
Do 10 pushups every other hour. Aim for 50 the first 2 weeks and add a few more each week after. Shoot for 20 pushups at a time and 120 per day.
Same with situps. If you work buisness casual, a towel will keep your shirt clean. Get a sit-up bar for your feet or just hook them under the edge of your desk.
Do curls, squats, upright rows, military presses, and other creative exercises with the dumbells. Agian, no more than 10 or 20 at a time. But you will be doing them throughout the shift.
It'll keep your metabolism high and make you feel a lot better.
Get some alcohol, talcum powder, hand lotion, and a clean rag for your drawer.
If you feel sweaty, use the rag doused with some alcohol to clean the sweat. Use talc to prevent sweat to begin with. Hand lotion is for your hands; push-ups and dumbells can wreak havoc on girly-hands.
Anyway, good luck.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.