Dunno how else to call it. Got me a job. It’s not a bad job. I like the work I do, I tolerate the people there, the hours are not long, it’s unionised so they can’t harrass me when I’m off the clock, it pays the bills I got.
… But god damn. Once I’m home I lack the drive to do literally anything.
I’ve stopped going to gym, I often eat junk cuz I just don’t wanna cook, even my hobbies are being left to gather dust. After working my 9-to-5 I just wanna lie down and rot until it’s work time again.
So the question is, how do the better-adjusted adults handle this?
Human beings are the only Great Ape that works for more than a few hours a day.
It isn’t healthy, and we weren’t built to labor 40hrs a week for basic survival.
What you are feeling is a natural response to being overworked.
Get off the crack. No social media, gaming, or serie etc.
Get fucking bored and you’ll wanna do something that’s worth doing (in your POV)
I’m leaning more and more towards this.
The other week, a guy in a fantasy football rage thread had a similar take, and put it so good I had to screenshot and save it.
Gaming away from mtx and daily reward grinds, and also single player experiences without the competitive pressure can be beneficial. It is also a low effort activity that distracts from work only mindsets and it’s been proven to be a net positive for rest in contrast with social media doom scrolling.
Welcome to life after your 20s.
you’ve used up your prime hours of the day at work, that’s all.
Aside from a really good advice on putting activity before home, make sure you sleep enough.
While it may sound tempting to have a few extra hours in the evening, the way you spend them when you’re exhausted is meaningless.
When you get proper sleep, you may have a bit less time on your hands, but you can actually turn the time you do have into something nice - and finally get the kind of rest you deserve.
Trust me - you’ll thank yourself for this when you find out you still have energy after your work.
With that energy, you can not only go to wherever you want to go, you can also make the home a nicer place. Make yourself a spa evening. Watch autumn movies with tea and cookies. Read a book. Whatever strikes your fancy and makes you relaxed and…at home.
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For me I usually position my exercise routine before work. The cardio allows me to think and generally function better throughout my work day, like my version of caffeine.
But yeah I don’t have time to do anything else in that few hours before work begins.
Second pot of coffee.
Spice up your life outside of work. Move to a new home. Start a family. Ditch your family. Start a revolution. Sell your car. Give yourself some challenges, obstacles. You get the idea. SPICE. 🙂
work less hours, if you can’t afford to work less hours…then you should be figuring how
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If you find the secret, pass it along
The secret is simple. What you do for money isn’t what or who you are. 8 hours of work. 8 hours of sleep. (Unconscious body resting sleep) That leaves as many hours per day you spend working as you could spend doing anything you are able to facilitate. Problem is, if your 8 hours of work is debilitating to the point it owns the other 66% of your time then you need a new 9 to 5 or at least find peace with what it is you do for money.
Or you have depression. If that’s the case I feel for you, and I know you got this.
That leaves as many hours per day you spend working as you could spend doing anything you are able to facilitate.
No commutes?
No chores ? Like laundry, dishes, cleaning, shopping etc…
D d d d d d d d d d depression
Don’t go home from work. Go to a place to do the thing from work instead.
Recently lost my wife and my whole life feels like this listlessness you describe. Some suggestions people have made.
Plan out an hour after work to do something even if it means not driving home for an hour and going and doing something. This one works for me.
Do all your extra work on the weekend when you have the energy. Laundry and cleaning the house fit in here.
Plan out and prepare your metals for the work week on the weekend. Its only 5 meals. Cook two big meals and portion out the extras as leftovers in frozen containers then make an extra small meal that is either quick to cook or precooked or frozen meal from store. You now have three meal variety you can pick to quickly cook during the week after work. This works for me as the variety makes me feel like I have a good selection to pick from and if I buy some junk otw home I can eat the extra on the weekend.
Force yourself to exercise for at least 20m every other day. A hard sweaty workout! Just fucking do it no matter what. I do this in morning before shower.
Life still fucking sucks and I hate it… But its better than it was and gets better day to day. You just have to do it.
That’s really what it all comes down to and the only real advise. Just do it. Pick one and do it for two weeks. Then add one more and do it with the first one for the next two week. And repeat. They say it takes two to three weeks to build a routine. At some point it will feel weird to NOT do it… But it takes time and energy. So just fucking do it because its not going to magically get better on its own.
Just do it already.
Sorry for your loss, mate
And thanks for the advice. Even if right now I want to make sad animal noises at the idea of “just doing it”.
Baby steps. Just pick one small thing and do it… I say this as I fight against “just do it” myself… Its so fucking hard. I get it. But again. It wont fix itself magically.
Yeah, and once you get going it’s easier to keep going because of momentum
Sorry for your loss. Thank you for the inspiring words.
Your story is inspiring, and I’m really sorry you’re going through this. Rooting for you
I admire your strength and perseverance.
Sorry for your loss, man. If you need someone to talk to, about anything, send me a message.
Sorry for your loss. I admire your strength.
I can’t fathom what you are going through. I hope you continue to see the light through any dark tunnels you may find yourself in. Take care of yourself. I’m glad you’re finding stuff that works for you! Much love from a stranger on the internet.
There’s a good dozen of great suggestions in the comments here for tips to sort out various things like cooking, etc. (I have saved a few for myself later).
So instead I’ll offer some meta advice for making these things feel effortless:
- Find the paths of least resistance and chain them together.
Look at the additional activities you want to add on to your day before/after work and figure out what is the most effortless way to trigger starting one activity when the previous one ends.
For example, back in April I wanted to start going to the gym regularly so I did three things: put together a gym bag with enough sets of gym clothes for the week’s exercise, keep that gym bag in my car, and joined a gym as close to my place of work as possible.
By doing this I was able to build “going to the gym” into my commute home from work. I have managed to keep up the habit of three gym sessions a week since then (with the occasional miss due to illness or other life events getting in the way).
- Make the good habits obvious and the bad ones obscure.
I struggled all my life with something so basic; remembering to brush my teeth both in the morning and at night. So what I did last year was use the IKEA peg board thing and found some holders for my toothbrush and toothpaste. That pegboard is right next to my bedroom door so I have to walk past my toothbrush whenever I leave the room as a visual trigger to go brush my teeth.
Think about how you can position physical reminders in your space to do the activities you want to do.
Or use your phone’s calendar/to do list app of your choice to book in reminders to nudge you into getting started.
- Just five minutes to get started and if necessary do the bare minimum badly.
Whenever I’m feeling tired but there’s a task that needs doing I ask myself “will this take five minutes or less?”. If the answer is yes, then I just do it there and then.
If it’s something that will take more than five minutes to complete to 100% then I say to myself “ok I’m tired but I’m just going to do five minutes of it and see how I’m feeling then”. This works out great for the gym example. Today on the way home from work I was knackered but I told myself to just do the five minutes as the bare minimum. Once I’d done a few minutes of exercise I felt like I was achieving and then pushed past the five minutes for a good 30 minutes before deciding that was enough for today.
And yes, there have been days when I literally just did the five minutes and stopped. But that didn’t matter, because I still completed what I set as the bare minimum. Those minimums still get me closer to my goals and therefore they’re still a win. So long as I’m getting just one more of these little wins over losing (i.e. not going to the gym) then the progress keeps stacking and the good habit continues to form.
Everyone sharing their own coping mechanisms in the comments makes me want to question the whole thing itself. Why are we living like this? And why do we need to force ourselves to go through all this? What is the end goal? Are there no better ways to live? Why, why, whyyyy…
Why are we living like this?
No one is going up to people and offering them a better alternative. Literally that’s it.
On a less flippant note, The people who represent us, care more about the orhanizatins who give them money than they do about the needs and wants us the people they are representing.
If you aren’t producing value to pursue who can offer you a better life, then there is no reason for then to offer it to you.
Now add in tradition, culture, religion and a host of other competing morals and opinions, and we have the world of today
Capitalism. The answer is capitalism.
We live in a society
There are better way to live. But we’re used to a certain level of comfort, that includes not doing the many, many upkeep tasks to grow food, maintain home, clothing, etc. so we trade some time for currencies, that is then traded with other people, and the leftover currency allows us to indulge in fun things that are also complex and high maintenance, so they’re done by other.
Well, that’s the theory. In practice, working a full-time job barely, if even, covers the minimum expanses required to live, which keep going up anyway, so you have to work more to barely go by, which thankfully will let you forget that you won’t make anywhere near enough money for leisure time. Good thing you won’t have any, eh?
sigh knowing we have the technologies, right now, to cover all basic needs, including food and housing, for cheap, but still do with the charade of inflation so that a few select individual can extract all our time from us is really sad.
I’ll tell you what worked for me: Doing everything before work instead. Get up at 4am instead of 7 and go to bed at 7pm instead of 10.
This is MADNESS
THIS IS SPARTA!!! Kicks
My schedule changes frequently. On days i start at a normal time i tend to get things done in the mornings. Days i start early i get stuff done after work. I find the best trick for getting stuff done after work is to start right away. Even sitting for just 5 minutes can be detrimental to my motivation.
Part of what helps motivate me is in my area electricity is cheapest between 7pm and 7am. So i try to do things like laundry early in the morning and i try not to use my computer much until after 7pm. Even my wifi is often off during daytime hours (i live alone and work away from home). I know the savings are minor, but i find that extra financial incentive is all i need sometimes to wash the dishes at 6:30 pm and relax afterwards.
Yeaaah, doing this would mean the death of anything I enjoy outside of work and the wife and kids.
OP is already failing to do anything outside of work and sleep. Desperate measures.
Fair.
At the very minimum, gym in the morning (but after coffee/caffeine, plus the time for it to kick in) is the enlightened way. It helps if your gym is nearby or you have a !homegym@lemmy.world .
I personally also use the wee morning hours to reconcile my financial accounts, since ACH transactions in the USA will generally process a day faster if submitted before 10:30 ET.
God I wish I got up at 7. I’m already at work for a half hour.
