How do you retain energy for 10+ Hours a day?

- Skip breakfast, have espresso

- Drink green tea during the day

- Skip lunch

- More green tea

- Have a shake before working out

- Workout 

- Have dinner

- More green tea

You get used to it. First 9-5 job is always hard for a few months. It gets to the point doing 12+ hours a day where 8 hours feels like nothing.

A commute like that would also break me so that's contributing for sure.

Something I found useful is trying to breakup your day with short periods of time where you can just disconnect. This will require some trial and error, and it will not be something you can do every day, but give yourself some time during the day to just do something that isn't work.

For example, maybe you give yourself one 15-minute period every 3 hours where you block out in your schedule and you just disconnect from work. You close your computer. You put the time on your calendar as a hold. And you do something that isn't work. This could be something like taking a walk down the street. You could just listen to music or scroll through social media. You could read a book or even take a quick cat nap. 

One of the elements of the job that makes the hours feel long is that it is relatively monotonous. So, to the extent you can, try to find things that break up that pattern. 

A couple of things to throw in the mix-

-Improve your quality of sleep. Consistent bed and wake times. No phone 30 mins before bed (ideally 1-2 hours). Personally, wearing a nose strip at night makes an enormous difference for me in quality of sleep- I didn't know I needed it until I tried it. Didn't realize it was possible to wake up without a headache.

-Hydrate. Make sure you are getting enough water, as computer-induced headaches are exacerbated by dehydration.

-Try to minimize phone distractions during work. Your phone OS is designed to grab as much attention from you as possible- even the screen lighting up with a notification is enough to pull you out of a state of flow. Do what you can to minimize those distractions (do not disturb, putting your phone in a drawer, etc).

-I drink a lot of coffee to get over the late morning and early afternoon slumps, but I've gotten pretty desensitized to it.. Sometimes just getting up to get water is enough of an energy boost.

When all my regular fueling and caffeine fails I can fall back onto an internal combustion engine powered by a mixture of spite, greed, and self-loathing.

I avoid heavy lunches. I get food comas pretty bad and so avoiding a lot of bread or any fried foods helps a lot. Of course hydrate, get good quality sleep, and workout when you can. I thought maybe it was a mental stamina thing, but after several years of 16 hour days I found that you’re just gonna get mentally tired at some point. For that reason, I try to save any ‘creative’ analysis or writing for mornings, and then more automated number crunching for second half of day.

As others mentioned, stick to a routine. Go to bed at a certain hour and wake up at a certain hour. Try not to deviate from that schedule on vacation or the weekends. Honestly, take your long weekends when granted. Work on sleep patterns, no caffeine after a certain hour, don't eat heavy foods, especially fried foods. I ride my bike in the evening for at least 30 mins or the peloton for 15, about an hour before bed. 

The long commute sucks and def will eat into that calming down after work to get your mindset ready for bed. But maybe read and disconnect on your commute. If you drive maybe play a podcast that you don't have to think about during listening. It finding the thing that hurts your sleep. Mine was screen time and any sweets after dinner. 

1. Working out, sounds counterintuitive but it works. It helps you release some of that pent-up stress and prolly also releases dopamine and counteract those cortisol (stress hormone).
2. Have a small hobby that you would look forward doing during your downtime, but try not to play video games (especially something that's involve competitive matches) you'll be burned out in no time. I personally cook in my small amount of downtimes experimenting with steaks and learning how to do basic butchery.
3. Focus on what can you control, as long as the ball is in someone's field and you did your job you absolutely no need to worry about it. Getting worried about things outside your control drains your energy and brings you down mentally.

just my 2c