Unpopular, but helpful post for young professionals.
I think that the worst advice I got as a junior was to be sure to carve out time to eat properly, sleep 8 hours, and exercise daily. For many of us, at the beginning of our careers, we don't have the ability to manage our schedules. We find times to grab a quick bite and eat at our desks. Our best exercise is walking to and from work... maybe. We sleep when we can. Trying to do all these things while performing at work just leads to anxiety. None of us need any more of that.
Something that really, really helped me was finding 5-10 minutes to just breathe and use something like the Calm app or Headspace app. If you want to really get into it, get yourself a Hyperice Core. Yes, it may seem dorky or weird, but trust me, those 5-10 minutes a day can really help your body survive the pain and suffering that not eating properly, not exercising, and not sleeping can have.
Yeah, sounds like absolutely terrible advice.
Sorry but I think this is terrible advice. You are giving up on being healthy (which also impact most people’s happiness, energy levels, relieves anxiety, gives people self confidence, etc) before even trying. You are going into this admitting that there is no way to stay healthy so try to find 10 mins to just give yourself space? No F’ing thank you. It gives you anxiety because you aren’t managing things well and because you are putting unreasonable expectations and pressure on yourself. I’ve rarely seen a group that actually requires the amount of time you are talking about, so much of it is self inflicted.
My advice would be to figure out that most teams are reasonable and just want you to get work done, so balance that with what brings you happiness. Additionally, exercise (and general health) will make you more productive and “sharper” in the office.
I’ve been in this industry for almost 20 years and would never put those time constraints on people and have never been that way myself. You will end up very unhappy.
Del
The worst advice you got was to take care of yourself?
Sounds like a weird shark tank pitch?
In the OPs post, sleep 8 hours may be the hard part, but everything else can be obtained. Most people can too bogged down in making everything perfect when sometimes its a time trade off. Meaning, if you're in banking maybe you can't make every meal by hand so its super healthy, but you can order reasonable healthy food when working late. Or maybe you can't get to the gym, pushups and body squats are free, doing them 10 minutes before bed and ten minutes in the morning really helps over time. Just think about it like, you might need 2 hours for a 100% workout routine, but what if you could get 80% of the value in 45 minutes, seems like a reasonable trade off.
Most of what you think you know and what you are being instructed to know is wrong.
This is terrible advice. Your career is a marathon, not a sprint. Completely asinine to wind yourself in the first 5 miles when you have 20 more miles to go. The one exception would be if you're an entrepreneur and am extremely passionate in what you're working on. But to not sleep, exercise, or eat properly for a job that you don't enjoy or are doing for someone else is crazy
Agreed, keeping ourselves in a healthy state both physically and mentally is a quite tricky balancing act. There are so many hours in the day, and most of us have to spend full two hours a day just to get to our jobs and back again. And then we further pressure ourselves by aiming to go to a gym at least 3-4 times a week, eat properly, have an eventful social life, and always turn up fresh for work?!… Yeah, right
All of that gets old very soon, but that doesn't mean we cannot make things easier here and there. For example, I have to scan and organize a great number of docs every single day (convert them to PDF, name them properly so I can track them easier later on, upload the correct ones to the cloud, and so on). While it sounds simple, losing track of all that is actually surprisingly easy to do. So, this was a big pain point for me in the beginning, as there wasn't an effective system in place I could follow to perform an error-free job. Plus, back then, I wasn't even sure that I'm allowed to implement a new software of my choosing to help me with this, so there were days when I'd just panic and hope for the best...
Granted, things got a lot better once I mustered the courage to raise the question. Turns out the company had no issues with buying a new software (I settled for FileCenter, ultimately) just to streamline the file management side of things (I guess the product's low price has something to do with this lol). After that, I quickly learned how to use our new DMS and have been able to scan, send, edit, compare, alter, rename, track, group, etc. tons of files a day without a severe mishap (at least thus far). In short - this move has been a real blessing for me and my mental health!
My point is, there's always, an opportunity for a "safety net" we can set in place and leverage during the long hours at work. It's just a matter of barking at the right tree at the right time
Meditation isn't as effective as working out, not even close, at least in my case. If it's about taking some time off during working hours to organize your thoughts - then what are the lunch breaks for? In my experience, every time I'd cease to work out for a few weeks I'd soon start feeling progressively worse. It's why I've been making sure to leave room for exercising after work as much as I can, cuz it simply doesn't cut it for me otherwise.
These headspace ads are getting ridiculous.
> I think that the worst advice I got as a junior was to be sure to carve out time to eat properly, sleep 8 hours, and exercise daily.
Did you mean to say "best advice"?
Health is wealth man. My single biggest regret as a junior was NOT focusing more on my health/fitness and letting myself get out of shape and gain weight. Sure I could fall back on the covid excuse as a crutch but we both know that's bullshit. If you don't have your health you won't live long enough to enjoy all the wealth we got into this career to build in the first place.
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