What else is happening around work?
In recent posts, we looked at whether you dislike the work or its conditions and how to trace what is draining you through the wider system at work. Now we can take that same thinking beyond the workplace.
When work feels miserable, it’s understandable that we keep trying to fix work. That’s the thing that’s in front of us, that’s what we’re focused on, that’s what feels like the source of our immediate pain. But work is one part of a much larger system in your life.
How are your relationships? Your physical and emotional health? Your sleep, food, and movement? Do you have room for hobbies, community, or spiritual life? Are there places outside work where you get to live out your values?
These questions help you see the conditions you’re carrying into the workday, as well as what the workday is taking from you.
I’ll give you a quick personal story. Last year I hurt my back playing golf, pretty badly, to the point that it pretty much ended the hobby for me. As I went through physical therapy, do you know what we worked on the most? My hips. We rarely ever touched my back. And the explanation that the PT gave me was that the reason I hurt my back so much is because my hips were inflexible. See if the hips are inflexible then the back compensates by trying to be flexible, when it’s meant to be a stable system. That attempt to be flexible is what caused the injury. So the remediation wasn’t in the back at all, because that wasn’t the cause, it was the hips.
What is work giving you, and what is it taking?
Work can give just as much as it can take away. Work can support your life with income to pay for housing, food, hobbies, vacations, and the ability to handle an emergency. Those are meaningful parts of the relationship between you and your job.
Work can also take more than you have available: evenings with your family, attention for your partner, or time for something that matters to you. You miss dinner, take another late call, or sit through a movie with your mind still on a deadline. Or worse, find yourself waking up at 2am to check if you missed a notification from work. (been there, done that, and bought 50 tshirts along the way)
The influence can move in the other direction, life can absolutely have an impact on work. A loss, illness, relationship difficulty, or event in your community can make work harder to navigate. NIOSH describes work-family conflict as operating in both directions: demands at work can interfere with life at home, and demands at home can interfere with work.
The question becomes: where is the pressure coming from, and where does it go next?
What happens when work leaves no room for being human?
You cannot reasonably be expected to arrive with exactly the same capacity every day of the year. Life happens. Yet a workload can be planned as though your best day is the baseline for every day.
If nothing changes when your capacity changes, unfinished work simply moves into tomorrow. The deadline stays, the expectations stay, and now tomorrow carries its own demands plus everything you couldn’t finish today. You don’t get any relief no matter how bad things are going in your life, you’re expected to keep operating at your absolute top performance.
Managers need to know how to adjust priorities and expectations when that happens. Otherwise, flexibility can amount to permission to catch up later.
Imagine your relationship with your spouse is going through a difficult period. You bring that worry to work and struggle to concentrate. And so, concerned about falling behind, you start working longer hours.
Those extra hours leave less time for the conversations and connection your relationship needs. You return home more stressed, the tension grows, and the next workday becomes harder again.
That is one possible neverending loop that keeps you trapped. It shows why working harder can deepen the very pressure you’re trying to escape. Support may be needed at home, and the workload may need to change too.
Could the pressure begin several connections away?
Sometimes the connection is less immediate. Imagine childcare becomes more expensive or harder to access. You feel pressure to earn more, so you take on extra work to pursue a promotion.
But those hours also reduce the time available to arrange care, seek support, or participate in community efforts to improve access.
More income might help, sure, but it is also worth noticing the other places where help or change could matter. The pressure you feel about your career may have a source several connections beyond your job. Yet, very few people take this more “whole person in context” approach to your wellbeing.
How can I start seeing those connections?
Seeing the connections is often the first start. Sometimes just knowing they’re there, can open up a world of possibilities for you.
Think about one recent situation that left you frustrated or overwhelmed. Write down what happened, then explore:
- What else was happening around that situation?
- What contributed to it or made it harder?
- What did I do in response, and what did that affect next?
- Where could support or a change ease some of that pressure?
- What made this more difficult and what was made difficult because of it?
- What was adding pressure coming into it?
- What pressure remained after it was over?
Follow the connections as far as you can observe them. You may find several contributing factors, and some may sit outside your control.
The value of this reflection is that it can reveal more options. A conversation about workload, practical help at home, or support elsewhere in your life may address something you couldn’t see while focusing only on work.
Sometimes the place where you feel the pressure and the place where a change could help are farther apart than you realized.
