What does it mean to have a “healthy” workday? It might help to work backwards, and start by defining a workday that feels rotten. I’m sure we all have different criteria, but here’s mine:
- Hot, smelly and/or delayed commute
- Hip flexors barking from too much sitting
- Regrettable lunch decision
- Lots of superfluous screentime
- Unable to move the ball forward on big tasks
When these join forces, I walk through my front door at the end of the day like George Bailey after another tussle with Mr. Potter, prepared to chuck that unscrewed stair knob through a window. My professional future suddenly feels less certain, my dinner cravings veer more outlandish and I’m likely to practice revenge bedtime procrastination.
I actually used to think my worst workdays were days that I was on deadline, when I owed a feature story on top of my usual workflow commitments. But lately, I’ve found a fascinating clarity on such days. Assuming I’ve prepared accordingly — organized interviews, assigned a structure to the article, whatever — my task is very straightforward.
After years of standing hunched over a fryer, scorching his knuckles, Anthony Bourdain considered writing simple and easy, a daily reprieve where his only task was to sit down and “tell the truth.” Sure enough, the days I feel the least sorry for myself are the days I feel the most focused — when I manage to move the ball down the field, perhaps even tap into flow.
I’ll stop writing about writing, considering only 0.03% of adults are professional writers. But hopefully you take my point. A healthy workday is not necessarily an “optimized” day; it’s a day that you actually sink your teeth into something. You inch forward an idea, you talk to the right person, you take your time.
I’m sensitive to the fact that many workers in low-income or entry-level jobs don’t have the freedom to think about their workdays in this way. But if that doesn’t describe you, consider: how often are you maxing out your “rotten” criteria? What would it take for you to cultivate workdays with more inspiration and less distraction?
We like to say that a good bed is worth it, as you’ll spend a third of your life sleeping on it. Well — adding an hour commute each way — you’ll spend 30% of every single week in workday mode. (And in a post-pandemic era of cloud-based messaging, the real number is probably higher. Too many employees refuse to log off.)
Below, I’ve detailed seven suggestions to help you reorient your workday. But before we get there, a note on the nature of workdays: they’re full of friction. That’s unavoidable. It’s awfully tempting in the ages of social media (which propagates influencer routines) and AI (which purports to take the friction out of every single task) to assume you can figure out a perfect, repeatable formula for wellness-focused work.
But step zero is accepting that you’ll never break this horse. Workdays are messy microcosms of life and the best we can do is show up for them and attend to them with intention. I believe that implementing just a few of these steps will help you do so — and at the very least, keep you from going to war with your bannister.
1. Cock-a-Doodle-Doo
I’m a night owl, not an early bird (believe it or not, the difference is genetic). But I’ve always known in my gut that sunrise wake-ups are a good idea. Whenever I sleep in, I’m on my back foot, frazzled, before the workday has even begun.
Give yourself an extra hour-plus in the morning. You can spend it: working out, reading, spending time with your significant other (mine happens to be an early bird), attending to the kiddos, starting a load of laundry, meditating, making a proper breakfast, choosing an outfit that gives you confidence, whatever. The idea isn’t to pack lots of that stuff in — or assign yourself a dubious, CEO-esque regimen — but to consciously choose one thing and consistently do it right.
Besides, it’s not only useful to take pressure off the evenings — it appears to be beneficial for your mental health, too. A Stanford Medicine study published last year found that when night owls stick to their “chronotype,” they’re 20-40% more likely to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder.
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A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine texted our college group chat that Sweetgreen made him feel like Wile E. Coyote — no matter how close he got to redeeming a free salad, the billion-dollar company seemed to move the goal posts. So he beats on, boat against the current…paying for another $19 salad each Tuesday at noon.
Lunch is the rare daily decision that you can control ahead of time. Like my friend, I’ve thrown money at the problem many times; or I’ve slugged down mighty sandwiches that all but guarantee an afternoon slump. Meal prep is your savior in this arena. For example, for under $5 a day you can easily pack a container with cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, pistachios, chickpeas, mint, parsley, lentils or quinoa, and chicken or tuna. I’ll often also bring bananas, clementines and a PB&J.
In terms of building a “healthier” workday, it doesn’t get more literal than packing a healthy lunch with healthy snacks. But beyond decreasing your long-term cholesterol levels, this is about promoting your daily energy and financial autonomy. The practice will also make you a smarter cook.
3. Fall in Love
With your commute, I mean. In 2016, the sustainable engineers at ARUP published a report called “Cities Alive” that outlined the benefits of walkable cities. They included an interesting study from economists at the University of Zurich, who concluded: “[A] person with a one-hour commute to work has to earn 40% more money to be as satisfied as someone who walks. At the same time, shifting from a long commute to a short walk would make a single person as happy as if he or she had found a new love.”
In some ways, your commute is what it is. You live a set distance from your workplace, and you can’t control the shitty weather or the rabid behavior of your co-commuters. But if that trip regularly turns you into Eeyore, it might be time to start asking yourself some basic questions.
Could you take a different route — or a more freeing mode of public transportation, like a ferry? What about hopping off your commute early and deploying a last-mile solution, like a folding bike? Are you overstimulating your brain (maybe with morning news podcasts) in order to make the most of the trip or “improve” yourself? How about sharing the commute with your significant other or friend? On WFH days, if you have them, could you get in on that Swiss economist romance and commute to a nearby coffee shop?
4. Fidgeting Is Good
I know people get annoyed when their fitness tracker zaps their wrist, reminding them to stand. It isn’t personal: a sedentary workday truly is a silent killer. If you don’t get up and move around once in a while — even just a minute an hour! — you’re at an increased risk of high blood pressure, high blood sugar, obesity, osteoporosis, blood pooling in your lower half, or feet and back pain.
A lot of people might just prescribe a standing desk here. It’s certainly a start. I use this one at home, and balance barefoot on a motion board. In the office, meanwhile, my setup is ironically DIY: a tower of printer paper boxes. Across either location, though, I spend the day between sitting and standing. It may be healthier for my hips to stand for eight hours, but the real issue I’m trying to root out is too much time in one position (literally and figuratively).
Getting up, walking to the kitchen, looking up from the screen and out the window (honoring the 30 x 30 x 30 rule to reduce eyestrain) — these are all examples of positive fidgeting. We’re taught at a young age that fidgeting is disruptive and unnecessary, but where does that get us? Don’t be a delusional desk zombie, convinced that if you sink yourself deeper into the task at hand everything will clink into place. On the contrary, this is where you’re all but guaranteed to start online shopping. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve figured out how to finish a paragraph after simply walking to the bathroom. (Then I get sprint back to the laptop with my fly undone.)
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I think it’s possible, within the framework of your workplace reality, to savor something each and every day. To feel like your workday isn’t just a workday, but in fact another day on this earth (of which you don’t have very many), and you remain a dancing animal. At some point during those 10 hours, you should be able to look up or around and feel alive about something in the physical world.
It helps to leave the desk and go outside. Consider this “advanced fidgeting.” Go for a short walk as part of your lunch hour, even if the weather’s crappy. Call somebody. Listen to a podcast that doesn’t stress you out. Or eavesdrop on strangers. This behavior doesn’t function in denial of your workday — it expands it. For my purposes, at least, it lends me the mental bandwidth (and bursts of creativity) I need to do my job well.
On the rare occasions where you truly can’t get away, and have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, try to do something different after work. Run a new route, or watch a movie or listen to an album from start to finish. This is the sort of “revenge” routine that’s actually a gift to yourself, while a phone binge will push you deeper into the emotional red.
6. Your Brain > AI
Disclaimer: there are, of course, many different ways in which people are using AI at work. For employees of particular industries, ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot are now used nonstop; AI is considered an appendage without which they’d fall behind.
Only a fool would think we can go back to the Before Times. Still, we can be clear-eyed about what’s going on, and what’s to come. For starters, AI doesn’t save you from doing your work. It helps you complete that work quicker, which only creates more work, because your to-do list (and more importantly, the to-do lists of your bosses) will never be completed. No wonder AI-aided workers are reporting extreme burnout. LLMs affixed a motor to the hamster wheel.
But beyond that, an overreliance on AI chips away at the very purpose of your work, whatever it is that you do. As a joint study from Carnegie Mellon and Microsoft (go figure) revealed, using AI means outsourcing your critical thinking. It’s an existential shortcut, repeated day after day — and sure, maybe you start with the small tasks, the stuff you just want to “automate.” But how long until you incorporate it for the more robust projects, the stuff that was supposed to be your professional “why”? Remember: purpose is a longevity powerhouse. Protect it.
7. Put the Pencil Down
One of the most underrated ways to have a healthy workday: know when to end it. There’s a movie called The Intern, starring Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway, that seemingly everyone has watched on a plane once, in which De Niro’s character, a senior citizen intern, brings his old-world chops to a modern, Millennial setting. He regularly stays in the office until well after dark, as long as Hathaway, the head honcho, is still working. “Don’t leave until the boss leaves!” he says.
Nay, I say. And that goes for the boss, too. (In the film, Hathaway’s workaholism is partly to blame for a familial disaster.) It’s always important to make a good impression — even if you’re a 71-year-old intern, I guess. But at some point, you have to accept your effort that day for whatever it was, however uncomfortable that may feel. Put the pencil down, pack things up and go home.
Also important: don’t log back on once you get there. According to a Wall Street Journal report, nearly a third of workers check their inbox after “pausing for dinner or home duties.” For better or worse, another workday will arrive tomorrow. Just focus on inching things forward, and it’ll be a healthier one.
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