How to Be Healthier When Working 60-Hour Weeks

Master work-life balance! Discover top tips for staying healthy despite long 60-hour weeks with our easy guide to wellness for busy professionals.

Whether it’s for an isolated season or indefinitely, we all go through periods where we’re forced to work long hours. And if you aren’t careful, these demanding stretches can put a strain on your health.

How to Prioritize Your Health during a 60-Hour Work Week

There’s nothing innately wrong with working long hours. People have worked 60-hour weeks since the dawn of time. In fact, for most of human history, farmers and hunters would work from sunup to sundown. It’s only over the past century that labor laws have put a cap on how long a person can be required to work “on the clock.” In other words, what you’re doing isn’t anything new. Having said that, it’s still not ideal. (And you have to learn how to shoulder this increased workload in an intelligent way.)

The problem with long hours isn’t necessarily the long hours. The problem with the long hours is the way it crunches your schedule and forces you to compromise in other areas of your life (including fitness, diet, sleep, etc.). So if you are going to work 60-hour weeks indefinitely, you must have a plan for how you manage these other aspects of your life and well-being.

Here are several suggestions to get you moving in the right direction:

1. Exercise Twice Daily

Exercise is an absolute must when working long hours. But instead of carving out just one quick workout session, we recommend exercising at least twice daily. In fact, you may find it more productive to have two 30-minute sessions as opposed to just one 60-minute session. This gives you two different times of the day when you can relieve stress, take your mind off work, and release powerful pain-killing endorphins into your body. (For best results, try early morning and late afternoon.)

2. Toss the Fast Food

When you’re working long hours, food is often a secondary thought. So what do you do? You reach for the quickest and most convenient option. Unfortunately, this happens to be fast food.

As delicious as it might be, fast food wreaks havoc on the body. It can cause headaches, acne, high cholesterol, weight gain, high blood pressure, shortness of breath, dental distress, insulin resistance, bloating, and even depression.  The best thing you can do is stay away from fast food and replace it with freshly prepared meals. (Try meal prepping on Sunday afternoon to avoid spending so much time cooking during the week.)

On a related note, make sure you’re staying hydrated. Research shows that men need roughly 15.5 cups (3.7 liters) of fluids per day, while women require 11.5 cups (2.7 liters) to function properly.

3. Optimize Your Workspace

If you’re sitting at a cramped, uncomfortable desk for 12 hours per day, it won’t be long before your body is screaming. Aches and pains, joint stiffness, muscle soreness, back and neck issues – it won’t be long before they set in. Get ahead of these issues by optimizing your workspace to make it more ergonomically friendly.

The best thing you can do is invest in a standing desk and/or adjustable chair that allows you to comfortably move into multiple positions throughout the day. Check out the BTOD.com Facebook page to see some of the available options.

4. Avoid the 7-Day Week

It’s one thing to work a five-day 60-hour week. Anyone can plow through a five-day week knowing there’s a two-day weekend ahead. Working a seven-day 60-hour week is much harder. Even though you’re spending less time working each day, there’s no extended break. You have to wake up each morning and do it all over again.

For your own sanity, avoid the seven-day week. Do everything you can to only work five or six days. You need some extended time off to create a sense of balance in your life.

5. Prioritize Sleep

Finally, make sure you’re sleeping. While eight hours per night is the recommendation, you should be getting a minimum of seven hours. That doesn’t leave much time during the day to do anything other than work, but it’s that important. Your body (and mind) needs rest to recover and replenish.

Put Your Health First

As with anything in life, your career will be defined by seasons. Some seasons will be relatively easy and carefree. You’ll feel as if things are under control and have plenty of room to breathe. In other seasons, the hours will be long and the stress will be high. And while you don’t want these types of seasons to last indefinitely, you should have a plan for how you approach them. Prioritize your physical and emotional health and you’ll find yourself in a much better place.