Embracing the 5-to-9’s Around Your 9-to-5

Meeting the 5-to-9

Somewhere in an infinite scroll, I came across a nugget of wisdom that I actively bookmarked for later, only to never look at it again. It was only until I began pondering my situation that my brain unfiled the information for consideration further.

Social media casts a 5-to-9 before the 9-to-5 as a trend centered around promoting personal wellness on either end of your day. It considers an ability to create a work life balance that enhances one’s mental and physical well-being. Typically, these trends blow over, and for me this one did as well until I began to question the lifestyle routine that I had created during my first three weeks of work.

Embracing the 5-to-9’s before embarking on your actual work day seems problematic to me. Centering life around work is realistic, yet, by definition, I have proposed a more holistic and perhaps realistic approach to my days that takes on some borrowed perspectives of several authors to back up the mindset that I’ve created for myself.

If you’re a new graduate who has never worked a 9-to-5, I think Dolly Parton summarizes the feelings best: “What a way to make a livin’ / Barely gettin’ by / It’s all takin’ and no given’ / They just use your mind / and they never give you credit / It’s enough to drive you / Crazy if you let it.” To many degrees, I think she’s right. Corporate America, in my opinion, is a runaway train any way that you look at it, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t make it work for you, especially since, for most of us graduating from college, we’re at the bottom of the totem pole with no real way of making organizational change. We need to pay our dues, right?

To make it in today’s world, many influencers preach the hustle mindset that defines one’s success by their side-hustles and outside ambitions that are supposed to bring them wealth. A 9-to-5 has become an income source, and somehow has, for some people, become only a partial ambition despite taking forty hours of their week.

I was driving home one day, however, worrying about my future and ambitions when I considered the phrase that many multi-income sourcers describe as “working for yourself” after work. While time, in this metaphor is still defined somewhat by a capitalist system, I think that this lens fits. Family time can be blocked off as non-negotiable meetings at the end of the day. Once you leave work, it’s time to live by your priority list, which is largely funded by your day job. Depending on your family situation, this list can look very different. For some it can be hiking. For others it can look like entrepreneurship, or a spouse.

Regardless of what your system looks like, after work, your thoughts are your currency. I believe that the attempted point of the 5-to-9 advocates intended these thoughts to center around less measurable benchmarks: your active relaxation, personal progress, activities that help you become less reliant on the rat race, education, or any activity that supports a passion that either recharges you or helps remove you (hopefully) from a life of forty hour work weeks. Supporting these ambitions whether it's your mini you’s, or your future you’s all are the reasons why we work the classic jobs in the first place, and for most of us are why our parents worked themselves or helped us pursue college.

However, one of the problems with a divide between generations however, is the question of more. As a young person, I want more from my life, and have been attempting to demand it daily. I question my reality, because I can’t understand why some of the people around me are not also asking for it. By more, I am referring to hoping for a successful career, while also believing that I am a complex and well-rounded individual outside of that career path. I recognize the importance of having a job and that career that I studied for, but also believe that it is possible to suck more meaning from life, despite my life currently telling me that it’s sucking me dry.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Sean Covey, he describes this behavior that I’m referring to ‘Sharpening the Saw’, or essentially the physical act of replenishing one’s self through the physical, mental/spiritual, and social/emotional necessities that it takes to maintain balance. During his explanation, Covey asserts that these habits help produce productivity, success and happiness to some extent. And he’s not wrong--why wouldn’t you want to live a better life in every way possible? Successful people sure seem happier to me. But as a twenty-one-somethin kiddo, I hear warning bells when I hear people saying that you should be recharging for work. Uhhh shouldn’t I be living for myself?

A different story by a different author (Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman) describes this problem in terms that are a little bit more digestible. Burkeman says that our routines have become more similar to billable hours. He says that it’s a

problem for most lawyers, where they become somehow so ingrained in the rat race, where each hour equates to, let’s say $200 dollars. Hence, spending one hour doing something other than working is

costing them. For example, spending eight hours sleeping costs them $1,600 because that’s the way that they’ve come to value their time.

I engaged in a similar perspective with my 5-9, thinking that if I could make more during those hours than the hourly rate at which I was paid, I might be able to find a way down the road to quit the stable, reliable, and essential day job. Doubtful.

Why is this even a question?

I remember when I first started working. It was early January, and I was driving home to my brand new apartment, still relying on my navigator. I was gripping the wheel, thinking of my deepest anxieties, which were directly stemming from working ten hours a day. I thought to myself: This is what your days will look like for the rest of your life. I didn’t get to see the daylight, and I hadn’t even made any money yet (When you start work, sometimes it can take a couple weeks for your bank account information to be processed, so those on-boardings can be rough). From that perspective, I was afraid that I might become too tired or too committed to one possibility (i.e. my day job) to pursue the things that everyone was telling me that I needed to pursue to be successful: a graduate degree, side hustles, or sleep (Thanks mom!).

In that anxiety, however, came some clarity to my days regarding the 5-9’s. Firstly, every decision that I make in the non-work hours is up to me to make the most of. Whether it’s writing my goals in smart, attainable ways and adjusting accordingly, or making that free time work for me, I am in control of how I allow myself to be tired or recharged. Next, it is also my responsibility to make active rest time for myself. No one else is looking out for you on the daily except you, especially if you’re living by yourself.

Active rest is a term that I learned way back when. Essentially it’s a more engaged way of taking time for yourself. In physical terms, active recovery is the act of performing less strenuous activities that help repair you more quickly for the high strain and stress workouts. But, for your mind by my definition, actively resting is engaging in activities that make your brain feel recharged and prepared to tackle the more intense and often obligatory tasks elsewhere in your life. For example, taking a hike is a great form of active rest.

One Sunday, I woke up around nine feeling exhausted from a long weekend of running around. By nine a.m., I was ready to go back to bed, yet had accomplished nothing except making a bowl of cereal that was soggy in two seconds. I decided to heck with it, and I threw on a pair of sneakers and drove half an hour away for a hike. By the time that I got back from four hours with no distractions, no noise, no cell service and a great sense of achievement, I was way more ready to face the monotony of the life that was waiting for me.

Returning home, I sat down and tackled everything. I had less time, and still somehow seemed to get everything done. That’s the thing about your 5-to-9’s as well. When life seems to be overwhelming at work and the to-do lists never seem to end, investing in the hours where you actively participate in something you want to do as a non-negotiable, everything that is important will find a way to get done because it has to, and everything else that is gray space and less important will not. Your priorities will be made black and white only if you draw them for yourself.

Finally, the question of the 5-to-9, at least in my brain, arose from a place of tremendous anxiety that I didn’t know about until I started my first day of work. Despite loving my work and job, it terrified me--having to work in one space, in one office with no foreseeable breaks? That’s not what college said adult life was like!

Yet, through a lot of reading and reflection, I was able to unpack two halves of my anxiety:

One. I was worried about the future. Relinquishing control over the options of pursuing my dreams and other possibilities was crushing. Mark Manson says that the cutting down of options should make you happier, but my situation had me questioning if I really was happy staring at white walls and working in this way for the rest of my life. In college, I’d had an option of heading out and sitting in the grass and working with my friends that changed, ebbing and flowing in a way that is different from a 9-to-5. Once again, working is just a different experience, one which nobody had really prepared me for--not better or worse than expected.

Two. Worrying about the fuuuuuture aka the long term outcomes was terrifying. When I had dreams of adult opportunities, I was scared that they might not come true in a way that I couldn’t have before. Knowing what a job was like, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to stand out enough to be considered for promotions, because I quite honestly didn’t know how the working world worked. I was afraid that my job wouldn’t help me grow as quickly or in the same ways as I wanted. Every scenario was something that I had no control over, and would only make me more anxious about it, as I came to learn from my bestie Oliver Burkeman. Yet, those feelings all stemmed from being locked into a contract that a particular amount of life would be set in stone. Now, I fully understand that I have the option to quit my job and work on a side hustle, which is only to say that would cause me more anxiety at the current moment. Once more, I’m just asking for more from life, and hoping to think of new ways to find it.

Finding MORE ways.

I have, and probably will never solve the productivity wheel for myself. But I have picked up a few things that really have helped me understand and reckon with the 5-to-9’s a little bit better. I hope that they may quell your anxieties if I’ve just scared you about what your reality could be like (Don’t forget that my reality is just one option for how your life might shake up, but if you do feel your life aligning with my words, we’ll figure it out together! Nothing is impossible).

‘They’ say that the outside activities are useful for recharging yourself for the job. To me that’s a messed up world view. I believe that each of those activities that makes your soul feel whole is why you should be waking up in the morning. Your day job is a currency to invest into those. What makes life worth living is the family that you have dreams for, the book you need money to publish, and any activity that makes you smile and lifts your shoulders into their unweighted and loose positions.

You do not need a million side hustles. You don’t even need one. You just need to understand that even when the current economic climate makes it extremely difficult for someone to make it on a single income, be aware of the moments that make up your 5-to-9 so that if you need to sacrifice some of them for a second job or a side hustle, that you don’t lose what is making you who you are.

Your choices are how to best live for yourself. Read books and gather experiences and perspectives and opinions (like this!) to choose what reality is right for you and what you accept. All that I’ve been trying to communicate in this post to you is: be active in your decisions. If you’re going to work for a living, know why you’re doing it. Do not let life decide what you need and what is for you. Something that other people choose to accept for themselves does not need to be what you choose. If work is a means to the end of being able to act on that decision, be the best that you can be at it.