Eight hours a day. That’s how much time you are likely to spend sleeping. Since hitting adulthood, you’ve slept away about a third of your life. That means one third of your college years, one third of your summers, one third of your weekends, and one third of your vacations have all happened while you were checked out. Other than sleeping, can you imagine how angry you’d get if you found out something was taking a third of your time away? Keep that in mind because you just might be doing that to yourself as a sleep-worker.
Imagine how frustrating it would be if you were fully aware of time during sleep. You still have to lay immobile in a room for 8 hours a day, but the time doesn’t fly by like we’re used to—it really feels like 8 hours. I bet it would be maddening to be completely conscious that a third of your life was being spent that way. It makes you wonder at all the amazing things you could be doing with that time if only you could take a magic pill that made sleep unnecessary.
For some of you, the thought of conscious sleep probably sounds a lot like your job—8 hours in a small room that go by slowly, frustratingly taking up a third of your life. We do have magic pills for that problem—they are just hard to come by. Retirement, lottery, inheritance…
If that sounds like your experience with work, you’re not alone. You are one of the millions of sleep-workers in this country. These are people who approach their jobs as a check-in, check-out, check-out proposition. That’s to say, clock in at 8, zone out mentally, and clock out at 5. Put in your 8 hours, expend as little mental and emotional energy as possible, and go home. The parallels to sleep are obvious—thus, I call it sleep-working.
Now to be clear, checking-out mentally doesn’t mean that you don’t have to think or make decisions while you are at work. It simply means that you try to numb yourself one way or another to those 8 hours while on the job. You want them to fly by as fast as possible, and you’ve probably gotten pretty good at making the time go by.
If you are a sleep-worker, let me say this: WAKE UP! You are basically snoozing through two-thirds of your youthful life! Challenge yourself to find a job that doesn’t cause you to wish a third of it away!
For those of you that aren’t sure if you are a sleep-worker, see if you agree with this statement: Most days, it would be nice to be able to fast-forward through the workday.
Disagree? Great. Agree? You sleep-worker, you.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Alan Kemper // Jul 4, 2007 at 6:14 pm
Sleep worker… sounds more like a Career Coma, at least you wake up from sleep. what if you your stuck in your job, and you can see that there is more to life than what you have access to, but you are trapped inside your body unable to do anything of significance.
I feel like that is one of the most frustrating things about being young and talented in the business world of today. I have energy, I have talent, i could be some body.. I coulda been a contender… but instead my job tells me to be quiet , work hard and wait my turn. I know Our generation has been called the entitlement generation, and that people laugh at us because we are not willing to wait for our turn, but honestly the world is changing, and there are new, and better ways to make a buck, and if corporate America is not careful they are going to push their talent away, leaving them with a bad taste in their mouth.
I long for significance in what I do. and so do so many of my friends in the 20 something generation. where is the significance .
Some one wake me up from my career coma
2 Melissa // Jul 9, 2007 at 8:48 am
The difference between a job where you’re sleep working and one where you’re awake and excited is phenomenal. I remember a job I had where I hated being there. I really had to turn myself off just to make it through the day. And then the time when I was home was really hard, too. Having a job I love and am excited about every day makes a huge difference, not just in the 8 hours I’m there, but in the quality of every other hour, too.
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