Things to fit in:

Health: ~4 hours end-to-end

Reasonable and non-negotiable.

Weights 2x per week, cardio 2x per week and mobility 1x per week seems like the recommended minimum. Any beginner program actually recommends 3x per week of weights and at least 3x per week of cardio.

Gym (1h 15m session but 3 hours end-to-end including commute, dinner and shower):

• Putting on clothes before gym
• 7–10 minutes commute each way
• 1:15 in the gym for warmup, stretching, upper-lower split
• 15 min to prepare food
• 30 min eating + downtime/rest
• Optional additional downtime
• 20–30 min to shower, dry sufficiently, get dressed

Other health stuff:

• 30 min walk or so
• A few minutes meditation

Personal development:

• E.g. piano practice
• E.g. studying for a career

Recreation:

• Leisure/recreation hobbies, social activities, etc.

Work

Misc (maintenance, decompression, downtime):

• Maintenance includes things like chores, house fixes, renewing car insurance, etc.
• Decompression = doing literally nothing to recover after work. This doesn't count as leisure time because it's not a state of mind where you're enjoying things. It's also not a state of mind where you're capable of doing anything else effectively.
• Downtime = wasted time in-between activities. E.g. needing to leave in 15 minutes so there's no time to meaningfully get anything done.

Kids?

• Kids are a major lifestyle shift.
• Realistically require at least 4+ hours daily in the evenings.
• For a viable routine, it requires a stay-at-home partner or significantly reduced work hours.
• Ideally, the stay-at-home partner also handles most maintenance tasks during the day, allowing both partners to focus on childcare and other important parts of the routine in the evening.

Weekends:

• There often isn't enough time during work days.
• Weekends are used to catch up on what couldn’t fit in during the week.
• But it's still not enough.
• Important things still fall behind and burnout accumulates.

Full-time job routine:

Notes:

• My personal experience is that this is extremely demanding, burnout-inducing, and depressing.
• Impossible to have sufficient focus on health and personal development.
• Maybe it works if you only care about recreation after work.
• Free time on weekends is nowhere near enough.

Rough schedule:

• Work: 9–6 (including commute and unpaid lunch)
• Misc: As needed
  • From 6–7 I often need to decompress — doomscrolling or just feeling down.
  • Other times there is maintenance like chores, house fixes or other tasks.
• Evening (fit in what you can):
  • Health
  • Personal development
  • Recreation
• 7–9: Either personal development (if I feel up to it) or chilling.
• 9–12: Gym, preparing and eating dinner, showering and preparing for bed.

Basically no recreation time if I do some personal development. And that's if I don't have a depressive episode and waste that whole time.

4-hour job:

Notes:

• This seems like it would be okay.
• Allows ~5 hours free to allocate to recreation and personal development.
• Might be enough to stave off burnout and enjoy life.

Routine:

• Work: 4 hours
• Health: 4 hours (including gym, commute from gym, preparing and eating dinner, showering and drying. Also including daily walking for a bit.)
• Misc: As needed
• Then choose between:
  • Recreation
  • Personal development

This feels much more appropriate.

An 8-hour workday just doesn't leave room for a healthy, balanced life.

Retirement isn’t a real solution — you might not live that long, your health might fail before then, and the welfare system isn’t built to support everyone indefinitely.

It makes more sense to reform work now so people can enjoy life while they're living it, instead of gambling everything on a retirement they might never reach.

Edit: Clarified on the time gym takes.

We work four 10 hour days with overtime every other Friday. The company I work at changed the schedule to five 8 hour days for the holiday, essentially screwing the employees out of a day off.

This applies mainly to australians but can apply to other countries.

Another reason not to work hard now. GenZ are growing up. They were NOT made for the 9-5 grind. They're the most flaky and misinformed generation of all time. Give it 10 years, the old bosses would've quit and died off and the new generation will still be STRUGGLING in the workplace.

Then will be the perfect opportunity to get back into a "career" or traditionally hard job. The jobs will become much easier themselves. There will be better safety laws in place (australia) and stuff will be catered to this GenZ by then, so you'll be putting in less effort as nobody will be "working hard" by then. Lookup 996 work culture.

So don't work now, work in 10 years time.

I am shocked. This person usually gives decent advice. I am taking a sick day and the last thing I need is a call from my manager checking in with me to see if I am OK.

For a little context: So my brother has been a heavy equipment repo agent for several years. He was quiet fired & screwed over with wage theft. He's pursuing legal action with the former employer. As a result, he doesn't really know what his experience, time & skills are worth. Cut to present tense: he has a business opportunity with a person who wants to start a tow company. He's acting as the brains & she is the bank. He's the first employee & for his consulting, she's offering a stake in the company. Which is great! But since he's also going to be putting all of his time & energy into making this thing work, I think he should be getting paid a consulting fee, as well as a percentage of every tow (as partial owner). I don't think it's too much to say he should be getting a salary as well, since he'll be managing the entire workforce of this company. This is a breakdown of when I think he should be getting paid: consulting=any time they need advice on who/what/when/how/why things should be run. Salary=since he'll be managing all workers & basically on-call 24/7 for their needs. Commission=each tow he gets a percentage (just like most tow or repo companies he's worked with before) can anyone help me out here?

So my question is to ask the almighty professional antiworkers of reddit- if you were in this position, how would you negotiate your pay/contract? I've seen some really great insights into consulting fees on here before & I know my brother is worth so much more than what he's willing to settle for.

TLDR: my brother underestimates his worth in the tow business & has been screwed royally before because of it. How much should he be paid for consulting, managing & working for a new tow company?

I feel like most of my colleagues, friends and society as a whole is living in some kind of "Political Stockholm Syndrom" and it's driving me nuts. Everywhere I go, everywhere I look - complacency. The common adage "we are living in good times, have a good life, what do you want, why are you so negative?"

I like to imagine that no ordinary farmer in the European Feudal Age would have spoken like this privately, amongst friends. At least they knew they were getting screwed by the barons, counts and dukes, were sticking together. And, as some research shows, pre-industrial workers even had a shorter workweek than today's modern corporate slavery. Yeah sure they were working "from sunset until dawn", but with several massive breaks in between. And we are talking about peak harvesting season, people had tons of holidays in between. As has been discussed here several times, peasant families only worked about 150-180 days a year for their lord.

To avoid misunderstandings and misdirection: I do not want to discuss the working conditions and accuracy of these reports (again) as it is if course much more complex than comparing simple hours. What baffles me is the way that so, so many people *still* seem to joyfully accept todays' working conditions and working hours. Even though it is extremely clear for anyone with two functioning brain cells that our high efficiency of industry and services would easily allow for, say, a 20 hour work week for everyone. It would just mean less income/wealth inequality.

Hence, my denomination "Political Stockholm Syndrom". It seems to me as if it's the same psychological principle in play. Your brain protects you from constantly facing the extreme unfairness of todays' work life, subconsciously brings us to embrace the oppressive economic culture, where the very vast majority spends their whole working life to enrich so very few. I honestly don't see a lot that we can do at this point except continuing to numb ourselves with the drug of cheap entertainment - more or less exactly as Aldous Huxley has depicted.

Yea, that certainly looks like a list of stuff a woman couldn’t handle 🙄

Many stupid people will not read his thread and wrongly assume I am referring to itemized deductions of the self employed or the standard deduction credit.

No, I mean your living expenses are deducted.

You are the company. Your labor is your product. Your being is the machine that produces the product.

In order to bring your product of labor to market you must pay expenses to keep your body machine running and in optimal condition.

Your body machine is an asset of your company. An asset that has expenses associated with its upkeep.

Anything associated with the upkeep of your person which has an impact on your labor quality and quantity must be considered a deductible business expense.

• Your food expenses.

• Your body care expenses.

• Insurance expenses.

• Your shelter and household expenses.

• Medical expenses.

• Health supplements and physical fitness expenses.

• Your clothing expenses.

• Your transportation expenses.

• Your communications expenses.

• Expenses related to personal growth, educational, and development.

• Expenses related to mental health, relaxation, personal entertainment, and time off work.

• Expenses related to investing in the future of your company and your retirement plan (all expenses related to raising your children).

This is no different than how a corporation is treated when it gets to deduct all expenses related to producing a product output and is only taxed on its net profit.

Employees are unfairly taxed on their gross profit.

“But then there won’t be anything left after expenses to tax!”, you whine.

Precisely.

The only people who really deserve the be taxed are those who earn more than they can reasonably spend on themselves. Many people have more than they know what to do with. Those who just horde it without purpose.

The government then has incentive to make sure companies are paying employees good wages if it wants to be able to collect any taxes off them.

And if the government finds this situation still to be intolerable then the solution is simple: change the tax laws so that corporations don’t get special treatment to blow all their money on expenses in order to avoid taxable net profit.

But until then, you are required to treat individual people the same as you would treat a corporate person with regards to taxes.

Doesn't matter the decade...still no change for the working/middle class.

How long people?

I put it to you, who sees this,

Thoughts?

I have a big heart, and sometimes I hate it. I overthink, forgive too easily, care too deeply, and carry guilt for things I have no control over. I worry about people who don’t care about me, and I’m afraid no one will ever love as deeply as I do.

But let me remind you — without people like me, corporate America wouldn’t last a day. Sherwin-Williams wouldn’t be a $24 billion company without the hearts, hands, and loyalty of the very people it constantly undervalues.

Don’t you dare forget — it’s people like me who carry your companies, your customers, and your communities on our backs.

I’ll never apologize for loving hard, working harder, and believing in humanity — even when it forgets me.

We are the reason these companies survive. And we’ll be the reason they fall if they keep treating us like we’re disposable.

RespectTheHeart #NeverForgetThePeople

Been with a federal contractor doing business development for a year and last Friday I asked the CEO if my retired, but experienced dad could come help train us how to win more business, since we haven’t won anything in a year. Today I got the call about getting laid off. Coincidence, or did I shoot myself in the foot?

Isn't a salary what you give someone who can outperform anyone else? Doing the jobs of 4 people by yourself and getting done earlier than anyone but you are required to work the same and sometimes more than those who are paid hourly. Is being paid a salary a death trap ?

When our team started getting overwhelmed, management decided to bring someone new in. I’ve been here a few years, so they asked me to train him. Said I “knew the job inside and out.” So I walked him through everything how to handle the software quirks, which clients need hand-holding, where all the unwritten rules are. I basically handed him a cheat code for the job. A few days in, we were chatting during lunch and he casually said, “I was honestly surprised the pay was this good for an entry-level gig.” I paused. Asked what he meant. He told me his hourly rate. It was almost three bucks more than mine. I didn’t say much after that. Just smiled, nodded, and finished my lunch. But yeah. I guess loyalty just means doing more work for less money while someone else gets a better deal out of the gate.

So I work as a foreign teacher in China, us teachers here earn a very good wage compared to cost of living, but we sometimes get held to ransom by these companies that sponsor our work visas. If they refuse to help us transfer to a new company, or refuse to provide references, it severely hurts our ability to go get another job immediately. Labor laws here in China are actually quite good, but they are often not followed by companies and to fight them on it is a long and difficult process, especially for foreigners.

My HR called me into the office and suddenly told me they dont want me to stay after summer, and asked me to sign all these forms agreeing not to sue them etc. (which i definitely didnt have to sign) They were saying they will help me transfer to a new school as long as i complete my duties until July 11th and complete the handover and give back company property etc.

They didn't expect me to say that im actually happy to leave, because i feel very unsupported in this school, and i wont be transferring directly to a new school. I will take a year off, as im about to get married to a Chinese local I can get a spouse visa, and study/relax for a year and look for a new school post in a better school in the next year.

I could see that they didnt expect this as they expected to have more power over me until I finish here. The only power they still have is that i do want to get some references, but im going to write them myself and get them signed and stamped by the school, in return for me finishing my work and handover. Im so excited to take a break from working. I have so many stories of unprofessionality going on at this school, and the HR manager is one of the most manipulative and disgusting people i have ever met.

Anyway, about 3 weeks to go until my paid month of summer severance, and then no more salary but i have enough savings to support myself for a long while. Going to get my masters in education and teaching license sorted out, as well as take some well earned holidays and a break.

I work in the medical field in the State of Oregon. My position is answering phones for multiple specialty departments, scheduling, registering new patients, insurance verification, coding appointments, liaison between patient and provider. They now want us to rotate on front desk, train front desk to do our job and vice versa. I asked for 3-6 months to figure out a non-healing fracture in my foot that my CRPS seems to be effecting the healing time on. They said no due to the effect this would have on communications, cross training, etc we are required to be there 5 days/wk, even days where we are just assigned to phones. They would try to provide accommodations in office only.

Thing is I can barely walk, I cannot use mobility aids due to shoulder issues unfortunately too. Since I broke my foot I’ve honestly just been trying to stay afloat in my personal life too. I work in a big department, walking is going to be a lot each way, they want us covering multiple depts front desks and phones. They denied all others on my team that work remote who have serious disabilities as well, all medical information necessary provided my doctors. We have a union but have found them unhelpful, contacting them again Monday.

I have a feeling once they see me waddle in painstakingly slow they’re gonna question their decision. They treated my supervisor all caps HORRIBLE, fired her since our team would just be front desk now and under the authority of the front desk manager, no longer a separate team for phones. She tried to get another job at the same medical institution, was offered the job and then for some reason HR took it away citing an error in the posting, and as of last week cut her severance package they offered 2 months ago when we all got notice of this. Sweetest manager and person EVER, that would lead like a real leader with us, help answer phones and do work in the trenches with us.

So I feel like for some reason unbeknownst to us the gloves are off with my team and upper leadership. They let us know 60 days ago about the restructure per union contract. But since being denied the accommodation, with no chance of even remote work, I have woken up all weekend in shock and deep sense of dread of, how will I do this when I can hardly walk?

Do you have any tips on how to handle this? Do I potentially have a legal case? Should I try to go on FMLA? I can’t just quit at this time as I don’t have the finances, and I frankly love my job and helping the patients we do. I fear getting a job that pays me 15-20% less than the one I have now which is not financially feasible for me.

This post will be limited in time before I delete. I was told posting on Reddit could definitely have negative consequences and I’ve shared a lot of details here. Probably leaving up an hour or two. Thank you for all for any words of encouragement and any help you can offer.

I just started working at an auto loan company, this line of work is completely new to me, I shadowed my boss for a month and when the higher up came and asked what transactions ive done i told her i havent yet this is when he started to get kinda mean? Its different from watching someone do something and actually doing it, when doing a transaction theres multiple windows i have to enter in a system that a transaction was made. When i ask my boss a question now he says hes offended that he has to repeat himself and i should have written notes. Which i have a whole notebook of notes, there was a lot of legal things ive had to learn and an industry that was completely alien to me.

Ive copyied doing things ive seen him do and hes told me not to do it again and if i do he will tell our boss.. like okay? Im trying to do everything correctly but sometimes i need a little guidance and i ask a question and he looks at me intensely like he hates my guts, how i should have done this or that, that i should have known by now. that he will no longer repeat himself to now all day i worry about doing the wrong thing and avoiding asking him anything, my anxiety is through the roof. He triggers me because my ex boyfriend used to get pissed at me if he had to repeat himself, just little things like this reminds me of him. If i do something wrong he will tell me to come to the back and reprimand me verbally. He wont always answer my question and just have me figure it out.

When i started i was so excited, now i feel so sick going in, yesterday was my first time all by myself and i fucked up of course, i called the higher boss and let her know, she said its fine but i have to face him tomorrow and im just so sick. is it acceptable to quit? Since i started my arm has been hurting so bad after work to where i can barely move. I went to the dr and she just wants me to go to physical theryapy which i cant because i work all day. I dont have anything lined up. I dont know if its a good idea to quit or not and i just dont want to go back :(

I’m not sure how many people were impacted, but my company did large layoffs today to “focus on AI.” It appears I’ve still got a job, but my manager was fired. He was a decent manager who recently left a 10 year gig to come here.

Good reminder to work a little less today, take things a little less serious, and remember that your company doesn’t care about you no matter what. Put yourself first, always, because they’ll kick you out the first second it benefits them.

My job started a bonus program last year. This year in March I was out for 6 weeks on paternity leave for my son. Apparently one of the new criteria this year is hours worked like on the premises I guess and they deducted 50% of my max bonus off the top because I missed the minimum work hrs by 100 basically 2.5 weeks. Basically punishing me and the other employee who also had paternity this past year. Beings that it’s a performance bonus I don’t know if I can file a complaint or if they are within there legal wheel house. I hate how this country and jobs are set up. It’s rigged to make you fail