I used to think that working a steady 9-to-5 job was the key to a secure and fulfilling life. But as the years ticked by, I started to feel a nagging sense of unease—like something was slowly draining the life out of me.
Every day, I woke up feeling exhausted, less inspired, and increasingly disconnected from the things that truly mattered to me. 9 to 5 job burnout is mostly associated with a heavy workload; however, I don’t believe it’s just that. A lack of fulfilment, flexibility and freedom to express how you want to serve the world is the main culprit. It took me a while to realize that the very routine I relied on for stability was quietly chipping away at my health, happiness, and sense of purpose.
Let’s be honest… there are some perks to the 9-to-5
You get to dress up and have somewhere to go each day. You make friends at work who become your go-to for venting about life’s annoyances. There’s a sense of structure; you usually know exactly where you fit in the corporate machine. You don’t have to stress about the company’s profits; that’s someone else’s problem.
And let’s not forget that regular paycheck. You’ve probably already mentally spent it before it even hits your account. Sometimes, you can coast by doing the bare minimum, convincing yourself you’ve found the perfect gig. Oh, and free events with food and drinks? Can’t complain about that, right?
Each year, your life consists of looking forward to the weekends and the annual holiday.
To put things in perspective, let’s do some quick math… (thanks Chat GPT!)
- Total days: 365
- Subtract weekends: 365 – 104 = 261 working days.
- Subtract public holidays: 261 – 10 = 251 working days.
- Subtract annual leave: 251 – 20 = 231 working days.
- Subtract sick leave: 231 – 5 = 226 working days.
So, there would be about 226 working days in a non-leap year with these assumptions. That’s about two-thirds or 62% of your year. That’s not counting sleep, personal upkeep, housekeeping, etc.
Then it hit me—I was spending most of my time living a life I wanted to escape.
Why the 9 to 5 life caused me to burn out
I worked a corporate job for many years. Although I was good at it, I found myself institutionalized and aimless.
Here are 7 reasons why a regular office job wasn’t for me. For context, my last job was as a Digital Project Manager in a Government Organization.
Merit loses to ‘Likeability’
I saw people who were friends with higher management get opportunities purely because they fit a particular identity or knew someone in a way I didn’t. It goes back to being friends with the right people, and I get that’s the way of the world, but I wouldn’t say I liked it.
Not open to change
Many people in the traditional workplace are not open to changing their ways. When I came up with a clever, more efficient way to achieve an outcome, I was shot down. Change, if at all, is too slow in most organizations to keep up in this modern world. “We’ve always done it this way” and “If it’s not broken, why bother fixing it” are common phrases that everyone remains mediocre.
Doing well makes someone else look bad
You can work hard and try to do well, but not too well. If your progress matches that of those around you, you are fine. Overachievers and ambitious minds are belittled and frowned upon. In the end there is little point in doing well so you become accustomed to not being your best.
Requiring permission to take leave
If I had to visit family overseas or go on a holiday with friends, I had to ensure my leave didn’t overlap with anyone else’s. Even though I had a job where I could get the work done remotely, I wasn’t allowed to. It was clear that it would be better for me and the company to occasionally change my environment and work from somewhere else, but it was against company policy. Made no sense.
Hitting a ‘Learning Ceiling’
There comes a point in most careers where it becomes mind-numbing. Happiness comes from growth and progress. This explains why so many people are unhappy and busy with mundane lives, only to squeeze time for personal and professional challenges on rare occasions. It should actually be the other way around. Spending time developing oneself and overcoming challenges more than repetitive work to earn a paycheck.
Not being able choose the clients or people you work with
You get stuck working with people who you don’t share values with. What a waste of one’s most precious asset—time! Life is too short to put up with people you’re misaligned with. You are the average of the five or ten people you spend the most time with. Hanging around work colleagues who lack ambition and don’t think outside the box is dangerous over the long term. Being able to choose your clients also ensures that you bring your best self to every interaction.
It’s Unscalable
Here’s the most important one: your career is not scalable. I had no leverage. I was trading my time for money. I knew how much time was blocked and how much money I’d receive in exchange. After years of contemplation, this point stood out to me the most. Even if I go on a growth journey and strengthen my skill set to provide supreme value, I only get some shallow recognition, and a meager pay increase each year. I couldn’t leverage my learning to exceed the norms. All this while, I saw young kids making a killing on YouTube and Instagram.
If I can do it – YOU can too
Deep down, I knew this was destroying my spirit, and I was wasting my life for a false sense of security. I knew that if I exercised discipline and leveraged my skills in the ‘Free World,’ I could be healthy, rich and happy.
I made a plan, took a couple of risks (made mistakes), knuckled down on my growth journey, and here I am. I get up each morning and choose how I spend my day. Running websites and travelling the world at will. I work and holiday at the same time. I join social and fitness groups that perfectly align with my interests.
I don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars (yet) nor do I travel in the fanciest cars or yachts, but I get to work from where I want, with who I want, when I want. I get to spend more time with people I love. I don’t look forward to just weekends or certain months of the year. I approach each day with curiosity and peaceful energy.
It takes time to destroy limiting beliefs and break the mold, but you’ll get there if you want to. We all tend to overestimate what we can get done in a day and underestimate how much we can accomplish with consistent effort over a year or two.
Think about what you really want out of life and decide. Build a habit where you learn and work on something scalable for a few hours each day. Turn your ideas into a business. Don’t expect it to be easy. Give yourself time to achieve it. The reward on the other side of that tunnel is ‘Freedom’.
Freedom
Don’t confuse Freedom with ‘not doing anything’. If you go with this mindset, you will never achieve anything. Freedom is having the ability to work on ‘what you want’ with ‘who you want’ and ‘when you want’.
So, you still must be doing something. Work is not something you get away from. Without work, life would get boring. But ‘work’ should not be confused with the word ‘job’. All humans need to work, but the open-minded and clever ones don’t need a job. They sit in the driver seat of their lives. They are the stars of their stories. Never passengers or sidekicks.
Living a life of time, location and financial freedom all starts with a decision to make a start. As a bonus, once you make this decision, it’ll make your ‘job-life’ easier because, at the back of your mind, you’ll know it’s only temporary.
Five years of research and experiments have been condensed into this one e-book that can be life changing. It has helped many people cross that bridge and live the life they could only dream of previously.
Sunny Peters 