Here’s why you are always tired.
A new work-life balance paradigm for Gen Z.
Today, young people are pressured from an early age by parents, teachers and employers to harvest skills and interests for their portfolio. The purpose is to ‘stand out from the crowd’ and be ‘different’ and ‘unique’ in order to successfully secure the dream career, which has a great salary as well as great flexibility.
I think we can all agree that a healthy work-life balance is a priority for most of us. It is the measure of success among peers and the #lifegoals highlighted by our social media influencers: the oh-so-elusive and perfect lifestyle. You may not have heard of popular lifestyle influencers Chiara Ferragni or Lauren Bullen, but I would assume that you have heard of Marie Kondo. Heck, I’d even assume that you have tried to implement her tidying up tips to find joy in your own home (don’t worry, I have too). There are so many influencers to show us exactly how simple it is to achieve the life of our dreams and to find joy by balancing work and life by talking about their own lives.
So if we have plenty influencers showing us to live better lives, why is a healthy work-life balance so hard to achieve? We don’t actually work 24/7. In fact, the majority of full-time employees in Australia work 37 hours a week, and sleep an average of 7 hours a night, which leaves 82 hours a week, or over 10 hours every day, of leisure time.
So why are we tired all of the time?
Most young working professionals are concerned with constant self improvement and the desire to achieve more, do more and be more. According to Melissa Gregg, this tendency to feel like we are never enough is the result of a range of factors including globalisation, industry competitiveness, social media and human nature. All of these factors contribute to a rising sense of pressure and insecurity caused by the knowledge economy.
The term knowledge economy describes the way we value knowledge and information as the new currency or wealth among professionals: the more you know, the more valuable you are. For myself and many other university students graduating, this means that our future careers are no longer a specialist role but a generalist. As a marketing and communications student I will need to continue expanding my skill set to include things like content creation and design in order to ‘do more with less’ as the evolving workplace demands. Just take a look at the job description for a marketing intern below.
I find myself spending a lot of their time learning new things, reading and trying to keep up to date with politics, society, environmental issues, and my own family and friends. This is all while trying to build a social media presence and business that demonstrates how I am the perfect candidate for… let’s be honest, most of us aren’t really sure what job we are trying to land yet (I know I don’t).
The point is that we are spending all this time working on things or being a version of ourselves that isn’t necessarily who we are, which is why you and I feel tired all the time. I think this inspirational quote sums up our problem perfectly:
“You often feel tired, not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you.” — Alexander Den Heijer
So what now? You shouldn’t be trying to build my portfolio? No, you should. But what I have realised is that you should be filling your portfolio with things that you love. Once you start spending time on the things you are passionate about, you will notice that you have more energy and motivation, while simultaneously becoming a better job candidate.
I know that seems a little vague, but what I mean is that you should be doing the things that make you happy; you know, those projects that fully immerse you and make you forget about everything else. Those are the things that you are meant to do and the things that will make you stand out, because you can see a passionate person from a mile away: they glow from the inside.
