9 to 5

When I had my first internship as an MA student in the UK, nobody told me that the working day wasn’t from 9 to 5 but was actually from 9 to 6.

For the whole month of my internship, I diligently left at 5, and in a very British manner, nobody ever told me that the day wasn’t quite finished yet.

You see, in Finland, my working day in an advertising agency was from 8 to 4, so I knew nothing else. This was the norm.

I was reminded about this story yesterday when I was skimming through a book on burnout. The writer pointed out that, on average, people spend a total of 8.9 hours on work and commuting.

If you live in London and work in a creative industry, this is not your reality. You work 9 hours (or more!) and can easily commute 2 hours per day. Do the math.

The writer went on to point out that, on average, people spend 2.5 hours watching TV, and her not-so-helpful advice was that if you need to find time for so-called self-care, this is where you can get it.

The fact is that most people I speak to in my coaching have to steal time from their sleep, which we all know is not the greatest solution. It has a name, and it’s called revenge bedtime procrastination.

This got me thinking…

If an organisation really wants to give people an opportunity for well-being, maybe the best thing they can give is the gift of time?

Because if I look at it from my point of view as a burnout coach, time is by far the most common obstacle I hear for well-being, and the lack of sleep is the most common physical manifestation of burnout.

I know that there are many ways that organisations are trying to put this in place already, but the difference of arriving home at 16:30 in Finland versus arriving home at 19:00 in the UK is huge.

To be honest, I don’t have the solutions for this, at least not as long as our value is measured in time.

Maybe we can all just turn up to work, pretending to be the innocent intern I was, and leave at 5:00?