Work survival guide

40 hours a week is borderline torture.

And honestly, most people I know work even more than 40 hours a week. That's insane.

The emotional and physical cost of doing anything for 8 hours a day, especially something you probably don't actually enjoy, is enormous. Combine that with the fact that most people feel like their jobs are meaningless emotional black holes made specifically for paychecks and you have a perfect storm of self-loathing depressive monster-mash stress and boredom.

I'm a firm believer that a full time job is a pointless artifact of a by-gone sepia tone era where productivity wasn't anywhere near what it is by today's standards. We should refactor how jobs work, and watch as a ton of mental health issues magically fix themselves.

I digress. You probably know how your own job is slowly stabbing you to death, and I don't need to point it out. You might even be reading this while at your job. The point of this post, if you pardon the rail spike pun, is to show you how you can work at a full time job while also focusing on your own values instead of your employer's.

The whole enchilada of this post boils down to this simple quote: Exploit every single itsy bitsy tiny weeny yellow polka-dotted speck of freedom you can, and use that to accomplish your real goals.

Every job has to give you some sort of freedom. Obviously there's jobs out there that are far worse than others -- Amazon warehouse workers come to mind here -- but you can still get something out of them. Still, you'll have to be more and more creative and less and less stingy depending on how Orwellian your job is.

To try and make this as inclusive as possible, I'm going to be presenting specific freedoms that an employer might give you, and the best ways I've found to exploit them for personal gain and/or fun. You may enjoy an intravenous injection of personal anecdote along the way.

Begin the sanity preservation!

Freedom: Headphones

If you're lucky enough to have a job where you can wear headphones/earbuds that are connected to your personal cellphone, than you've hit the jackpot. In fact, headphones are so obviously fantastic for exploiting your freedoms that you're probably already using them as bastions of light in the dark pit of endless suffering that is full time employment.

Most of the information in this section also works in any other situation where you have private access to self-curated audio, like truck driving.

Headphones are the holy grail because of these facts:

1. You have total control over the content of what you're hearing.
2. You have total freedom to listen to whatever you wish without garnering unwanted attention.
3. When asked what you're listening to you can easily answer "music" and not be questioned further. (although you might want to have a "favorite album" lined up just in case the "what are you listening to" follow up happens).
4. You can still do your job with headphones in. It may "distract" you from your "important" work, but you can still seem like you're working, which is the most important part, obviously.

Before you use headphones, make sure to take these precautions:

1. Try everything you can to download content locally onto your phone. You don't want to use your employer's WiFi to stream anything, since they can easily bring up logs of what you've been doing. In the worst case scenario you can stream from your own mobile data, but that isn't ideal. (The first rule of youtube-dl is that you don't talk about youtube-dl)
2. Make sure your headphones aren't noise canceling. You may receive complaints if you're seen to be ignoring someone, even if you can't hear them. This is on a case-by-case basis, of course; if you find yourself in a situation where noise canceling headphones are viable, than use them.
3. Set things up so that you aren't looking at your phone constantly. Make playlist, use the buttons on your headphones to play and stop audio, and so on. Don't give management an excuse to ban headphones as "distractions".
4. Get a good pair. If you're going to be listening to these things for 8 hours a day, than you probably want them to be comfortable and high quality. Look up "in ear monitors" (aka: IEM's) and find cheap and effective options, if you can afford it.

(All of these are on a case-by-case basis. Consult your own local common sense to see if any of these apply to you.)

That's great and all, but what are you supposed to actually use these damn things for?

The great thing about headphones is that there's a nearly infinite amount of things you can use them for. If you plan correctly and sprinkle in a little self loathing creativity than your options are nearly limitless. Remember: your goal is to maintain your sanity while also covertly accomplishing your actual life goals without getting fired.

Here's some ideas to get your started:

1. Obviously music.

Download your favorite albums and listen to them. You can also stretch the value of your music by memorizing lyrics, melodies, and so on. If you're musically inclined you can also "study" the music.

2. Obviously podcast.

Another obvious option that a ton of people already use. Do I really have to explain to you how to listen to a podcast? Just download the damn thing and listen to it. Pick something that interest you, is exciting, is interesting, or is otherwise related to your current real desires. You can stretch the impact and usefulness of your podcast by thinking critically about what you've listened to before going to the next episode.

3. Obviously audiobooks.

Seriously. This is one of my favorites. Get your favorite audio book and listen to that shit. Think critically about it. etcetera etcetera.

An interesting point about downloading audiobooks: If you read things that don't normally get audio books made of them (online fiction, fanfiction, etc), than you can also easily make your own audiobooks by running the text through a speech synthesizer. I'll let you find your own setup for this, but I can attest to its usefulness. You'll have to get used to a synthesized voice, which doesn't take nearly as long as you might think.

4. Study stuff

If you have something that can be studied through audio format than the long drudgery of work might be a great place to get some revision in.

The most obvious examples are learning a language, helping your listening skills (speed up audio until it's hard to understand and listen until it's natural, repeat), practicing your music skills (have "what is this note?" lessons and whatnot), and so on.

The most revelatory thing is that you can create your own study material for this using nothing but your phone's microphone. It doesn't even have to be that great, you can just talk about something you've learned and use that as a reference to reinforce it at a later date. The options are really really broad here; get creative.

5. Misc ideas

Rapid fire ideas: guided meditation, memorizing certain pieces of text, relaxing sounds (ASMR?), talks and presentations (TED talks?), interviews, and so on.

The main thing to take away is that you can use your headphones for an enormous amount of things, and the quality of their contributions only grows as you add other freedoms to the list; like if you had access to paper you might be able to combine that with your headphones to practice taking dictation.

Interlude: Information smuggling

One of the most common problems with staying sane at your job is smuggling information.

And no, I don't mean some stupid fucking corporate sabotage or anything like that. I mean information that you care about, but isn't at all related to your place of employment.

For example: you come up with an ingenious idea for a blog post, and you want to remember it when you get home. What is the most effective way to save that information for later use?

"Just remember it" might not work in all occasions. Anyone who has ever had a good idea to only forget it after you got distracted will know what I'm talking about here.

The next most obvious thing is to write it down on a piece of paper / sticky note and than put that note in your pocket/purse/whatever. This has the added security layer of not being suspicious; if you have access to paper at your job than it's probably not suspicious to write something down quickly.

You may also be able to use your phone to take notes; this has about the same benefits of the paper route with more risk. Cell phone rules are all different, and you know better than I do about how your specific situation works on that.

So it's obvious, than. If you want to remember something than just write it down for later. But what about the really nasty jobs? The ones where you don't have any access to anything that might let you spontaneously record an idea/thought? I'm thinking on the level of a high-stress food service job or something like that; the jobs where you have nothing but your brain. Is there any hope to smuggle information from this? Of course there is, it's just a bit more complicated.

There's a memory technique called the method of loci, or more commonly memory palace. If you're in a situation where you can't smuggle physical information, than you must take advantage of your own brain to remember things. The memory palace is, as far as I can tell, one of the easiest and best ways of doing this.

I like memory palaces a lot, so I'll probably make a post about them some time in the future. If that's the case I'll edit this post with a link to it.

The basic idea is that the human brain is really well suited towards remembering locations (hence "method of loci"). If you close your eyes you can almost certainty visualize your childhood home in near perfect detail; you can "walk" through your mind's imagined memory of your home. The trick of a memory palace is to "put" physical objects into this imagined recreation of your home to remind you of things you need to remember. For example, if you wanted to remember that you had to buy a hockey stick you can imagine your friend shoving a hockey stick up their ass on your couch; when you want to remember what it was you needed all you need to do is "visit" your mind palace of your house and you will "see" your friend on your couch pleasuring themselves with a hockey stick.

It seems like it's more stuff to remember, "oh now I gotta remember my friend and the hockey stick plus my house?" but trust me on this one. I don't know the science behind it, but I know that this method works. Do a web search for "memory palace" and try it out, even if you can use other means to smuggle information out of your work.

Of course you can use the same techniques to bring information into your work, if need be.

If you want the stuff you do at work to be meaningful you have to figure out how to smuggle information without it being suspicious. Be extra careful if your employee contract says that anything you make while on the job is "company property"; these predatory contracts will ruin you if you mess up. If you're subject to a contract like this I sincerely hope you're good at forging information, otherwise just use memory techniques and give absolutely no physical evidence that you're "working" on your personal projects.

Plausible deniability is an art form. Learn it well.

Freedom: Paper

So your job is one where you can write something on a notepad and not immediately be called out for it? Lucky you.

The previous notes about knowing your employee contract obviously apply here. Chances are your job can claim anything you make while on the clock is company property. Just be careful out there, people.

If our goal is to keep ourselves occupied and (hopefully) get some work done that we actually care about (personal projects or the like), than there's actually a ton of stuff you can do with paper, should that be a freedom you have available. I suppose you also need a pen or pencil to take full advantage of it, but whatever. There aren't many situations where you'd have paper but no writing utensils.

Before we begin, make sure you know how free you are to write things. Ask yourself these questions: for how long of a stretch can I write for without it looking suspicious? How much paper do I have available to me? How easy is it to throw away something I've written? How scrutinized are the things I write? If someone were to come across something I was writing, what would be the worst allowable thing I'd be okay with them reading?

If you're actually desperate enough to implement any of the ideas in this post, than you're gonna want to think carefully about doing anything that might attract attention. Every work situation is different, so have some fucking common sense. You're goal isn't to get fired, it's just to make your life more bearable while you turn to dust for a paycheck.

Here's just a rapid fire list of things you might be able to do with paper. There's endless creativity you can use, so this is more of a primer to kick that long-zombified brain of yours into action:

1. Practice writing in shorthand (helpful skill, and also makes your notes more private from prying eyes. It's also time consuming to learn depending on what system you choose)
2. Draw. Be careful with this one, obviously. You know better than I do about how your management would react to you drawing. Plausible deniability says it's harder to excuse drawing than it is "innocent" notes.
3. Math. Works for certain situations, and is really fun for certain kinds of people.
4. Word association games. Start with a word, and than write a similar word under it, than a similar word to that, and so on. OR Start with two random words and write a short sentence that combines them together ("knight" and "poison" make "and the knight drank poison because he's stupid")
5. Printed games. Think crossword puzzles and Sudoku. Hard to make inconspicuous, but might work.
6. Practice your handwriting / calligraphy. Nobody can get mad at you for writing your notes carefully. Probably.
7. Combine paper with other freedoms
8. So much more.

Just like always, use your creativity. That's part of the game, coming up with interesting ideas.

Freedom: Just straight up no supervision

I've heard stories about jobs where people just don't do anything. Where all you do is come in and sit there for hours on end with no supervision. Most of the time I hear that these people browse reddit / facebook / whatever all day to distract themselves. Even if they get caught there's no punishment. Totally useless jobs just for the sake of existing.

There are certain levels of this kind of thing. Like most of these jobs wouldn't let you just hang out in your underwear, or let you try to summon an eldritch monstrosity from the outer darkness. You'd probably be kicked out for that kind of thing. It's not total freedom, but it's the level of freedom where you could say "I could probably bring in a book and read it at my desk without being reprimanded for it."

These kinds of positions can be some of the most soul crushing. You don't just feel useless, you know you're useless. Yet you still have to keep up a certain pretense of being a productive and responsible employee or you'll stop getting your paycheck. I've never had a job like this, but I can easily imagine how it'd be.

Still, if you're in this position you have a level of freedom that's far above the average wage slave. It's enough freedom where the thought of "what do I do?" is pretty difficult. It's easier to come up with creative ideas where there's a lot of restrictions in place; a blank canvas is harder to fill than a fill-in-the-blank picture book.

Social media is... it's at least effective at being distracting. It also has the added benefit of being inconspicuous, since most of your other co-workers will be using it as well; hiding in the crowd and all that. Still, my own experience tells me that extended time with social media has diminishing returns on satisfaction. Browsing reddit for 8 hours a day probably isn't going to bring anything but crippling depression to your life. Dropping social media isn't what I'm promoting, but you may want to keep special attention on how bored you're getting of it so that you can do something else to keep your mind occupied.

Going another degree of separation: reading. You probably won't actually want to bring attention to yourself by bringing in a book to work, but you can easily bring in a flash drive / phone / whatever and digitally read stuff. This is also nearly as inconspicuous as social media, since it's so similar. Look into your local library and see if they have a program for you to digitally check out books, or legally obtain them (legally, of course). As for what to read, that's up to you. I recommend books that make you think (Godel Escher Bach, Human Compatible, etc), but you may be more interested in fiction; whatever keeps you sane.

Another degree of separation: writing. If you can find a way to write, than you may want to do that. Normal warnings about your employee contract apply here; don't let your employer take legal control of your own hard work (be aware that anything you do on your work computer is traceable by your company IT department). If you can pull it off, than you might have a great creative outlet. It doesn't even have to be fiction/non-fiction/blogs/whatever, it can be musical notation, a diary, and so on.

The list goes on and on and on. Your freedom of movement allows for an enormous amount of... freedom of movement. It's understandable to be bored in a situation like yours, but only if you aren't aware that you can do so much more. Not everything has to be intense "improve myself constantly AAAAAA!" either. You can just as easily just sit back and listen to a favorite album or daydream about talking to a sentient robot or something. Even the act of planning what you want to do with your time is a valid use of your time. The sky's the limit.

Freedom: Your brain

The opposite extreme is usually the most interesting.

This is the worst case scenario, total supervision. You can't write anything down without suspicion, you can't have headphones, you can't talk, you can't make any movements out of line, you can't stop working for any reason, you have virtually no break time, and so on and so on. You're treated like a prisoner. You might even have a significant cognitive load like a waiter. I'm thinking jobs like food service, busy retail positions, or basically anything that's "customer facing".

The normal advice for people in this kind of position is, "Just leave and get something better!" I'm not so naive to hold this view, obviously. There are perfectly legitimate reasons for someone having to hold a job this disgusting. I predict you might be happier if you didn't have this kind of position, but you almost certainly already know that too. I know your pain.

You know the whole "a blank canvas is hard to fill" problem? This is the opposite. It's so restrictive that it's almost as difficult. You can't even make the excuse of "oh just lower your standards!" since you're the kind of person in most need of help.

There are ways to stay sane with this kind of job. I know this because I did it myself for two years while I worked in food service. The problem is that one of the solutions is to spend a lot of mental effort cataloging and testing ideas for keeping yourself sane, and I'm half tempted to say, "Just figure it out on your own!" as way of help. This problem is compounded by the fact that everyone's mental world is different, and so any other advice I give would be highly personalized. I'll let you decide for yourself if you want to keep reading this section.

Ahem.

The brain. Your brain. It's amazing. The brain is one of those mundane amazing things that are so normal that you don't think about them that much. The mere fact that you can read and comprehend this is absurd. To survive with your sanity you're going to have to turtle up inside your mental world like a turtle. That metaphor could have gone better.

1. Games

Mental games, specifically. This is the most obvious solution, and just might be enough to keep you occupied depending on how much depth you add to it.

I remember reading a news story a while back about some woman who worked in a potato chip factory and hated life, so she started looking for chips that looked like celebrities to pass the time. I think the story was supposed to be uplifting, but it just came off as debilitatingly depressing to me.

The basic idea still applies. Find some way to keep your mind occupied. Anything at all is better than focusing on how your life is falling apart and the horrifying condition you find yourself in every day. Sorry, that was depressing too. Whoops.

The kinds of mental games you can play with yourself depends greatly on the mental workload you have to endure. For example, if you're a waiter you may have to constantly re-focus your attention on taking orders and delivering food and spitting in people's drinks, than any game you come up with will need to be playable either in short burst or in the back of your head.

There's a spectrum of focus with mental games. There's mental games where you need to focus intently or you will "lose", or those where you can play them in 30 second chunks, or those you can play in the back of your head (like counting how many people with red hair you see or something), and those where the whole point isn't to focus on them (like The Game).

You got math games (how many times can you multiply a number by two before you lose track of it?), counting games, searching games (like the depressing potato chip thing), and more than can be listed here. I guess I could list them here, but I'm to lazy to. Ill just make the excuse that it's more fun to think of games on your own.

A bit of advice: having a concrete losing condition for your game is usually a way to make it more interesting. You can't really lose a game like the potato chip thing. Exercise caution with this, since losing your own game might make you more depressed.

2. Day dreaming

This is my bread and butter, right here.

There is a fine art in the act of day dreaming. With proper practice it can even be done in the back of your head. Bonus points for the fact that you can use your day dreams for coming up with stories, if that's something you're into.

This is a bit of a dangerous art to learn, because of course it is. If you fall too deeply into your own fantasies than the real world will look even bleaker to you. Use at your own risk. I'm serious here, by the way.

So what makes a good daydream? Specificity!

What do you normally daydream about? Maybe abstract ideas of what it would be like to have super powers, or what it would be like to be a Harry Potter character? My guess is that you don't normally give names and faces to things that aren't directly relevant to your power fantasies.

Try to take it a step further. Make your inner world come alive as if you were reading it as a novel. Make it self consistent. Make it feel real. Give names and back stories to minor characters, give names to things that don't need them, think of interesting universal rules, or if your fantasy takes place in reality come up with interesting interactions other's might have with each other. Imagine it in vivid color, with tactical feedback, with all your other senses too.

You're of course still going to be the main character, at least at first. You may find that you like day dreaming about other characters when you get done with your first fantasy, and that's fine. The goal is to make it interesting and appealing to you, not an audience.

The second most important concept is moving on.

If you actually practice this you will eventually find a fantasy that you love. You will re-iterate and re-plan and re-make it a thousand different ways. Trust me on this one, I know; I've had fantasies that have lasted for over two years of constant re-implementation.

The problem with redoing the same fantasy (with subtle variants and extra details) is that it gets boring and automatic. In the worse case scenario you will start comparing your real life directly to the contents of your fantasy world, and everything you experience will be tinted by your own automatic reliance on it. It stops being fun and instead becomes a problem.

You must move on with your fantasies. I know it will feel like killing your child, I know it will feel like abandoning old friends, but it must be done for your own sanity. Reiterating over a fantasy is normal and interesting, since you can add details and nuance to it, but when it gets to the point where you aren't even enjoying it, that's the sign that it's time to try a new one.

If you find it really hard to move on you might want to put your fantasy to paper. You don't even have to share it with people, just write about it somewhere to get it out of your brain.

In the worse case scenario I'm afraid you will have to get psychiatric help with it. Seriously, be careful out there. Daydreaming is a beautiful art, but in that beauty there's a real danger of losing touch with reality.

3. "Meditation"

Meditation is, as I understand it, hyper focus on a single mundane constant. Like focusing on your breathing; not asking yourself if you're focusing hard enough, not contemplating how meta you're being, or anything like that. Just focus.

When at work, especially one that's high stress and customer facing, you might have more issues with obtaining perfect hyper focus.

Still, I've had some success in the past with meditating at work. Just focus on your breath and let your mind automatically respond to any outside stimulus. It's a pretty simple concept, and if done right it can keep you entertained for a few hours. There are people out there who really like meditating and try to do things like this all the time; I think it's called "enlightenment" or some shit.

4. Others

The brain is an amazing thing. If you don't want to do something like the things mentioned here than that isn't an excuse to not come up with something else.

You can come up with philosophical concepts, jokes, or deep sounding quotes. You can think up rap lyrics or melodies for songs. You can practice rolling your tongue or something. There's so many different ways you can use your mind, there has to be something that will keep you interested for those long painful paycheck hours.

Interlude: The time before and after work

The dreaded commute.

I count a work commute as "work hours", since if you didn't have a job you (probably) wouldn't choose to commute to a single location every day.

You can use most of the techniques already mentioned to make your commute better. You also have the added benefit of being able to scream in inconsolable despair. Practice talking precisely, sing out loud, whatever; you get the general idea of how to come up with good ideas at this point.

If you have a really long commute you will obviously want to spend more energy (usually at work, so you don't waste your free time) coming up with ways to keep it from systematically crushing your will to live. Yada yada. Same concepts, different hat.

There are some important points I'd like to make about the time before and after your commutes, though.

Let me take a stab at what your morning routine is like: wake up to your alarm. Force yourself to get out of bed, even though you would really rather not. Try not to cry. Take a shower and then brush your teeth. If you're lucky you may have some time to wolf down some cereal and a bagel before you leave. Than the commute begins and you slowly fall into whatever mind state you automatically go into when working.

If your commute is part of working hours than this kind of morning routine is part of working hours as well. You wouldn't have your mornings like this if you didn't have a job, right? The first thing you do in your day, every day, is something for your employer, not you.

(And I know there's people out there who have inconsistent work hours and whatnot. There's unique cases for everything.)

Your brain is most active in the mornings (for most people, at least. There are legit night owls out there). Is it really the best use of your morning's energy to drive to a place you most likely hate, constantly in a rush?

I gently suggest that you change your morning routine. It doesn't even have to be a huge change, just add something that you choose. Maybe make it something that you're really passionate about, so you can reinforce that your own passions are more important than your employer's demands.

For me, I spend an hour every morning writing, since writing is my passion. You could also practice an instrument, read a book, walk your dog, exercise, whatever. You could just sit there and browse facebook, if that's your passion. Just make sure it's something that you care deeply about.

The big issue here is, of course, finding the time.

"Time is a whore that doesn't stop sucking"
-Tipsy Duck

You might be able to convince your employer to change your hours. Something like, "I'll come in an hour late, but I'll work the same amount of time" has been known to work in some situations.

You can also wake up earlier, going to sleep earlier as well to keep getting sufficient rest.

The issue with making the time is that there's always trade offs. You have to leave work at a later time, or you need to go to bed earlier, or you have to get used to a new sleep schedule, or any other number of excuses. Insert excuse joke here.

In my purely anecdotal experience: Making the time for myself in the morning is one of the best thing I ever did for my mental health. It's constantly validating and uplifting to know that the first thing I do in a day is something I care about, instead of subjecting myself to an insane rush to get to some place I don't even want to be.

If you take one piece of advice from this post make it this one.

Final words

In the end, staying sane at work is three fold:

1. Re-organize your priorities. If you don't like your job, than there's something you must like more.
2. Use your creativity to come up with ideas to focus on your core values while maintaining plausible deniability (so you can easily claim that you were "working" if questioned).
3. Subscribe to my patreon.
4. Execute on your ideas and iterate until you die.

This post is already enormously long, and yet I only really scratched the surface of what's possible. The ideas here are obviously not exhaustive. Use this as a springboard for your own creative efforts.

Work hard ;)

-Tim