60 hour work week?

Everything to me already feels unrelenting in a 40 hour work week.

What kind of country forces you into a 60 hour work week. Is that even legal? In any case… I cope by focusing on my kids and wife and picked something I like to do in the little free time I have.

Freetine - recreational time is utterly needed.

If you have no or too little time for yourself ever you will not be able to hold on indefinitely.

I’m in my 40s. I don’t have any kids, but am married nearly 20 years, home and property owner, bills, the household handyman “fixer,” managing health conditions, etc.

1. Find work you enjoy. I know that’s easier said than done, but you spend much of your waking hours at work, and it bleeds into everything. Find a way to make it suck less. A bad job will suck the life out of you.

2. Find hobbies you enjoy. Preferably more than one, you can burn out on things you enjoy as much as you can with work.

3. Cut off negative people. Social connections are important, but be wary of social vampires, people who leave you exhausted and stressed. Cut them off, even if they’re your own family. If that’s not possible, keep as low contact as possible, put them on an information diet, and gray rock them.

4. Make time to connect with your spouse. Cuddle in bed, talk about your day. Hug. Engage.

5. Make time for exercise. Don’t say there’s no time. Don’t make excuses. Get it done. It’s one of the most important things you’ll do for your physical and mental well being, and should improve your energy levels over time.

6. If at all possible, contribute to causes that matter to you. If you have the funds, maybe donate to your local food bank, homeless shelter, animal shelter, or maybe volunteer if you don’t have funds. It can help a lot to feel like your contributing meaningfully to society and your community, and jobs may pay the bills, but don’t always provide that sense of meaning and contribution.

7. Practice gratitude. Spend some time thinking of the things you appreciate and are grateful for, the good things, even just small stuff.

None of this advice is particularly specific, but it’s mostly worked for me. Dunno what else I can suggest. You sound stressed and possibly burned out, so take some time to find your stressors that are triggering this feeling of being overwhelmed and “over it” and try to focus on the good and meaningful things.

How do middle aged family men handle it?

Simple living. That work should be treated only as a means to live, rather than allowing work to consume the individual.

I’m 56, and I don’t have any answers.

Any upward momentum at work stopped for me. I’m slowly descending into alcoholism and sloth. The more I do to maintain the household, the less that everyone else does.

There’s a reason that financially comfortable, socially stable, middle-aged men have a ridiculously high suicide rate.

The worst part - the VERY worst part - is that even after I retire, I don’t see any improvement. I’m going to be slaving away at an attempt to maintain a modest life until the day I die.

I didn’t really realize I was middle aged until I hit 39. It’s been a blur for years. I’m finally making enough to possibly own a home soon. We’ll see how my work holds up in this economy. But honestly. I don’t even think about it. Just be you and take it one day at a time. Stop looking for tomorrow when it’s today.

You should not be working 60 hours. No one should be. Being over-employed is just as harmful to your life as being unemployed, sometimes more so. You need time to do the things you originally went to work to be able to afford doing, otherwise what’s the point?

I’m a 41 year old dad with a 1 y/o and a 3 y/o, with a partner who has a busy schedule. My advice is (surprise!) the same as everyone else’s, trying to work a 60 hours work week and do that other stuff isn’t sustainable. Maybe if you had a stay-at-home partner who took care of childcare and household chores, I could see you making it work (but then you wouldn’t really be involved in your family’s life at all which I would consider a deal breaker).

I’m tired all the time, but it’s at least possible. If I was working 60 hours a week? No way.

And while I have no interest in an affair or divorce, I probably should drink less wine in the evenings while making dinner and doing chores :-/

EDIT: I just saw your other comments, you work 40 hours a week, and are in 15-20 hour training per week, until January. Can you get anyone to help watch your kids for another 1.5 months? Family? Babysitter?

60 hour weeks yikes

I work 37.5

Try that

The secret is actually enjoying who you’re with during the day. If you don’t like that then, well there’s your problem.

I have 3 kids and my parents are ageing enough and I’m the only male heir that I’m now taking on the role of head of the family more and more. I also manage a branch at work so I have a lot of responsibility there too. It’s fun once you give in and start enjoying what you’re doing. As with most things mindset is everything.

The 60 hour week alone would wipe me out. You need a day to yourself and you’re going to have to bargain with your family to get it.

I don’t understand how other middle age men have time for an affair.

You are just overworked and therefore tired. 60h plus kids? It’s a matter of time when your physical and metal health collapse. First thing to do, consider how to move to a 40h per week job. My 4 year old and 1,5 year old sons sleep at 8 or 9 p.m. Could you change the kids habits so you all could go to sleep earlier and thus get more sleep?

Pro tip. Work 40 hours a week.

Hard to make any real conclusions or make any specific helpful recommendations/observations without making a lot of assumptions. If I were going to, though, I would say that it sounds like you’ve taken on too much and you’re burned/burning out. And it might be worth a little introspection to try and prioritize what’s important to you, then trim expenses and activities if there are any that can be cut.

When I see myself headed towards burn out, that’s what’s worked for me. Granted, this is still a lot of work and can take a bit of time and effort to get to a better place in life.

Sometimes there are low hanging fruit you can tackle. For example, some nights we just have cereal for dinner. Not the most nutritious thing, but easy to fix, easy to clean up (relatively speaking). Maybe it only amounts to 15 less minutes of work that night, but 15 less minutes of work goes a long way when you’re exhausted. Also, the kids are taught to help out with basic stuff like putting away toys, making beds, and even feeding the pets.

Another low hanging fruit is simply learning to say no (to yourself and others). If you’re the type that’s overwhelmed because you can’t help but take on more or you just can’t find yourself being content and enjoying the moment, then you’ve gotta put the work in there, realize you can’t keep it going or that it’s simply not worth it. Easy to say, I know.

A bit of an anecdote: A buddy of mine ended up having a health scare and basically cut back at work to the point where he qualified for various forms of government assistance. I know he wasn’t exactly proud of it, but it kept food on the table and a roof over his and the kids’ heads, and gave him the time and space to focus on his health and be more present for the kids.

I handle it just fine now, but I did lay some groundwork before kids to make sure my life was going to continue to be easy even with the added responsibility of parenting:

• Insignificant commute. I can leave my house and be at my desk at the office in about 10 minutes, even during rush hour, because the bike lanes still flow efficiently.
• Small home. I don’t want to fuck around with house maintenance or even cleaning up around the house any more than is absolutely necessary, so I don’t have excess rooms in the house and don’t have big spaces. I also don’t fuck with yard work so I have only a small patio with a few planters for a modest garden.
• Flexible career that I actually like. I have a decent chunk of work to do in any given week, but most of it can be done on my own schedule, so that I can start my day late or end my day early as needed, so long as I can find the time elsewhere to fill in as needed. This did take some work to find a career that I like and that actually complements my strengths (several complete resets in my 20’s and 30’s, including going to law school as an older student), and then advancing in that field long enough to where I just have credibility to get things done without other people supervising me. I do work more than 50 hours per week fairly regularly, but I largely do it on my terms.
• Money. My wife and I both earn more than average, and we were already rich before we had kids. That gave the flexibility to do things like take unpaid leave for each kid being born, paying for childcare when they were young, grabbing takeout on days when time is tight, etc.
• Social support network. We have some family nearby, and they can help in a pinch (and we in turn help them as necessary). Our neighborhood social group is amazing, with a lot of other parents and similarly aged kids who can provide the social and emotional support for navigating the very real challenges of parenting. We don’t feel like we’re doing things alone, and we have a village. Many of these relationships predate parenting, too, so in a sense we knew that we had that ecosystem of friends and family to continue to grow with (even if we wouldn’t have been able to predict in advance exactly which friendships would thrive and which would wither after kids, we had the baseline to be able to be flexible with that).

There were tradeoffs, to be sure. We were older than average when we had kids, and that might translate into lower energy levels for each stage of childhood, and may eventually mean that we get to enjoy less overlapping time as adults. We live in a small place so we do need to basically leave the house regularly so that our kids don’t get bored, and that’s more of a challenge in the winter when outdoor spaces aren’t all that pleasant. During COVID, while working 100% remotely, being close to the office wasn’t all that much of a perk.

And we got lucky on other things. Our children are healthy and (mostly) well behaved, so we don’t have to worry as much about a lot of things other parents have to deal with. We also really get along with our own parents, so there aren’t challenging dynamics with the grandparents/in laws.