Work and Stress

After about a week at work, it's blindingly obvious that it's not very good for health. Stress has been blamed for everything from natural disasters such as earthquakes (stress at points where tectonic plates meet) to serial killers (school schooters and stabbers must have been pretty stressed up) to suicide cases (nothing new there). Work causes stress, and by work I mean a chore that you don't actually like doing, but you do it for money, or simply because you're forced to, like half the population in singapore. Though they'd like you to think you're doing it for pride, honour, glory, family, friends, country, security, society, anything but forced labour.

Back to stress. It differs very much in the work that is bring done, but one can tell the nature of the work from the stress levels. Let's illustrate an example in a graph, because they make everything look professional, and everyone fall asleep.
























The x-axis shows the time, and the y axis shows stress levels. I would believe stress is normally measured by blood pressure, but in this case i shall use cm^3 instead, the assumption being that if the stress levels are more than the volume of the brain, the brain will just explode. But i digress.

This graph depicts the profile of someone who goes "above self, beyond duty, many extras". The day starts off relatively calmly at 8am. Optimism is in the air, it is going to a great day of accomplishment and satisfaction, and you have the world at your feet. It's as if everyone standing up is giving you a standing ovation to celebrate your messianic presence at work. You enjoy the peaceful walk to your office, and your stress levels instantly increase upon seeing that stack of paper on your table. But sitting at the table, surrounded by your dear friends Printer, Computer, Pen and Paper, it's impossible not to get a warm feeling of familiarity. Getting 'in the zone', one draws up a to-do list and it's almost like conquering the world. On a high, adrenaline rush, it seems as though one can finally reach the holy grail of productivity. Thus, the stress levels remain relatively stable till about 12.

Then, it's time for lunch, time to think about where to eat. A little stressful sometimes, especially when the food sucks, but it's not really a problem. After lunch, it gets really tiring, and all that has been done for the day is the to-do list. So it's a dilemna. To sleep or not to sleep? If you sleep, precious time is lost, and if you don't, you're incapacitated mentally.

And as you decide, time ticks by anyway oblivious to your whining, and in the end you fall asleep anyway, because it's hard to stay awake. Wake up at 3, and realise it's really really close to the magical time of 5pm. Try to change the world again, but people won't pick up your calls, or not in, or whatever. You realise that it's ultimately futile, and continue to lay in a collapsed heap at your desk. That is, until 5pm acutually hits like a sledgehammer to your frontal cortex. There are 2 options:

a) fuck off and go home

b) stay and work and feel pathetic

b is the option shown by the graph above, because when 6pm hits and then 7pm, there's an increasing sense of desperation as each hour at work leads to one less hour at home enjoying. And finally, the brain can't take it anymore and explodes, leading to a bunch of happy retards running around at work. And that is the end state.