Do you ever feel a wave of despair that your job is just never ending?

[whereisthestamina]

I'm not sure exactly how to express this, exactly. I'm talking mostly from the perspective of jobs like PR or marketing with ongoing never ending tasks that are never fully completed, with a line drawn under them. Sorry this probably makes no sense - I mean, yes, individual projects of course do wrap up but there is a wider sense of endlessness that I'm sure exists in plenty of jobs.

I am in poor health and suspect my lack of energy contributes to this feeling. But does anyone else ever get a sense of this never ending cycle of tasks and feel very stressed out by it?

You don't want something with puppies and kittens. Cat rescue is the most soul destroying thing in the world. It's the very definition of a never ending job. There are so many irresponsible non neutering owners out there that it doesn't matter how many we neuter, rescue or home, there will always be thousands more than we can ever deal with. I'm sure the dog world is the same. Maybe I'll join you with the flowers ....

I do more project type work in my role now, but before that it was regular work so same thing every month or every quarter and it felt endless.

Yes. Healthcare and it is getting worse.

I don't have a job where the day's tasks disappear at 5 pm, never to be seen again. Things are left, if I am off sick or on annual leave, things build up and up, no one covers.

Given we are offering a public funded service, no one seems to have the time to do anything anymore, with any kind of quality anyway, just fire fighting existing paperwork. Not just me but everyone is getting more and more stressed not sure how it can continue in the long term, it's urgent now.

I has this thought today OP.

In a similar industry - it's hard going to think of the endlessness of it all.

I work in charity and run a helpline. The calls are fine. But the more emails I respond to the more they reply.

I'm like ooh lush the inbox is empty then it fills up again. I feel like one of those salmon swimming upstream constantly 😀

Teaching, always! Trying to keep up with marking for 15 classes, meanwhile planning for and teaching those classes and meetings, own family to look after, put dc to bed then continue to work until past 11pm. Yes I totally agree we do work more than our paid for hours as we have to. X

All jobs that aren't dull and repetitive, are never-ending and due to our stupidly long lifespan, we have to do it for many decades to provide for retirement. It just can't be helped and it's easy to feel trapped.

You may need to become better at switching off when you get home. Get changed/shower, nice cup of tea and a nap if your kids are old enough, or you are tired enough. Take the dog out, walk to the shop and buy some nice bread, or flowers, don't check emails. Different clothes, bag, shoes, perfume for work than home. Try to do something enjoyable every night, even if it's just a book, doing your nails. Make sure that you get enough sleep. If you don't like your job, it's very easy to put off going to bed, because when you wake up, it will be tomorrow, but you'll just feel dreadful all day. Work is important, but don't let it invade your home. Don't spend time outside work with your work colleagues en masse. A Christmas do is OK, but that's it! Keep your work bag/laptop and any other work accoutrements out of sight.

Go on holiday at least once a year if you can afford it. A holiday is something tangible and enjoyable that comes from working and you deserve it.

This was definitely my experience.
Keeping your fingers crossed that there would be no dead children on your caseload.

On the WFH threads there are always posters that say that it doesn't matter if they do washing / go to the shops / watch TV etc on work time as long as the work is done. If they can get it done in half the time of someone else then it is irrelevant what they do with the rest of their time.

What are those jobs? The concept that my work can ever be finished is absolutely alien to me.

But back to my job, I cried myself to sleep last night because I just feel so stressed.

Yes. Academic here.

Not helped by the seemingly endless facility for students to request extensions for submission. My assessment period will now stretch well into the NY just in time for first examination boards and start of semester 2.

Yep my business is quarterly and it feels like Groundhog Day. I get paid really well and I have a lot of responsibilities.

I have got a lot better at switching off.

Yep cybersecurity, constant battles because no one really wants to think about it let alone put money and time into the boring parts of IT infrastructure and dev work that people can't even see. Standards and frameworks are always changing, buggers are always learning new ways to try to hack systems and steal data, client demands are increasing.....

On a bad day it feels like a never ending argument and more projects that I'll never get round to, on a good day it's exciting learning about new stuff and achieving goals.

As a freelancer, I had a brief period this year when the work just stopped. As did the money. I’m fine with never ending work! Though you do need boundaries and to stop at a reasonable time and do something else. Otherwise you can’t keep doing it.

Even when I had no work I still had plenty that needed doing. It’s not like I was on holiday.

yes work in community healthcare and is like this, the difficult/complex cases just gets replaced by another. I manage by compartmentalising my work/home time. Although very lucky work part time too so have a few days off work every week, used to find it much more difficult to relax in my time off work when worked more hours and always takes a day or 2 to wind down

Yep, urgent care /acute nursing. It's bloody relentless and just as one wave seems to subside another comes crashing down. I definitely won't be doing this job forever

All of these are a real eye-opener 💐

I’m not sure I have understood this properly.

Surely if your work had an end, you would be on a fixed term contract? A permanent job exists because the work is expected to be ongoing?

My job role will always be required, but that’s nothing that stresses me. When I retire, someone else will do it.

Social care. I've been doing it 23 years. Same problems (if just more of them and more severe) experienced by clients and in terms of budget/expectations/systemic problems). It's very demoralising. I want to retrain as a florist.

My thoughts exactly! Yes my job is never ending but that’s why I have a job. It links with a few of the roles others have mentioned, I think it’s something with a shelf life, but I’ll keep doing it until I move onto something else, someone will replace me and the job will go on.

Yes, I agree with this. Surely most jobs are a constant stream of work? Otherwise they'd be FTC as another poster said. I can't imagine a job where you have a list of tasks to tick off as complete and then sit around twiddling your thumbs until someone else gives you another list, yet still have enough autonomy to WFH and manage your own time.

I try to leave the job at work. Ita not going to change, same tasks will aways be there. Thats a tomorrow problem and focus what's infront of me

You should be grateful that the jobs are never ending. The longer you do them, you find more efficient ways to do tasks, as you are familiar with problems, when they crop up again you know what works and what doesn't. It also helps that you can plan for the future to some extent. If the jobs do come to an end, so does the need to pay you, so redundancy. I worked in retail for most of my working life, and until the last few years, when online shopping began to decimate the high street, it was constant. As soon as Xmas finished. January sale, then February massive trade show buying new stock for the new season, then Easter, which used to be as busy as Xmas, then into summer, and coping with staff holidays, and trying to fit in a few days holiday for ourselves. Septembet saw the start of Christmas for us, buying stock, increasing production to build up enough stock of what we would sell, then the 2 months of madness, then it started all over again. As online sales began to hit, and footfall in our city centre dropped, the business became unviable. We sold a lot online ourselves, but our suppliers started selling direct to customers on their own websites with much higher marketing budgets that we couldn't compete with. So that was the end of that, and 4 jobs gone.

Yep: PR and comms. I really miss working on magazines, where there was a real rise and fall in the work pattern and a sense of monthly accomplishment when an issue was put to bed and followed by a slow week. Then everything wrapped up for two weeks at Christmas and the whole building shut down, you really felt done. With a tangible outcome: the issue arriving! Digital journalism is a relentless slog to feed the content machine and PR, which I’m currently doing, equally just expands to fit the time. It feels like my domestic to do list, which gains 17 tasks a day while I’m only ever able to cross off ten. Aaargh.

I have dual role dealing with infectious disease. I get to treat my patients and then follow up through the public health side and see the case completed and closed down, its very satisfying. Obviously it doesnt always work out like that but it does often enough - I think that its why I like my job so much.

Is there any way you can work that kind of oversight into your role OP? It sounds as though you need 'closure' for want of a better word.