This is your sign to take a sip of water

Taking care of your basic needs takes care of everything else.

How did you sleep last night? Have you seen the outside of your apartment today? Have you moved your limbs? Have you… had a meal? When was the last time you drank a full glass of water?

Don’t mean to crowd you with questions, but if you haven’t noticed yet, I’m trying to make a point. If you’re like…well, most, you’re in the habit of ditching your basic human needs during your work day. Project urgency, overloaded days, fear-based office culture, and a work-as-worth mindset all have roles to play in why we often leave the care of our bodies last on the priority list. 

All that, and the fact that resources and collective teachings on the subject of body, mental and emotional health as pillars for the rest of our lives weren’t broadly taught when we (20, 30, 40-somethings) were in school. 

Of course, we grow up with the basics on basic needs. The fact that we can only survive about a week without water has been living rent-free in my mind since the 6th grade. We get that there are some non-negotiables to general human aliveness. Some of us (fellow psych minors, hi!) even got the crash course on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs which colors in a ton. It explains, in most simple terms: if we don’t have x, we can’t get y. If we have x, we get y. And up the pyramid, it goes. It’s an incredible conceptual reference, but far less frequently taught as a put-it-into-practice guide.

Your Body on Burnout

Now that we’re grown-ups, in charge of our own bodies, the absolute need for basic needs to nourish the rest of our lives can get a little lost. And for a fascinating reason. You ever consider yourself a workaholic? Join the club, your body is the president. Every bone and organ. Every nerve and muscle. Each microscopic cell has a one-track mind devotion to its very important job, which is to keep you alive. 

So, if for example, you spend 3 days on a diet of oat-iced coffee, half a bottle of water, and peanut butter toast because YOU’RE BUSY, your body is gonna do what it can to make sure the machine keeps running. In the short term, our subconscious mind is like, oh cool, I am invincible, I don’t need to really pay attention or spend time drinking more water or eating anything the color green, or purple, or red for that matter. BEIGE IS FINE. 

But listen, in the long run, your body, like any over-assigned, burnt-out workaholic, is going to start cutting corners to make things tick. And, if we’re following Maslow’s hierarchy (signed, sealed, delivered research-wise), the stuff to get the boot is your mental health, ability to connect to people you love, and general well-being. And that’s, um, wildly important stuff. 

Fuel Your Body, Fuel Your Work Day

Though total mental crumble likely won’t happen if you forget to go outside for a day or skip yoga for two weeks, you will notice it in other small ways, and your team members might notice it too. When we aren’t tending to our needs, our mental clarity suffers, making tasks harder to complete, our creativity plummets and our work becomes uninspired, and our patience, kindness, and connectedness with our colleagues (with whom we spend most of our days interacting) takes a huge toll.

The real kicker? If we aren’t in the habit of taking care of ourselves, taking responsibility into our own grown-ass adult hands, we’re likely to find someone to blame for not doing it for us. Cue resentment zone, and if you’ve been reading Nice Work for a while, you know we don’t like to touch that territory with a 75-foot pole.

Settle in. Take a freaking sip of water. Sit on the floor and stretch while you read the rest of this. Here are 5 basic human needs that your workday can’t go without.

1. Eat + Drink

When our physiological needs, like hunger or thirst, start to pop up, it triggers our brains into an appropriate version of survival mode. Hunger overwhelms our system and processing function slows around ideas, tasks, and interactive capability. If met swiftly, we’re rewarded with refueled and rejuvenated brain function. If left unattended, the body starts to run on fumes, and our survival brain signals us to react to all things in our way hard and fast. There is no space for a mindful response. Everything feels dire. And look, while a lot of us may be conditioned to think that working under many different types of pressure is fine and manageable, our most fulfilled and creative work happens when we’re in a state of ease. Eating lunch helps.

2. Sleep

Some of the most vital work our body moves through happens when we’re unconscious, including deep cognitive support that’s necessary for our attention spans, memory, reaction speed, and mood. Generally, we know what it feels like when our brain is sharp and when it’s not. When it comes to sleep patterns, we’re all a little different, and our unique bodies could thrive on anywhere from 7 to 9+ hours of sleep nightly. Ideally, we get our perfect cocktail of sleep every night, but for the nights our sleep is modified (aka decreased), so should the expectations of our work the next day. If it so happens that the most important career day of your life is about to run on 3 hours of sleep, let’s consult number 3 below!

3. Sun

TBH, I’m not huge on fast hacks, but this one fascinates me. Regulating our sleep routines helps us regulate our bodies' natural circadian rhythm, and so does our relationship with the sun. If you’ve slept poorly, but need to rally for a full day, getting about 15 minutes of morning sunshine signals to your brain that it’s time to be awake and alert. Even if you’ve got to drag your dead-tired body to the door with your blanket still in tow, it’s gonna help you do your day. Plus, getting sunshine first thing in the morning will help re-regulate your body to sleep better the next night and get you back on track.

Also, vitamin D. Precious, sacred, happiness-inducing, sunshine-created vitamin D. Do I need to say more?

4. Move

Our bodies are energetic sacks that need to be exercised. If not, all that energy builds up and creates a special brand of restlessness that can be hugely detrimental to our ability to focus on our work, let alone meet our day’s happenings with a sense of balance and calm. When we move, we increase blood flow that lights up our brains, and just like any other muscle, the more time we spend activating it in interesting ways, the stronger it gets. Any type of movement, whether a long walk, yoga, boxing or dancing also increases our body's natural production and regulation of endorphins, the feel-good neurotransmitter that’s of top-notch value for stress reduction. 

5. Pause

Best for last, in my opinion. Speeding through tasks, with no stops may work for some, but for most of us, we only do things that way because we think we have to. Pressure to perform and deliver in shrinking time spans can make us feel like the only way to get work done is right here, right now, very quickly. But if you’re human (and you are!) the more time you spend on any particular project, the more blindspots you’re likely to have. Taking a pause from your work makes space for your brain to rest and revisit with a fresh perspective and I bet, a final product you’ll be more satisfied with in the end.

When it comes down to it, our bodies know best, and though fundamentally physiological, building a healthy basic needs routine into our workday has a direct effect on our mind and emotional functioning. And we need that functioning to be healthy to have a fulfilling relationship with our work. Point blank. 

Time for that water refill,

Jade

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Links We Love

Do a deep dive into why taking care of your body's basic needs takes care of everything else. What else should we be reading?

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

Quench by Dana Cohen + Gina Bria

Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor (though this basic need isn’t covered in this particular newsletter, it’s a fascinating addition that demonstrates the sheer power we have to improve our lives with our body’s built-in tool kit)