Sometimes it wears a suit into a boardroom. Sometimes it wears a headset at a reception desk. Sometimes it sits behind a computer, eating lunch with one hand and answering messages with the other.
The title changes. So does the paycheck. Across a company, from the CEO to the secretary, people can spend their days keeping everything moving while their own health slips further down the list.
What concerns me most is how ordinary that has started to look.
A missed lunch barely earns a mention. Working through a break becomes a habit. Answering one more message after dinner seems harmless enough.
Then tomorrow arrives, bringing another “one more.”
My name is Rod Stiles. I have watched the pressures of business grow over decades. My experience began in collision repair, but the conversation I want to have reaches into offices everywhere.
01Where I learned to see it
I was born and raised in Salinas, California. In 1977, when I was eleven, my parents opened our family’s first collision center.
I immediately took to the cars and the shop. I was fortunate to have loving parents who encouraged my curiosity and allowed me to learn the business at a young age.
By about sixteen, I knew I wanted to work in the office and deal with customers. My dad preferred the shop floor and running production, so our interests fit together naturally.
Early in my career, the office work had a straightforward rhythm: write estimates, order parts, and keep customers updated.
Then came Direct Repair Programs, more computers, and more detailed performance tracking. Insurance companies could compare shops on measures such as cycle time—how long repairs took from start to finish.
There was value in that. Better information encouraged improvement. Customers deserved quality repairs and good communication.
But the pace changed. We were learning new systems while doing the work, being measured while learning, and trying to get faster through it all.
In 2000, my parents retired, and I opened our second location, about forty miles from the first. Our family was fortunate to sell our locations in 2011.
Today, my work still takes me into shops weekly. I see the pressure on receptionists, estimators, managers, and owners. I notice lunches eaten at desks, smoking breaks, and long stretches with little movement among office staff.
Those observations give me a window into something much larger.
You do not need to work around damaged cars to recognize an overloaded working day.
02A calendar with no breathing room
Consider an ordinary office morning.
Before you settle into the first task, messages are waiting. A meeting interrupts the work. Another meeting creates more work. A request marked urgent arrives from someone who cannot see the other urgent requests.
By noon, you have been busy for hours and may barely have touched the task that mattered most.
Lunch moves beside the keyboard.
The afternoon fills with follow-ups, approvals, customer questions, and small problems that refuse to remain small. Work requiring concentration waits until the interruptions stop.
Sometimes that means staying late. Sometimes it means opening the laptop again at home.
No single event has to be a crisis. The strain comes from accumulation: another deadline, another decision, another task squeezed into time already spoken for.
Technology allows information to travel instantly. In many workplaces, that speed has become the expectation for the person receiving it.
But attention takes time. So does careful work.
A calendar can look impressively full while leaving very little room to think.
03Different titles, different pressures
A CEO may be weighing financial performance, difficult decisions, and the livelihoods of employees. Responsibility can follow that person home long after the office is quiet.
A department head has to translate ambitious targets into work a team can deliver.
A middle manager may face pressure from both directions: produce better results for leadership while supporting employees who already feel stretched.
An employee may be trying to work carefully while priorities keep changing. Finishing one assignment brings little relief when two more have appeared.
For a secretary, administrative assistant, or receptionist, much of the day may depend on other people’s needs. Calls, calendars, visitors, last-minute changes: the role requires courtesy and constant adjustment, often with limited control over the pace.
These experiences differ. Authority matters. So do pay, job security, flexibility, and the freedom to step away.
A senior leader may be able to rearrange a calendar. The person covering the front desk may need permission and someone to take over.
That difference belongs in any honest conversation about workplace health. Advice must account for the choices a person actually has.
04The cost of being dependable
Every office has people others rely on.
They remember the detail, catch the mistake, answer the difficult call, or stay long enough to finish. Their dependability becomes part of how the business functions.
More work may find its way to them because everyone knows they will handle it.
But can they say when the workload is too much? Is help available before their performance suffers? Does anyone ask what it takes to keep delivering?
We cannot assume someone is doing well simply because the work keeps getting done.
The World Health Organization identifies excessive workloads, limited control over work, long or inflexible hours, and inadequate support as risks to mental health. How a job is organized deserves attention alongside the person doing it. World Health Organization
People can take pride in their work and still struggle under its demands.
Sometimes that pride makes it harder to speak.
05Health gets whatever time is left
Few people deliberately decide to neglect themselves.
Usually, the choices feel reasonable in the moment.
There is no time to find a better lunch. The appointment can wait. The walk will happen tomorrow. Getting through this week becomes the priority.
Then the next week brings its own demands.
A temporary adjustment settles into a routine: long periods sitting, hurried meals, little time to decompress, and evenings still occupied by unfinished work.
I cannot tell how healthy someone is by looking at their lunch or watching them at a desk. I can wonder whether they feel they have a choice.
Can they step away? Can they take time for an appointment without feeling they are letting everyone down? Can they finish the day without carrying the entire office home in their thoughts?
For those of us over 35, work often shares the day with family responsibilities and commitments that cannot simply move to next week. Our health needs a place in that schedule, too.
That is one reason I want to build 35Forward: to help us examine the routines shaping our energy, strength, sleep, and peace of mind, then find changes that fit the lives we lead.
Before you read on, think about yesterday.
When did work push aside something you needed—a meal, some movement, a break, or time to switch off?
Choose one moment you would like to handle differently this week. What would make that possible: a change you can make yourself, or support you need from someone else?
Pressure wears different clothes.
06Where Selank enters the conversation
The pressure described in this article has also led some researchers to study Selank, a synthetic peptide, for possible effects on anxiety-related symptoms, mental fatigue, attention, and quality of life.
A small study involving 62 patients with generalized anxiety disorder or neurasthenia reported anxiety-reducing effects and possible anti-fatigue and psychostimulant effects. Other limited clinical research has explored Selank alongside standard anxiety medication, while laboratory and animal studies have examined possible effects involving GABA-related signaling and other biological pathways. Selank clinical study
Those findings are possibilities, not established benefits. The available human studies are small, largely older, and concentrated within a limited research network. They do not establish that Selank improves ordinary workplace stress, focus, resilience, or performance in the general population.
Selank is not FDA-approved for any use in the United States. Long-term safety, product quality, appropriate dosing, and interactions remain uncertain, and a product sold online for research should not be treated as a medicine or used as a substitute for professional care. FDA safety information
For readers who want to follow lawful, independent, non-human peptide research, SAVREN Laboratories offers research-use materials with batch documentation to review. 35 Forward readers can create an account and use code 35Forward for 35% off their first order.
Editorial disclosure: SAVREN is specifically recommended by 35 Forward. SAVREN products are sold for research use only and are not medicines or intended for human use.
07What leadership makes possible
A company communicates its priorities through everyday decisions.
Employees notice whether managers take breaks. They notice who gets praised, who stays late, and what happens when someone says they are at capacity.
A late-night message may feel routine to the executive sending it. To an employee uncertain about expectations, it may feel like an instruction to start working again.
Clear expectations can remove some of that uncertainty. Leaders can explain when a response is needed, what counts as urgent, and which work should take priority when everything cannot be done at once.
They can also examine the calendar.
Does every meeting need everyone invited? Is enough time left to complete the work being discussed? Are deadlines realistic? Is there coverage that allows people to eat away from their desks?
These decisions shape the working day more directly than a general reminder to “take care of yourself.”
Encouraging breaks means arranging the work so people can take them. Supporting time off means considering who will carry the workload while someone is away.
Senior leaders need room to recover as well. Their example helps establish what employees believe is acceptable throughout the company.
08Start with the day you have
There is also value in looking honestly at our own routines.
When do you eat? How much do you move? What happens between finishing work and going to sleep? Which part of taking care of yourself repeatedly gets postponed?
Choose one place to begin.
That might mean eating a meal away from the screen, taking a short walk when coverage allows, or discussing priorities with a manager before the workload becomes unmanageable.
For someone with more control over their schedule, it might mean leaving space between meetings or establishing a clearer end to the day.
Regular physical activity can support sleep and mental health. Even a single session of moderate-to-vigorous activity can reduce short-term feelings of anxiety. Movement has a useful place in the working week, alongside attention to the conditions creating the pressure. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The first change needs to be realistic enough to repeat.
It also helps to make the need visible. A conversation about coverage, workload, or after-hours expectations may create room that determination alone cannot.
09Make an honest answer welcome
“How are you doing?”
We ask it so often that we sometimes move on before the answer arrives.
At work, an honest answer can feel risky. Someone may worry about appearing incapable, losing an opportunity, or becoming the person who cannot keep up.
Asking employees to speak openly means showing, through the response, that speaking was worthwhile.
Sometimes the next step is a clearer priority or a change in workload. Sometimes a person needs support from a qualified professional. Sometimes both are needed.
Persistent difficulties with mood, anxiety, sleep, or daily functioning deserve attention. Assuming everything is “just stress” can delay a conversation that needs to happen.
That applies throughout the organization, including to the people expected to have all the answers.
A corner office does not remove the need for support. Neither should a junior title make someone’s concerns easier to overlook.
10A way forward
My introduction to business came through my parents, a family shop, and the chance to learn.
Over the years, I watched expectations grow and working days fill. Now I want to look more closely at what those days ask of the people inside them.
That is part of what I want 35Forward to explore: how we care for our physical and mental health while meeting the responsibilities of adult life.
Our work matters. So do the hours around it—the time with family, the energy for friendships, and the ability to enjoy something beyond the next deadline.
For the CEO, the manager, the secretary, and everyone between, I would begin with the same question:
What part of your health keeps getting postponed because work comes first?
Choose one small change, or one conversation that could make room for it, and give it a place on your calendar.
If you recognize your working day in this story, the next step is to look more closely at its familiar routines. In “What Is Your Office Routine Doing to the Rest of You?”, we will explore how sitting, screen time, hurried meals, and work pressure fit together—and where you might begin.
Our work at 35Forward starts there: with the life you have and a practical step you can take within it.
Continue reading: What Is Your Office Routine Doing to the Rest of You?