You Don’t Need Another New Year’s Resolution: Just a Second Job — and Maybe More Sleep

By Kevin Kolodziejski 

In the novel I’m reading, a woman rises from her chair and tells the detective that her bad back doesn’t allow her to sit for long anymore. That the “most essential hour” of her day is the one she spends in the yoga studio. The detective tells her that a friend of his once said that having a bad back is like having a second job.

The woman replies, “Sounds like a wise man.” The detective says the friend is a female. “I’m not surprised,” she adds.

Are You Surprised?

No, not about the friend’s gender, but that you’re reading about it in this cycling column. Or is this the sort of seemingly off-kilter intro you’ve come to expect in my biweekly attempt to be a wise man?

Whatever the case, here comes the one to show today’s title is not off-kilter at all but, as a French cyclist would say, “parfait.” That whether it be today or a few days from now, you don’t need to make another New Year’s resolution. Just get a second job — and maybe more sleep. Unless, that is, you’ve heeded advice I’ve given before and do this very lucrative type of moonlighting already.

Yet this second job’s not the sort of employment that leads to an automatic deposit in your checking account, though there certainly is a payout.

The Second Job’s Payout

It’s the same as doing yoga an hour each day to keep a bad back in check. Or cycling to ease a weary mind or achey knees. You get paid in better mental and physical health. So what exactly does this job entail?

That’s hard to catalog, for it’s so extensive that any job recruiter would struggle to write an all-encompassing description of it. What’s easier to write is that all the tasks you perform while doing it are directly at odds with the job you take on after making a New Year’s resolution. A job, by the way, that two out of every three people quit before Presidents’ Day.

The Second Job’s Description

Achieving a specific and singular end result, the goal of any New Year’s resolution, is not what this second job’s about. Instead, it’s a continual process. There’s never a resolution at any time of the year, just a progression throughout the year that leads to a succession of health dividends.

A large part of this second job requires you to intelligently experiment and experiment and experiment — but only after you evaluate the latest findings in the fields of health and cycling and fitness and further consider the ones that affect you. Such as the recent research performed at the School of Nursing at Oregon Health & Science University and published in the December 2024 issue of Sleep Advances. Sleep research that’s certain to interest you since I’m certain you’d rather live longer than shorter and avoid the sorts of diseases linked to an early demise.

The New Sleep Research

As Andrew McHill, PhD, associate professor and director of the Sleep, Chronobiology, and Health Laboratory in the School of Nursing at Oregon Health & Science University, explains to Corrie Pelc in an article for Medical News Today, he got the impetus for this research simply because he wants to have a positive impact on his local community. That led him to wonder about the sleep patterns there and throughout his home state of Oregon, which led him and his colleagues to analyze data contained in the 2019-2025 Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Systems surveys.

What they found to be true for adults in Oregon, in the words of a doctor not involved in the research, Pakkay Ngai, MD, medical director for the Sleep-Wake Center at Palisades Medical Center in New Jersey, was “stunning and powerful.” So the researchers expanded the parameters of the study to encompass adults in all 50 states. And when considering all 50 states as a whole, they found more of the same.

The Study’s Major Takeaway

That what the researchers deemed to be insufficient sleep — defined as less than seven hours of sleep per night on a regular basis — had a more significant impact on life expectancy than type of diet, degree of physical activity, or amount of social isolation. Moreover, the only lifestyle factor found to affect life expectancy negatively more than inadequate sleep was smoking. Stunning and powerful research? I’ll say.

I’ll also say something about the National Sleep Foundation’s 2025 Sleep in America Poll that found 60 percent of American adults believe the amount of sleep they get is inadequate. That the key word is “believe,” for I believe most people mistakenly believe they need less sleep than is optimal. Therefore, the percentage of American adults who truly would benefit from more sleep is probably greater.

Now that we’ve approached the end of this column, ask yourself if your approach to health and fitness is right. For if it is, you approach it as your second job and find it pays handsomely.

And find there’s no reason to make New Year’s resolutions — or make up for lost sleep on weekends.

---

Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.

A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.