Unlike physical labour, it seems to me that mental labour is categorically more elastic or rather more forgiving in its boundaries.
In terms of limitations, the latter can be stretched a bit. I can push through mental fatigue with some element of willpower or just sheer stubbornness to work late into the night on a problem that won't let me go.
Whereas the former, i.e., physical labour, doesn't really yield much beyond what the body can physically sustain. There's a hard ceiling. My back would scream in protest and no amount of mental determination will let me lift that weight one more time, so to speak.
That said, this is in no way implies that mental work is somehow superior or less demanding.
Needed Anchor
If anything, the flexibility of mental labour can be its own trap as could be seen when precisely because we can keep going that we often do, long past the point of diminishing returns.
I've just noticed and observed recently that when the body is tired, it often drags the mind with it, without the latter not necessarily having exhausted itself independently.
I would like to achieve a separation of sorts between them, however, I'm not sure if that's doable to the expectations that I have about it.
After a day of physical work, say renovating a house, there's always this pleasant mental fog that settles in. The brain doesn't necessarily want to think and it's been pulled into the body's rhythm of fatigue.
The reverse can also be true, via tension and stress. A day spent wrestling with complex mental problems can leave the body wound tight as a spring, even though it hasn't moved much at all.
I think physically intensive labour has a knack for silencing the mind, at least temporarily. You can't be overthinking your life choices while you're focused on not dropping something heavy on your foot.
The body insists on near absolute attention on the work at hard, almost like a forced presence.
Maybe this is another reminder that multitasking, for the most part, can't be sustainable without significant costs to quality and wellbeing. The brain might trick us into thinking we're doing two things at once, but we're really just switching rapidly between tasks.
I personally prefer it as a temporary phase when the situation demands it. Say, when managing household chaos while dinner's burning and someone's at the door. But as a default mode? Exhausting.
Odd Imbalance
Our modern predicament of the sedentary nature of so much of contemporary work has created an existence of mental labour domination, which happens in the most physically static way possible. Sitting. Staring at screens. Hours upon hours of it.
When observed, at least to me, there's something fundamentally odd about this arrangement.
Our bodies are designed for movement. Even a century ago, most work involved significant physical component. Now, we've gradually severed mental exertion from physical activity almost completely for huge swaths of the workforce.
And I think this creates an also odd imbalance. The mental elasticity I mentioned earlier becomes dangerous when there's no physical fatigue to naturally limit it.
Behind a screen, you can just keep going. Since, the work is infinite, or at least feels that way.
Meanwhile, our bodies are restless, understimulated, holding all that mental tension with nowhere for it to go.
We end the day too tired to think clearly, yet somehow also too wired to truly rest. It's the worst of both worlds.
I've noticed this in myself on numerous occasions. On days when I'm purely doing screen-based work, there's this particular quality of tiredness by evening that feels incomplete.
My mind gets fried while the body feels vaguely anxious, like it's been waiting all day for something that never came. What's that something? I can't quite name it, but it feels like the body's been denied its vote in how the day unfolds.
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