Purdue University

What Is Intuitive Working? Purdue Daniels Explains

Maybe you’ve heard of intuitive eating, which is all about listening to your body’s own hunger cues rather than external diet norms? However, have you heard of intuitive working?

Purdue Daniels’s professor Kate Zipay and faculty director Allison Gabriel have coined this progressive idea out of the school’s Center for Working Well. Intuitive eating is a concept centered around working on a schedule based on your own personal work-related needs rather than being driven by organizational norms, social pressure, or feelings of guilt.

Exhaustion, burnout, and stress in the workplace have been at a high in the U.S. Last year, the APA found that the majority of workers reported emotional exhaustion and lack of motivation, and two believe we need intuitive working now more than ever.

More and more researchers and professors are looking at how we in the U.S. might adopt other countries’ healthy habits of work/life balance, and Zipay and Gabriel believe intuitive working is where we are headed.

‘OUR IDEAS ARE IMPACTFUL’

Others believe in them too. The two just received a $50,000 grant towards their initiative from BetterUp – a platform of similar nature that offers personalized coaching, mental health support, and professional development.

“We see this prize as signaling that our ideas are impactful, and that the work we are doing at the Center for Working Well is important and being recognized by other thought leaders on we-being at work,” says Gabriel.