In occupational therapy (OT), the term "occupation" encompasses much more than just a job. It refers to the everyday activities that people want and need to do to live a meaningful life.
That can include making a cup of coffee, tying shoelaces, gardening, or playing board games with friends. For students studying OT, it's essential to understand that therapy doesn't always look like exercises with resistance bands or handwriting practice.
In many cases, therapy means helping someone get back to living, one everyday task at a time.
What Are Occupations
Occupations are the meaningful activities that people engage in every day, which give their lives meaning and purpose.
Occupations can be individual activities or involve activities with family members or friends. Occupations occur at home, work, school, and in the community.
Occupations fall into multiple categories:
- Activities of daily living (ADLs), including bathing, dressing, toileting, and feeding
- Instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), including driving and mobility, caring for others, health, and financial management
- Rest and Sleep, including sleep preparation and participation
- Education, formal and informal
- Work, with or without financial reward
- Play
- Leisure
- Social participation
Not all activities are considered occupations. The key difference between a regular activity and an activity that counts as an occupation is that occupation-based activities are meaningful.
For example, doing rote exercises to recover from a hand injury may be a necessary activity, but may not be personally meaningful. Completing a puzzle, however, helps the client develop fine motor skills and strength while also being a meaningful activity. Asking an elementary school child to copy a list of words to practice handwriting isn't meaningful, but writing a sentence about their favorite summer activity is meaningful.
What activities are meaningful? The answer will vary for each person, which is why occupational therapy is such a personalized health care profession.
How Everyday Activities Become Therapy
Occupational therapy intervention involves utilizing occupations and meaningful activities to address a client's skills and support their overall health and well-being.
These activities motivate clients to participate, promoting engagement and participation.
Occupations are used to promote health and well-being and include any meaningful activity a person wants or needs to accomplish. Examples include self-care, activities of daily living, work, and caring for family.
Occupational therapy practitioners often use the tasks people already perform as the basis for intervention to support clients in adapting to new conditions and building or regaining skills. These everyday occupations serve as both the method of intervention and the goal of therapy.
For example:
- Folding laundry can be used to improve upper-body strength, visual scanning, and sequencing skills.
- Preparing a sandwich can help develop fine motor coordination, attention, and sequencing skills.
- Playing a game with peers can help build social interaction skills and self-regulation skills.
Seeing Things Through an OT Lens
For students, this means learning to recognize the therapeutic potential in ordinary settings. A kitchen is more than a place to cook. It becomes a space for practicing mobility, cognitive recall, and time management.
A city bus route becomes an opportunity to teach community navigation and problem-solving.
In the classroom or during fieldwork, students may be asked to design interventions based on everyday roles and routines. For instance: helping a parent return to their morning routine may involve coaching on energy conservation, using adaptive tools, or introducing new sequencing techniques to enhance their routine.
Students must also consider the cultural context in which they are learning. Not all occupations carry the same meaning across clients. What is essential for one person may be irrelevant to another.
Therapy Outside of the Clinic
Occupational therapy doesn't need to be confined to a hospital or healthcare setting. One of the greatest strengths of the profession is the ability to meet people where they are, across settings.
By using real-life environments and familiar tasks, therapy becomes more relevant and easier to apply to daily routines.
Occupational therapy services are provided to people of all ages in various settings, including homes, community settings, nursing homes, primary care offices, and any location where daily activities occur.
Meaningful Occupations and Occupational Therapy
The occupational therapy mindset is that everyday life is the therapy toolkit. Activities like playing cards, brushing hair, or sorting groceries may seem too simple to be therapeutic.
Still, they can be precisely what is needed to motivate a client to participate, and participation improves outcomes.
The heart of occupational therapy is helping people do what matters to them. By viewing ordinary life as extraordinary in its therapeutic value, future practitioners can build more effective, empowering, and personalized care plans.
In OT, what counts as an occupation is what matters to the client.
