Many cases of tiredness are due to stress, not enough sleep, poor diet and other lifestyle factors. Try these self-help tips to restore your energy levels.
If you feel you're suffering from fatigue, which is an overwhelming tiredness that isn't relieved by rest and sleep, you may have an underlying medical condition. Consult a GP for advice.
A good way to keep up your energy through the day is to eat regular meals and healthy snacks every 3 to 4 hours, rather than a large meal less often.
Read more about healthy eating.
You might feel that exercise is the last thing on your mind. But, in fact, regular exercise will make you feel less tired in the long run, so you'll have more energy.
Even a single 15-minute walk can give you an energy boost, and the benefits increase with more frequent physical activity.
Start with a small amount of exercise. Build it up gradually over weeks and months until you reach the recommended goal of 2 hours 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, such as cycling or fast walking, every week.
Read more about starting exercise.
Find out the physical activity guidelines for adults.
If your body is carrying excess weight, it can be exhausting. It also puts extra strain on your heart, which can make you tired. Lose weight and you'll feel much more energetic.
Apart from eating healthily, the best way to lose weight and keep it off is to be more active and do more exercise.
Read more about how to lose weight.
Many people don't get the sleep they need to stay alert through the day.
The website of the Royal College of Psychiatrists has information on sleeping well.
Tips for sleeping well include:
Stress uses up a lot of energy. Try to introduce relaxing activities into your day. This could be:
Whatever relaxes you will improve your energy.
Read more about how to relieve stress.
There's some evidence that talking therapies such as counselling or cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) might help to fight fatigue, or tiredness caused by stress, anxiety or low mood.
See a GP for a referral for talking treatment on the NHS, or for advice on seeing a private therapist.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists recommends that anyone feeling tired should cut out caffeine. It says the best way to do this is to gradually stop having all caffeine drinks over a 3-week period.
Caffeine is found in:
Try to stay off caffeine completely for a month to see if you feel less tired without it.
You may find that not consuming caffeine gives you headaches. If this happens, cut down more slowly on the amount of caffeine that you drink.
Although a couple of glasses of wine in the evening can help you fall asleep, you sleep less deeply after drinking alcohol. The next day you'll be tired, even if you sleep a full 8 hours.
Cut down on alcohol before bedtime. You'll get a better night's rest and have more energy.
The NHS recommends that men and women should not regularly drink more than 14 units a week, which is equivalent to 6 pints of average-strength beer or 10 small glasses of low-strength wine.
Try to have several alcohol-free days each week.
Read more about how to cut down on alcohol.
Sometimes you feel tired simply because you're mildly dehydrated.
A glass of water will do the trick, especially after exercise.
Read about healthy drinks.
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Fatigue is a feeling that you're chronically tired - mentally and physically.
It can be caused by a number of factors, including unhealthy lifestyle choices, workplace problems and stress.
There are many different ways you can boost your energy, but see your health practitioner first to make sure you don't have an underlying medical problem.
Food, which gives us energy, is broken down by the digestive system. Some elements, such as water, are absorbed through the stomach. The rest are absorbed through the small intestine.
The body's preferred energy source is glucose, from carbohydrates , but it can also use fatty acids (from fats) and amino acids (from proteins). Glucose is delivered to virtually every cell in the body by the bloodstream, and is then burned with oxygen to produce energy.
Hormones control every step in this process; for example, the pancreas makes the hormone insulin, which helps to control blood sugar levels.
If you want more energy, look at your diet and make sure you're following these basic guidelines:
Low calorie diets or diets that severely restrict carbohydrates don't contain enough energy for your body's needs. The typical crash diet also deprives the body of nutrients such as vitamins, minerals and trace elements.A common cause of fatigue is not enough sleep, or poor quality sleep. Suggestions include:
Adults need about 8 hours per night.
Take steps to address your work problems. A good place to start is to talk with your human resources officer.Studies suggest that between 50 and 80% of fatigue cases are mainly due to psychological factors. Suggestions include:
Are you so preoccupied with commitments and pressures that you don't give yourself enough time for fun? Laughter is one of the best energy boosters around.Most people feel drowsy after lunch. This mid-afternoon drop in energy levels is linked to the brain's circadian rhythm and is 'hard wired' into the human body. Preventing this drop in energy may be impossible, but there are ways to reduce the slump, including:
**This information was adapted from the 'Go for your life' campaign with permission by the Victorian Government, Melbourne, Australia
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Last Updated: November 4, 2013
The horse worked best on the collective farm, but it never became the chairman.
Even the most beloved work, which you are ready to do 24 hours a day and even for free, is tiring. And fatigue from your favorite work is the most dangerous thing. The brain is completely immersed in the performance of tasks and stubbornly refuses to accept the fact that it is time to rest, while the body falls asleep on the go, touches every first corner or door frame. For some reason, it is generally accepted that the person who is most tired all day on his feet or engaged in physical labor.
But sedentary work in the office, and creative pursuits, and even a housewife's day can end with a fall on the sofa with no legs. We tell you how not to fall asleep in clothes after a working day. nine0009
No, seriously. Take a shower, dry your hair so that in the morning you don’t pacify the nest on your head. If you take lunch to work with you, collect a container in advance and put it in the refrigerator. And go to bed on time.
The brain gets tired of multitasking, but relaxes with a change of activity. When you're doing your chores, finishing your coffee, answering customers on the phone, and writing a message to a friend with your free hand, you won't do any of those things well. Try turning off all distracting alerts, set a timer, and do one thing for at least half an hour. If you are distracted by messages in social networks, we rearrange the timer for another half an hour ahead. Time is up, you did everything - well done, go outside to unwind and breathe fresh air.
The main rule during the break is not to do anything related to work. nine0007
“I don't have time to do everything, so I'm hardly special. Planning helps, consisting of the following lists:
"Cases" - we write everything down there;
“To-do for the week” – we transfer there on Sunday from the “To-do” list what needs to be done during the week;
“To do for the day” – we transfer there in the evening from the “To do for the week” list what needs to be done the next day. nine0009
Actually, I still have things to do for the month, but I just can't start using them systematically.
There are also separate lists:
Chronos - something that is tied to time. Separately, this list live kicking me or someone else. For example, to check every day whether OKVED has appeared or to kick Kirill on procurement, because he promised to do one thing on a long weekend, but did not specify when exactly.
Kairos - something that is tied to a circumstance or place. For example, buy a heater if there is a dubak in the office for two days in a row. Pick up the Unified State Register of Legal Entities when I'm at the tax office. I won’t go to the tax office specially for a sheet, this circumstance makes the task a kairos. nine0009
I am motivated by the fact that my obligations have an iron discipline: I need to pay my salary on 5 and 20, rent - no later than the 1st of the month, and insurance premiums - no later than the 15th of the next month.
The deadline is in a week, and the first five days you don't take any steps, and on the sixth day you throw yourself into the task with your head. Perhaps you will do everything, but take pity on your nerves. The realization that you overcame your laziness, sat down and did it, is much more pleasant than submitting a project five minutes before the deadline. Postponing things for the evening is also an insidious thing.
It is better to do all the hard work in the morning with a fresh mind, because in the evening you will definitely want to relax. nine0009
Auto-suggestion and primary effect say that caffeine invigorates and relieves fatigue. A person who works all night long automatically reaches for coffee, because he is sure that in this way he will have strength, his mood will improve, and fatigue will pass. But these effects are illusory. Caffeine does not solve the problem of fatigue. Hundreds of examples should appear here, how you drank coffee and immediately became more active, but here's what actually happened: the body remained tired even after a cup of coffee, only the reaction and reflexes were temporarily aggravated, which after some time decreased to a lower level, than before coffee. A false sense of cheerfulness sucks even more strength. nine0007
“You have to really love what you do, then time will work for you.
Every day I go to the news, make programs and host Emergency Call. From time to time I conduct classes at the Teleshko television school and go in for dancing. Weekdays and weekends (I don’t have the latter) are scheduled literally by the minute. I always make a list of things to do in the order of “immediate urgent” to “not very important”. I have dozens of notebooks: one for exclusively working affairs, another for family and household affairs, the third for birthdays and important dates. There is simply a diary where everything flocks. nine0009
There is one more thing, and I'm just sure that it works, although it is very difficult - you have to get up early. Even on weekends. In order not to rush anywhere, have time to have a calm breakfast, think over and streamline your plans for the day - and go ahead. Of course, I can lie all day, but then my conscience begins to torment me. Sometimes, on the weekend, I watch TV shows and crochet napkins all day. But it's also hard to sit back, starts eating a worm for wasted time.
With a daily intense rhythm, the body can take such long stops as stress and a bell that something has gone wrong.” nine0009
Dropping home on Friday night to change and go to a bar or club with friends to celebrate the end of the work week is a good idea, but not the best. Spend at least an hour alone with yourself in a quiet place. Take a walk in the park after work, ride a bike or just read. The only thing you should definitely not do is sit down at home at the monitor and surf the Internet again. Give your brain a break from people, noise and endless information. nine0009
with their labor. There are several rules for this. The state of engagement occurs in two cases: either if you are solving a problem that is more difficult than the previous one, or in the process of solving a problem you need more complex skills than those that you have.
For example, you can only knit scarves. In order to get into the state of flow, you either need to knit some more complex pattern, such as a sweater. Or knit the scarf in some more complex pattern or in some new way, for example, using your own hands instead of knitting needles. nine0009
If a person performs the same task day after day without complicating it, he becomes bored and gets tired quickly. If he does not have the necessary level of development of skills to perform any task, then due to severe anxiety, he may not start work at all. This fear will hurt both the task and the person's self-esteem.
Challenge yourself with more difficult problems than you have ever solved before, or make your own problem-solving skills more difficult. Even if you do the same thing every day, you can always come up with something to complicate your own activities. There are many videos on the Internet about how people of the most ordinary professions do it: cooks deftly juggle knives, gardeners instantly tidy up overgrown bushes and trees, drivers of long vehicles turn around at the narrowest intersections with two turns of the steering wheel.
Be creative: think about how you can complicate the tasks you are solving, and go for it! Even if you get tired in the process of mastering a complicated technique, the power of your satisfaction will be so great that the fatigue will be pleasant, not destructive. nine0009
Change activities regularly. The best rest is a change of activity. And this is proved by numerous psychological experiments. A person keeps his attention on one thing only for 15 minutes, attention works as if by itself. And after 15 minutes, the focus of excitation in the brain goes out, and you need to either make an effort to keep your attention, or it switches to something new. Arbitrary retention of attention requires effort, from which we get tired. Remember how tired you feel after forcing yourself to understand something difficult. Almost everyone is familiar with these volitional and cognitive efforts that people make in such cases. Good teachers know this, so they change the child's activities every 15 minutes in their lessons.
Now children write, then read, then solve problems, then play, then tell, then consider. If the focus of our attention switches every 15 minutes, then we do not feel tired. Of course, this does not mean that during work you need to look out the window every 15 minutes, run to drink tea or go out for a smoke. Switching the focus of attention can also be within the work itself: think about something related, return to something past, plan the future, set a new goal, look at the task from the other side. nine0009
Foreign scientists claim that fatigue does not exist at all, that it is a trick of the brain. Indeed, when we are tired, nothing hurts us, rather, we feel without strength, without energy. It turns out that in our body there are special molecules that track what level of overload we experience. Their main task is to warn the brain in time that an overload is approaching. Having received these signals, the brain, in turn, sends an order to the internal organs: “Attention! Attention! Stop work! You need to rest! The body to take a prone position! Arms and legs stop moving immediately!”.
We perceive this feeling as fatigue. In fact, we have simply exhausted the usual limit of activity. But if you gradually increase its level, then the feeling of fatigue will come later and later.” nine0009
Today, the so-called chronic fatigue syndrome has officially appeared. Behind it is a huge amount of stress, and lack of physical activity, and an unhealthy diet, abuse of sugar, caffeine, alcohol, fats, etc. Doctors and psychologists believe that chronic fatigue syndrome is treated primarily by changing lifestyle. And in order to get less tired from work, learn to get involved in it as much as possible, look for the creative component in it, complicate your own tasks and skills, constantly move from one activity to another. And then the feeling of fatigue will not knock you down, but will begin to bring pleasant satisfaction from the work done. nine0009
It is enough to make a few clicks a day to indicate your activity, and the application will calculate at what point you started doing nonsense. Helper for those who want to do everything at once.
Anna Sokolova
full of energy
Author profile
Even if you work sitting at the computer, this does not mean that by the end of the day you will not die of fatigue.
nine0009
Fatigue appears not only from physical work. And not only because of the large number of cases. It may also indicate that you have not replenished the resources of the body, have distributed the load incorrectly, or do not see much point in what you are doing. Life in constant stress and work in emergency mode is harmful to health and leads to burnout. Let's talk about how to save energy.
Psychologists have a hypothesis about why mental work is so exhausting. If a task doesn’t particularly excite us, the brain has to put in a lot of effort to focus on it. And there is a lot of interesting things around - from news and Internet discussions to new collections of your favorite brands. This constant struggle with temptations exhausts a person. But without it it is impossible - otherwise the work will not be done. nine0009
This version is partly confirmed by a study conducted several years ago in Canada. Scientists monitored the condition of 156 students for a week: they constantly asked what they were doing, how they felt, what they really wanted at the moment, how much effort they had to make in order not to follow these desires and continue to study.
It turned out that the more temptations the students had to resist, the more tired they felt. nine0009
/no-willpower/
How can the weak-willed and lazy survive? Molecular biologist Irina Yakutenko answers
According to one of the authors of the study, psychologist Michael Inzlicht, this phenomenon has an evolutionary explanation. In order to survive, a person as a species all the time needs to do something: sleep, look for partners for procreation, get food, clothes - and so on ad infinitum. And if at some point he forgets about one of these tasks, then he simply will not survive. Therefore, the body has developed a biological mechanism that makes us switch from one to another. The psychological fatigue that we feel by the end of the working day is a signal that it is time to switch to another activity. nine0009
Tip 1
Increase your motivation In 2019, British scientists published the results of a study in which they observed the behavior, physical and psychological state of 100 nurses during their 12-hour shift.
And as a result, an important correlation was found: those nurses who were more involved in their work, knew that something depended on them, and received inner satisfaction in the process, were more energetic and less exhausted than the rest.
The explanation is simple: if we consider our work to be really important, then we are more motivated to do it and it is more difficult for us to get distracted. This means that the brain does not lose interest in it and gets less tired.
/hate-work/
Why people don't quit jobs they hate
To increase your motivation, try this exercise: at the end of each working day, for a couple of minutes, reflect on how your work is useful for others. If helping others is not part of your duties, remember that work allows you to pay for housing, feed and clothe loved ones, and financially support older relatives. nine0009
This simple action will have a beneficial effect on more than just your motivation.
According to research by psychologists Adam Grant and Sabine Sonnentag, people who are clearly aware of the impact their work has on others tend to be less distracted while doing it. And in general, they feel happier and more satisfied with life.
Tip 2
Don't get distracted too oftenThe human brain is not a computer. It's not designed for multitasking. Therefore, when the brain has to do several things at the same time, it spends too many resources. And as a result, he gets more tired and starts making more mistakes. nine0009
How do I fix this?
As a result, overall productivity increased. And most importantly, the psychological state improved: by coping with work faster, employees received more positive emotions, and this charged them with additional energy. nine0175 /how-to-focus/
5 tips to quickly focus on work
Tip 3
Take breaks Research shows that several regular but short breaks throughout the day can be better for rejuvenation, cognitive ability and stress reduction than one long one.
In 2014, specialists from DeskTime, a developer of time tracking software, analyzed the data of many users and found out that the most efficient ones worked in cycles. They immersed themselves in tasks for 52 minutes, and then disconnected from tasks for 17 minutes. nine0009
These data correlate with the modern ideas of scientists about the basic cycle of rest - activity: at night, on average, the body goes through all five phases of sleep in 90 minutes, and during the day, during the same time, it experiences a peak of activity, followed by 15-20 minutes of decline. And it is better to spend them on rest.
/chill-out/
How to rest: 5 tips
Things to do during a 15-minute break:
nine0175 What not to do during mini-breaks? Check social networks and messengers. This can deprive the rest of the forces. According to researchers from the American Psychological Association, excessive use of gadgets increases stress levels and greatly spoils mood. nine0009
Tip 4
Start working lessIt often happens that fatigue at work is not due to psychological problems. But simply because you are overwhelmed. In this case, all the previous tips are unlikely to help you. There is only one way out: discuss with the manager.
It is especially important to do this if you communicate with your boss orally, and not in a chat. When another request appears, specify in what order to fulfill it and, if the matter is urgent, what can be postponed until later. This will help him to assess the volume of your load and you to properly distribute it. nine0175 
Studies show that emotional distance from professional activities helps to recover faster and relax better. So don't check your work email on weekends. /time-to-rest/
“I close my laptop and start living”: 7 ways to quickly switch from work to leisure
Tip 5
Take care of yourselfWhen the resources of the body are at zero, it is difficult to cope even with work that does not require serious mental effort, and fatigue sets in faster. Therefore, it is so important to regularly recover physically. nine0009
The rules are simple:
These basic rules will help make your sleep better, which means that in the morning you will wake up alert, full of energy and in a good mood. nine0175 
