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.
Feeling tired from work is common and can be caused by many different factors. Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to reduce fatigue and maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Work can wear you out, whether your job requires physical labor or not. There’s more than one way to feel tired, and the daily demands of your job can leave you physically and emotionally weary, even if you spend your days behind a desk.
Other stressors — such as relationship issues, financial worries, or health concerns — can intensify the strain. And then there’s COVID-19.
If you’re still going in to work, you might find that you feel extra-exhausted from the added stress of worrying about potential exposure to the new coronavirus on the job.
If you now work from home, you might feel slightly safer — at the cost of greater pressure to blur the boundaries between work and home.
Long story short, it’s all too common to feel tired from working, especially during times of crisis and difficulty. You may not be able to quit your job completely, but you don’t have to watch your energy reserves slowly dwindle away, either.
There are several ways to recognize burnout.
A few of the most common symptoms of work fatigue include:
If you experience any of the symptoms listed above, it may be time to start identifying any factors that may contribute to your fatigue and consider making changes to your routine maintain a healthy work-life balance.
If work has you feeling a little more exhausted than usual, a good first step might involve taking a look at any habits potentially contributing to your fatigue.
Maybe you feel too worn out after your shift to do anything except relax in your favorite chair with your phone.
You regularly stay up late to give yourself more time to relax, but you find it hard to drift off when you finally make it to bed.
Even though you want to get out for a hike, see your friends (safely!), and make time for meal planning and cooking, you just can’t seem to find the energy.
Small changes can be key to reducing fatigue and preventing burnout, including:
Regular exercise can also make a difference, as backward as this might sound. If you aren’t up for a full workout, no problem. Even a brisk walk around the block can help boost your energy levels and mood.
You might feel more informed and prepared to deal with challenges when you leave work devices on throughout the evening and weekend or if you continue check your email after clocking out for the day.
When coworkers or customers know you can always be reached, however, it often becomes close to impossible to fully “leave” work, especially when you’re working from home.
If you’re always on the clock, you’ll never find the time to recharge.
If you’re expected to handle work concerns outside of your scheduled hours, talk with your supervisor about setting some clear boundaries around times you aren’t available.
Perhaps your heavy workload often requires you to work late. Sometimes, this is just part of the territory.
But consider whether you tend to volunteer for extra work to keep others happy or avoid guilt trips. If so, polite refusals when you’re at capacity may serve you better in the future.
It’s also a good idea to discuss options for workplace support with your supervisor or human resources office. It’s tough to be productive when you feel drained or burned out.
When you show up rested and energized, on the other hand, everyone benefits.
When you have too many tasks to realistically complete without support, it never hurts to ask for help.
You might worry that requesting support suggests weakness or incapability, but remember: Your employer likely wants you to do the best job possible.
They can’t support you in achieving that goal unless they know how you’re really doing.
Here are a few other tips:
After a long workday, you might lack the energy for anything beyond a night of Netflix. Still, challenge yourself to do something different from time to time, particularly when you feel the most drained.
Watching TV or playing video games might feel relaxing, and there’s nothing at all wrong with catching up on a show or two. Yet more purposeful hobbies can often feel more rewarding and leave you with a sense of deeper satisfaction.
To feel more rejuvenated by your time off, consider starting a garden, picking up a book, or doing one thing to improve your living area every day.
Other possibilities might include:
Prioritizing physical and emotional needs is an important part of creating balance between your work and personal life.
Taking good care of yourself can improve resilience and strength, making it easier to manage challenges as they come up.
When you feel physically and emotionally sound, it usually becomes easier to maintain a positive outlook and fend off the feelings of irritability, hopelessness, and pessimism that often accompany persistent exhaustion and stress.
While getting enough sleep and eating well do have an impact, self-care goes beyond these basic needs. It might involve:
Learn more about identifying your needs and creating a personalized self-care plan here.
Keeping stress to yourself can isolate you and make you feel worse.
You might worry you’re burdening others by talking about what’s going on, but think about how you’d feel if a loved one were in your position. You’d probably want to help them however you could, right?
Friends and family might not have the ability to directly relieve your fatigue, but they can still offer support by listening and helping out in small ways, especially if you’re vocal with them about what you need.
Your roommate, for example, might motivate you to get up and make dinner by inviting you to help them out with a new recipe.
Your mother might drop by with a bag of groceries when she knows you’ve had a long week.
Simply knowing you have support from your loved ones can increase feelings of belonging and connection, making it easier to detach from work when the day is done. Feeling less tethered to your job can, in turn, help you relax and recharge more successfully.
Just as repetitive tasks can lead to yawning and zoning out, an easy but monotonous workday can leave you feeling drained and mentally numb. Changing up your typical routine can make a big difference.
Some things to try:
You’ve taken steps to address your tiredness, but workplace circumstances continue to drain you, and your employer has been less than supportive of efforts to create change. What next?
It may be time to consider another job or career, one that allows you to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Without this essential balance, the situation will likely only get worse.
You might find it hard to “show up” mentally even when you’re physically present, and you may take little pride in your work.
Your emotional well-being and relationships with family and friends may bear the burden of your exhaustion, too.
Sometimes, lingering tiredness is just a normal outcome of working, but exhaustion — physical or emotional — can have other causes, too.
If you have other unexplained symptoms, including pain, changes in appetite, or stomach distress, it’s a good idea to talk with your healthcare provider to rule out other concerns.
A therapist can help you explore reasons behind tiredness accompanied by mental health symptoms, including:
If you’re thinking of a career change, your therapist can offer career guidance and counseling as you make the switch. At the very least, they can direct you toward helpful resources.
You don’t need to wait to recharge until you’re running on empty. It’s usually harder to recover your strength after you burn out.
Making time to recharge and drawing a darker line between work and home life — visualize this line in Sharpie, not pencil — can help you manage stress before it knocks you down completely.
If your exhaustion begins to affect your relationships or quality of life, it’s best to talk with a healthcare professional right away.
Crystal Raypole has previously worked as a writer and editor for GoodTherapy. Her fields of interest include Asian languages and literature, Japanese translation, cooking, natural sciences, sex positivity, and mental health. In particular, she’s committed to helping decrease stigma around mental health issues.
Anna Sokolova
full of energy
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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.
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.
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.
/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.
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.
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.
How can 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. /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, cognition 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.
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 it experiences a peak of activity at the same time, 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:
What not to do during mini-breaks? Check social networks and messengers. This can deprive the rest of the strength. According to researchers from the American Psychological Association, excessive use of gadgets increases stress levels and greatly spoils mood.
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. 
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.
The rules are simple:
10 ways to unwind before bed
According to the World Health Organization, adults need 150-300 minutes of moderate exercise or 75-150 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise to maintain good health.
/sport-every-day/
5 tips to make physical activity part of your life
This article is for those who work in the office and want to know how to get less tired at work . In this article, I will share principles that help me feel less tired after a hard day's work.
Office work is, in principle, a rather tiresome thing. Although it may sound strange to some. How can a person who sits in one place all day get tired? In fact, fatigue accumulates due to the constant look at the monitor, eye strain, monotony, the abundance of incoming information, noise and stress. All these factors are components of office work.
Tiredness after sedentary work is more like nervous fatigue than physical fatigue in the original sense of the word. Symptoms of fatigue are heaviness in the head, irritability, bad mood, etc. It's not like everyone's (hopefully) pleasurable fatigue after physical activity.
It is not possible to completely eliminate this fatigue. Working for many years for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week plus the road to the office can tire even the strongest body. But this fatigue can be minimized. Next, I'll tell you how.
If you have the opportunity to take a break from work, use every opportunity to recuperate and shift your eyes from the monitor to something else. When I say take a break, I don't mean quit your job and start checking your responses on social media or browsing the internet. Move away from the monitor, walk down the street, breathe. Or just move away from the computer and try to relax, free your head from thoughts.
Working in front of a monitor makes you tired, whether you're reading work papers or studying a blog post. Let's take a break from this.
Go outside at least once every two hours for 5 to 10 minutes.
Lunch time can also be used for walks. Do you have an hour for lunch? and you manage to finish your meal before this time expires, then do not rush to return to the workplace.
Walk and stretch your body. You can hang on horizontal bars. Physical exercise is great for relieving stress. Only do it preferably before lunch or a few hours after it.
Try to work less. Don't try to get as much work done in one day. If you can work less without hurting your paycheck, work less. This will save you some of your health and nerves. Work is not the most important thing in life.
I've noticed that if I'm not trying to do a lot of things at work at the same time, I feel a lot less tired in the evening. But if I jump from one task to another all day: answering mail and comments, then writing a couple of paragraphs of an article, then sending a Skype message to a friend, then by the end of such a day I usually feel pretty tired.
The brain gets very tired from multitasking. In addition, if you try to deal with several tasks at once, then the efficiency of each of them will be less, the greater the number of these tasks.
When I am constantly distracted, I manage to do much less on each of the cases than if I were doing these cases separately from each other.
Therefore, try not to be distracted by extraneous matters whenever possible. Turn off ICQ and Skype, deal with work tasks sequentially, you don’t need to strive to satisfy requests from other employees as they arrive (unless, of course, they require urgent attention), finish first with your current affairs.
And, of course, take rest breaks.
A work routine will help you use your energy effectively. Do the most difficult and time-consuming work in the morning, when you have the most energy. (I also wrote about this in the article on how to make yourself work) If you delay the completion of tasks for later and are lazy, then you may have to do them at a time when you already have less energy and the work will go harder, and you will get tired.
If you have work to do by tomorrow, don't put it off until the evening.
In the evening you will want to relax a bit. Therefore, do everything as early as possible. Do not waste the morning on all sorts of nonsense, try to do everything as soon as possible, and only then, relax.
Why not try asking your boss to move you to remote work? If your work activity does not require a constant presence in the office, then transferring you to remote employment will only save your company money! There will be no need to pay for your workplace, rent extra space of office real estate, carry out cleaning and other maintenance there, etc. Why not?
Remote work will save you a lot of effort, time and money that you spend on the road. At home, you will be much less tired, even if you do the same amount of work as in the office! Why? Because at home you can always lie down, relax, stroke the cat or take a refreshing shower. If you have completely finished work, let's say at 16:00 and you have nothing to do that day, then you do not need to pretend to be active and wait 18:00 to leave the workplace, as if you were working in an office.
Besides, an ordinary office is a public place. Employees scurrying back and forth, endless other people's telephone conversations, extraneous sounds - all this creates an unpleasant distracting background that affects you with fatigue. Add here the road to the place of work and the constraining business style of clothing. The average office worker sits on a pins and needles at work, spending days on end in a public place with a bunch of strangers, inside the constant fuss. In such an environment it is very difficult to relax!
Someone will answer me that he cannot work at home because of laziness and lack of discipline, while there is a boss in the office who watches you and, if necessary, will urge you on with an imaginary stick. There is nothing good in the fact that you cannot organize your work on your own, in the absence of bosses and colleagues. People drive themselves into office walls due to their lack of independence: “We need a leader, an uncle with a stick! We cannot work on our own!” It's time to learn to be independent and organized.
Develop willpower and self-discipline. Create a daily routine and follow it. Learn to work without an overseer and a drover.
Why not ask your boss about telecommuting? Just ask, they won't do anything to you!
Bosses know that most office workers are as undisciplined as children. They must always be urged, praised and scolded, monitored and kept in constant tension so that they do their job. For this, they are ready to pay the costs of your workplace and bear other costs. Prove to your superiors that you are not like that and can work on your own! Then you are more likely to get remote employment.
Didn't work? Well. This is not your last work. You can always find a place where you will be allowed to work remotely. Does the profession not allow? Change her. Learn new skills that will allow you to work remotely. If you set such a goal for yourself, follow it, and not just complain about the circumstances, then you will definitely get what you want.
Imagine how good it will be when you do not stand in traffic jams, ride public transport, listen to colleagues' conversations and sit in the office from call to call.
The less stress you get, the less fatigue you get - a proven fact. Stop participating in intrigues, gossip behind the backs of colleagues. Take it easy on the work itself. Remember, at work you just make money. You do your job and you get paid for it. That's it, you don't owe anything to anyone.
Don't worry about things not working out for you, that your boss isn't happy with you, that you're letting someone down. The worst that can happen is that you will be fired, and if you are not on probation, then by law you will be required to pay compensation. Don't think about anything else, take all personal relationships out of the brackets of work.
Management wants to keep employees on an emotional leash, so they try to instill in employees some sort of sacred relationship to the job function and the company they work for.
Treating your work the way your boss wants you to treat it can cause you a lot of unnecessary worries and stress. You will think about work night and day, thinking only about making the client of the company happy, so that an error does not suddenly creep into your calculations, so that the boss does not scold you. It's all superfluous. Treat work as a means of earning money, and not as the meaning of life, a matter of your honor and your sacred duty.
This will help you feel less nervous and stressed.
Many people forget that your level of fatigue is affected not only by what you do during work, but also by what you do outside of it. In order to be less tired at work, it is necessary, first of all, to rest better. Rest is perhaps one of the most important factors that determines your fatigue.
Spend time after work in a calm, homely environment. Read, lie in bed. Go for light walks, bike rides, or runs. This will help relieve fatigue and relax.
Avoid public places after work, because you spent the whole day in such a place! Take a break from the people and the noise. Take a break from information! All day long your brain was just processing data. Save him from this work, at least in the evening. No need to sit at the monitor and read the Internet all evening. This will only lead to more fatigue!
On weekends, try to dedicate at least one day of good rest, and not trips to shops or relatives. If you have a cottage - great. Spend time in nature and in silence. Remember, noisy parties, a large amount of alcohol - are not a good rest. Alcohol, only draws out of you the strength that you will need at work!
If you follow these tips, you will notice how much easier it is to work and how much better you feel at the end of the day! Yesterday I spent the whole evening after work at home. Before going to bed, I lay in bed and listened to calm music, and now, on Friday, I feel full of energy, despite the fact that the end of the working week is coming and I have less energy left ...
The same cannot be said about other days this week. I prepared for the holidays and went shopping after work, buying camping equipment. It exhausted me a lot, which had a very bad effect on my tone the next day. It was much more difficult to work and write articles and I was very tired.
This, I think, is obvious, but anyway, this paragraph will not be superfluous. Remember, you are entitled to a 9 hour work day (including lunch) and nothing can force you to work overtime, and for free! Free processing is the exploitation of employees by bosses who speculate on the human sense of responsibility (I wrote about this in the article how to learn to say no). Working 8 hours every day, except for weekends, is already quite a lot, not to mention working beyond this time.
Therefore, spare your health and get up and leave at the end of the working day. It is your right. If you do not have time for something, although you worked properly, then this is the problem of a company that recruited few employees and gave them too much work, not yours.
Ironically, the caffeine in tea and coffee makes you tired and drains your energy. I wrote more about this in the article how to stop drinking coffee. The more you drink coffee, the more you get tired and the more your efficiency decreases.
Lack or low amount of caffeine at work helps to evenly distribute forces throughout the working day. But if you consume a lot of caffeine in the composition of various drinks, then after a burst of energy, a period of fatigue quite naturally follows. The tone you get from a cup of coffee doesn't just come out of nowhere.
If you can't do anything without a cup of coffee, it's an addiction. If you get rid of it, you will no longer need caffeine at all.
The more physically fit you are, the more energy and strength you have and the less tired you are. Exercise, quit bad habits, eat healthy, get enough sleep, meditate. All this will help you always be in good shape and get less stress.
This is the last tip, but one of the most important! Please take the time to take care of yourself and your health!
As I said at the beginning of this article, office work is exhausting, no matter what you do.
