Tired at Work? Here are Three Tips For Getting on Top of Your Sleep Schedule

Feeling tired at work? Wish you could spend more hours of the day performing at your best?

Overcoming tiredness at work is a challenge many people have to face and, as with so many work related problems, there’s no one solution. On the other hand, a good mix of approaches can do wonders for the quality of your sleep, not to mention your waking hours.

So let’s talk about the top tips for fighting work fatigue so you can bring your A-game every day.

How to Stop Feeling Tired At Work

If you feel tired at work, then the chances are that one of two things is happening. Either you’re not getting enough sleep or you’re getting a poor quality of sleep.

If you’re not getting enough sleep, then it’s time to stop and take a look at your routine. Try to accurately record your habits and see how many hours a night you’re really getting. Then compare that against the hours a person of your demographic should be getting.

In general, this will fall somewhere between 7 and 10 hours although it’s worth noting that this can also vary on a personal level. Put simply, your body needs as much sleep as it needs and it may take some experimentation to find the magic number.

Of course for many, the need to maintain both a personal and professional life has a tendency to cut into your hours. Particularly for those with kids, the temptation is always to try to steal an extra few hours before going to bed.

The bad news is that there’s no getting around this dilemma. There are never enough hours in the day to do all the things you want to. That said, once you start forcing yourself to go to bed earlier, the problem may not be as bad as it seems.

When you’re properly awake, tasks that aren’t tied to any specific hours of the day – such as cooking, cleaning, and laundry – can take a lot less time. Your will power is greater and that means less procrastination.

Of course, to get those extra hours may also mean making sacrifices. If you have family responsibilities, it may even mean trying to shift some things around to find a new balance that works for you.

All the same, your sleep is crucial to your health. Missing a few hours here and there might not seem like much but over the course of years it can have serious mental and physical effects. You should never feel guilty about needing to put your sleep first.

Sleep Improvement Tips

As we said before however, it’s still possible to be regularly tired at work even when you are getting enough hours of sleep.

Sleep quality is just as important – if not more important – than the raw number of hours. As you sleep, you fluctuate between REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and deep sleep, drifting in and out of wakefulness.

Your body needs this cycle. It’s what allows you to naturally wake up with all systems in gear. Unfortunately, practicality dictates that we all have alarm clocks but if you can find a way to wake up naturally in the morning without the need for an alarm clock, your body will thank you.

Other elements that can affect your level of deep sleep include:

• Alcohol, cigarettes, or caffeine (particularly just before bed)
• Diet, especially over or under eating
• Daily stresses
• Mental health issues such as anxiety and depression
• Physical conditions such as asthma, heart disease, and sleep apnea

Of course, fixing/mitigating any of the above is never easy but the more you do to ensure that you go to bed feeling healthy and in a relaxed mindset, the better your quality of sleep will be.

Fatigue Management in the Workplace

We’ve talked a lot about what individuals can do to feel less tired at work but now we’d like to wrap things up by placing a spotlight on employers.

Happy, healthy employees make for a far more productive team and employers should be aware of this. That’s why, whenever possible, taking steps to help support employees in improving their sleep and minimising their workplace fatigue is incredibly beneficial.

Employers can alter working hours, allow for hybrid working, and even help to support employees who are struggling to get their sleep under control.

When all’s said and done, your sleep is just as important to your health as anything else and, here at Career Navig8r, we believe that health should always come first.