This article is for those who work in the office and want to know how less tired at work. In this article I will share the principles that help me feel less tired after a busy day.
Office work, in principle, is quite a tedious thing. Although, maybe for some it sounds strange. How can a person get tired who sits in one place all day? In fact, fatigue accumulates due to the constant gaze on the monitor, eye strain, monotony, the abundance of incoming information, noise and stress. All these factors are components of office work.
Fatigue after sedentary work is more like nervous exhaustion than physical fatigue, in the original meaning of the word. Symptoms of fatigue are heaviness in the head, irritability, bad mood, etc. This does not seem to be familiar to everyone (hopefully) pleasant tiredness after physical activity.
Completely eliminate this fatigue is not possible. Work for many years, 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. Then I will tell you how.
Principle 1 - Rest More - Work Less
If you have the opportunity to take a break from work, then use each such excuse to recuperate and transfer your gaze from the monitor to something else. When I say “relax,” I don’t mean to quit work and start checking what you have been answered on social networks or surfing the Internet. Get 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 at the monitor bothers you, no matter what you do: read working papers or study a blog post. Let's take a break from this.
Leave at least once every two hours on the street for 5 - 10 minutes.
For walking, you can use lunchtime. If you have an hour for lunch? and you have time to complete your meal earlier than this time expires, then do not rush to return to the workplace. Stroll and mash your body. You can hang on the horizontal bars. Exercise is great for relieving stress. Only to do this preferably before lunch or a few hours after it.
Try to work less. Do not try to do as much work as possible in one day. If you have the opportunity to work less without sacrificing your salary, work less. This will save you some health and nerves. Work is not the most important thing in life.
Principle 2 - No multitasking!
I noticed that if I don’t try to do a lot of things at the same time at work, by the evening I feel much less tired. But if I skip a whole day from one task to another: I answer mail and comments, then I write a couple of paragraphs of the article, then I send a message to Skype to a friend, then by the end of that day, I usually feel pretty tired.
The brain is very tired of multitasking. In addition, if you try to engage in several tasks at once, then the efficiency of each of them will be the smaller, the greater the number of these tasks. When I am constantly distracted, I have time to do much less for each of the cases than if I were doing these things separately from each other.
Therefore, try not to be distracted by other things when it is possible. Disable ICQ and Skype, deal with work tasks consistently, no need to strive to satisfy requests from other employees as they arrive (unless of course they do not require urgent attention), finish first with your current affairs.
And, of course, take rest breaks.
Principle 3 - Follow the schedule
Work order will help you to effectively use your power. Do the most difficult and laborious work since the morning, when you have the most strength. (I also wrote about this in the article on how to make yourself work) If you delay the execution of tasks for later and be lazy, then you may have to perform them at a time when the forces are already less and the work is harder, and you will get tired.
If you need to do work by tomorrow, then do not postpone it for the evening. In the evening I 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 quickly as possible, and only then take a rest.
Principle 4 - Work Remotely
Why not try asking the authorities to transfer you to remote work? If your work activity does not require constant presence in the office, then transferring you to remote employment will only save your company money! You will not have to pay for your workplace, rent extra office space, carry out cleaning and other services there, etc. Why not?
Remote work will allow you to save 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, pet the cat or take a refreshing shower. If you have completely finished the work, suppose, at 16-00 and you have no business for this day, then you do not need to depict a hectic activity and wait for 18-00 to leave the workplace, as if you were working in an office.
In addition, an ordinary office is a public place. Employees scurrying back and forth, endless phone conversations, other sounds — all this creates an unpleasant distracting background that affects you with fatigue. Add here another way to the place of work and embarrassing business style of clothing. The average office employee sits at work on pins and needles, spending days on end in a public place with a bunch of strangers inside the constant bustle. In such an environment is very difficult to relax!
Someone will answer me that he cannot work at home because of laziness and lack of discipline, while the office has a boss who is watching you and in which case he will fit you with an imaginary stick. There is nothing good in the fact that you can not organize their work independently, in the absence of bosses and colleagues. People themselves and 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 a guard and a driver.
Why not find out from your boss about the possibility of remote work? Just ask, you will not do anything for it!
The bosses know that most office workers are undisciplined, like children. They should always be customized, praised and scolded, watch over them and keep them in constant tension so that they do their work. For this, they are ready to pay the cost of your workplace and incur other costs. Prove to your superiors that you are not and can work independently! Then you are more likely to get remote employment.
Did not work out? Well. This is not your last job. You can always find a place where you will be allowed to work remotely. Does not allow the profession? Change it. Acquire new skills that will allow you to engage in remote work. If you set yourself such a goal, if you 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 are not stuck in traffic jams, driving in public transport, listening to colleagues' conversations and sitting in the office from call to call.
Principle 5 - Minimize the amount of stress at work
The less stress you get, the less tired you are - a proven fact. Stop participating in intrigues, gossip behind your colleagues' backs. Easier about the work itself. Remember, at work you just earn money. You do your job, and for that you get your salary. Anything more you owe nothing to anyone.
Do not worry about the fact that something is wrong with you, that the boss is not happy with you, that you are failing someone. The worst thing 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. Do not think about the other, put all personal relationships beyond the brackets of work.
The management wants to keep employees on an emotional leash, so it is trying to cause some kind of almost sacred attitude to the work functions and to the company in which they work in the workers.
If you treat your work this way, because your boss wants you to treat her, this can cause you a lot of unnecessary worries and stress. You will reflect on your work night and day, thinking only that the client of the company be satisfied, so that a mistake does not creep into your calculations, so that the boss will not scold you. This is all superfluous. Treat work as a means of making money, and not as the meaning of life, the cause of your honor and your sacred duty.
This will help you be less nervous and less stressful.
Principle 6 - Improve the quality of your holiday!
The fact that the level of your fatigue affects not only what you do during work, but also what you do outside of it - many people forget. In order to get less tired at work, it is first of all necessary to rest. Rest is perhaps one of the most important factors that determines your fatigue.
Spend time after work in a relaxed, homely environment. Read, roll in bed. Take light walks, bike rides or jogging. This will help relieve fatigue and rest.
Avoid public places after work, because so you spent all day in such a place! Take a break from people and noise. Take a break from the information! The whole day, your brain is only engaged in data processing. 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!
At the weekend, try to devote at least one day to good rest, not to shopping or to 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 pulls you out of the forces that you need at work!
If you follow these tips, you will notice how much easier it became to work and how much better you feel at the end of the working day! Yesterday I spent the whole evening after work at home. Before bed, I lay in bed and listened to calm music and now, on Friday, I feel full of strength, despite the fact that the end of the working week is coming and there is less strength left ...
What can not be said about other days this week. I was preparing for a vacation 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. Working and writing articles was much harder and I was very tired.
Principle 6 - Do not linger at work!
This, I think, is obvious, but still, this item will not be superfluous. Remember, you are entitled to a 9-hour working day (with lunch) and nothing can make you work overtime, also for free! Free processing is the exploitation of employees by superiors, which speculates on the human sense of responsibility (I wrote about this in the article how to learn to say no). To work for 8 hours every day, except for weekends, is not a little, let alone work beyond this time.
Therefore, spare your health and at the end of the working day, get up and leave. It is your right. If you do not have time, although they were working properly, then this is the problem of a company that has recruited few employees and gave them too much work, but not yours.
Principle 7 - Drink Less Tea and Coffee
Paradoxically, but the caffeine in tea and coffee increases fatigue and drains the power out of you. I wrote more about this in the article on how to stop drinking coffee. The more you drink coffee, the more tired you will become and the more effective your work will be.
The absence or small amount of caffeine at work helps to evenly distribute the forces throughout the working day. But if you consume a lot of caffeine in the composition of different drinks, then after a surge of vigor, a period of fatigue quite naturally begins. The tone that you get from a cup of coffee does not appear from nowhere.
If you can’t do anything without a cup of coffee, then that says addiction. If you get rid of it, then stop caffeine needing at all.
Principle 8 - Strengthen the body
The more physically fit you are, the more energy and strength you have and the less you get tired. Play sports, quit bad habits, eat healthy foods, get enough sleep, meditate. All this will help you to 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!
Final words
As I said at the beginning of the article, office work, in any case, is tiring, no matter what you do. In my opinion, the time that is allocated for weekends and holidays is not able to satisfy a person’s need for proper rest. And given the way of life that many people lead: they smoke, they drink, they lead a sedentary lifestyle, they linger at work and do not rest normally even while on holiday - many people do not know a proper rest.
In any case, you will be tired.
Remember, office work in front of the monitor, next to strangers before retirement is not the only life alternative. You can organize your life so that you can relax more, do less monotonous, senseless and unloved work, spend more time at home, with loved ones and children, instead of seeing them only on weekends.
As I like to say, everything is in your hands.
