Regular sleep is an essential component of a healthy lifestyle, but many of us treat it as a luxury. Due to the constant pressure to squeeze more tasks into our daily schedules, we often tend to skimp on our recommended 7-8 hours of sleep, only to find ourselves fighting drowsiness all throughout the next day.
While a cup of coffee or a can of energy drink may give you the boost that you need, they are not always the best option. Their effects usually need several hours to wear off, so consuming them late in the day could result in a sleepless night followed by another day of constant drowsiness, fatigue, and irritability.
In this article, you will learn how to stay awake without coffee, energy drinks, or prescription stimulants.
1. Start Your Workday with a Nap
Though it does sound weird to take a nap mere hours after waking up, it might be all you need to go through your workday without nodding off at your desk. The boost in alertness you can get from napping for just 20 minutes may be enough to get you through a full eight-hour shift. As such, this could be particularly useful if you’re a shift worker or have alternating working hours every day.
Your start-of-the-day naps should ideally be shorter than 30 minutes. Otherwise, you will reach deeper stages of sleep, making it difficult to wake up and leaving you groggier than you were before the nap.
2. Walk to Work
If the weather is nice and your office is not that far from your home, you might want to consider walking to work. Research shows that just 20 minutes of sunlight exposure a day is all it takes to keep your melatonin levels under control. Melatonin is the hormone that occurs naturally in the body and controls your natural clock. When it’s not in check, you will feel drowsy even if you’ve slept well the night before.
A 2016 study published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise (MSSE) found that 150 minutes of light workout a week can not only help you lose weight but also improve your alertness. If you walk to work five times a week for 30 minutes, at least during the warm months of the year, you can meet your weekly exercise quota without having to go to the gym or exercise at home.
3. Take Regular Breaks
Concentrating on a single task for a long period of time can make you feel very tired. The same can happen when you’ve been standing or sitting in the same position for too long. To combat this problem, you should take frequent breaks throughout your workday. A short, five-minute break should be enough for you to stretch out both mentally and physically and return to work more productive and focused.
Even if you can’t leave your desk, you can still get similar results from “shutting off” your brain for a few minutes. According to a 2011 study conducted at the University of Illinois, even the shortest diversions (so-called “mental breaks”) can noticeably improve your performance on longer, more demanding tasks.
4. Drink Plenty of Water
In some cases, daytime sleepiness may stem from dehydration, which is why you should always keep a bottle of water handy and take a sip every now and then throughout the day. To prevent dehydration, adults need to drink about eight glasses (2 liters) of water a day. This is the optimal amount required to maintain your body’s fluid balance. Depending on how thirsty you feel, you may need to drink more.
Drinking more water will inevitably increase your need to take bathroom breaks. This is good because it gives you an excuse to leave your desk more often, if only to take a trip to the bathroom and back. The frequent movement will help keep your body awake, thus allowing you to maintain focus at work.
5. Have a Healthy Snack
Many people regularly experience the so-called “afternoon slump”, a drop in energy that usually occurs around the mid-point of the workday. If you’re one of them, eating a sugar-filled candy bar to regain alertness might not be the best idea. While the sudden rush of sugar will inevitably give you the energy boost that you need, that boost will only be short-lived. As soon as the effects of processed sugars wear off, you’ll be left with fatigue, lethargy, and mental fogginess – even worse than before you had a snack.
If you need something to boost your energy after the lunch break, you should always opt for healthful snacks with little-to-no added sugar. Some good choices include whole wheat crackers with peanut butter as an alternative to candy bars, baby carrots or celery sticks with a low-fat cream cheese dip, or a handful of fresh nuts with yogurt. Replace carb-heavy sandwiches and pasta with healthy salads.
6. Keep Your Workspace Cool and Well-Lit
Your body’s daily rhythm is in tune with the cycle of darkness and light, which means that insufficient lighting will put you to sleep whereas bright lights will help keep you alert. If you have trouble staying awake at work, a little more light may be all you need. Open the shades to let some sunlight in. If there are no windows near your workspace, consider adding a lamp to keep your desk well-lit at all times.
Room temperature also has an effect on your ability to stay awake. If your workspace is even a tad warmer than your body is used to, you will be more likely to nod off mid-work. To remain alert, it is recommended to keep your workspace cool. Ideally, the temperature should be around 68 degrees, but you may turn it up or down by a few degrees depending on your preference.
7. Rearrange Your Work Schedule
If you have multiple tasks of varying complexity to sort through during your workday, rearranging your schedule might help you build up energy over the course of the day. Since it’s usually difficult to focus on complicated tasks first thing in the morning, it might be best to get the easy stuff out of the way first.
For example, start your day by replying to emails and follow that up with phone calls to clients or a trip to the post office. Each task you complete will give you a small energy boost, allowing you to become more alert as your day progresses. Plus, if you have problems with procrastination, tackling the smaller, less demanding tasks first will kick your day into gear and help unleash your productivity in the process.
A Final Word
If you’re wondering how to stay awake at work, these seven tips should help.
However, if daytime sleepiness becomes a chronic problem despite getting regular sleep at night, it could be a sign of an underlying health condition. Sleep disorders like narcolepsy and sleep apnea can have a detrimental effect on your sleep quality and leave you tired from the moment you wake up in the morning. These common disorders can go undiagnosed for a long time, which is why it is important to go to your doctor if you’re experiencing chronic drowsiness.
References:
https://www.sleep.org/articles/how-long-to-nap
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14594199
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4911242
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21211793
https://www.sleepfoundation.org/articles/connection-between-hydration-and-sleep
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