According to the CDC, nearly one in three adults isn’t getting enough sleep every night. If you’re one of these people, there’s little chance you’re going to have more energy in your day unless you’re a superhero. In the modern workplace, there are so many demands on your attention and energy that you have to be prepared to give 100% every single day.
Here are five ways you can ensure that you have the energy you need day-in and day-out.
1. Get More Sleep
One of the most common complaints among adults who feel tired and low energy is that they don’t get enough sleep. Failing to get enough sleep is one of the leading causes of health issues. Sleep is restorative for the mind and body and is essential for living.
Losing just an hour or two of sleep every night has been linked to lots of problems with focus and attention. Your brain won’t be as sharp or as able to catch mistakes during the day. If you go into work when you haven’t had enough sleep, you’re going to spend more of your day trying to fix the problems you’re causing than doing work.
You’ll also find that not getting enough sleep will mess up your metabolism. When you’re sleep deprived, your digestion moves slower and you’re less able to get what you need from each meal. You’ll find yourself eating more than you need to just to make up the difference in energy, which slows you down even more in the end.
2. Eat Lighter
One of the reasons people don’t have enough energy is that their diet is dragging them down. Eating too much or at the wrong time of day often leads to problems with energy.
Rather than trying to eat more to get more energy, why not try eating lighter?
If you eat a big meal too early in the day, you’re going to be sluggish for the whole day. While you should eat your biggest meal in the morning to kickstart your metabolism, it can lead to a slippery slope. You could end up being slow-moving all day long.
Eating a big lunch is terrible for your workday, as any nine-to-fiver knows. It’ll cause you to need a 3 PM pick-me-up and cause you to eat food that’s not so hot for you. In the end, your energy is going to suffer.
While eating a bigger dinner can mean that your energy for the day was spent at the beginning, you’re eating when you need it less. You need that bigger portion of food at the start of your day to ensure that you have the energy you need for the rest of it.
3. Get Out More
If you’re low on energy, training your body to spend more of it causes you to create more of it. Spending half an hour a day on vigorous exercise gives you the opportunity to raise your energy levels overall. While you might think spending energy is counter-intuitive, daily exercise has many benefits.
First of all, you’ll sleep more soundly at night. After spending energy throughout the day, your body will crave sleep by the end of the day.
You’ll also find that your body is going to start becoming conditioned to that activity and produce more energy for you to use during the day.
Even if you’re just able to go for a walk with a co-worker during lunch, it’ll change the way you feel throughout your day. If you work from home, give yourself a lunch hour that includes a 20-minute break for running. By giving yourself this time to exercise, you’ll find your body will burn up calories better and give you energy more efficiently.
4. Take Time To Relax
If you really want to get more energy, you need to also consider the space for relaxation in your life. If you’re not making time to relax and decompress, you’re going to be running on fumes day after day. Burnout is a real problem and without taking time to care for yourself, you risk finding out just how bad it can be.
The last thing you want to do is to work so hard that you start to hate your job. It’s important for you to take time to relax and get some perspective. Taking time away is important for you to contextualize your problems and see things in a new light.
If you’re staying at work late working on a difficult problem, your efficiency is going to suffer after a while. You’ll spend more time doing less work when you could be at home resting. Take the time to know yourself and understand when it’s time for you to take a break.
5. Streamline Your Work
When you’re working, it’s likely that you can build up bad habits. Many of us would rather continue making the same mistakes over and over than to change our behavior. It’s much easier to work around inefficiencies than to deal with them head on sometimes.
However, when you take the time to cut out all the inefficiencies that plague your workday, you’ll end up getting more done in your day. That means you’ll spend less time frustrated and more time recharging day after day. Life is much sweeter when you take the proper amount of time to rest, recharge, and relax.
Take some time to learn more about ways you can cut out the fat during your workday.
You Can Have More Energy When You Take Control
When you take control of your day to day schedule, you’ll have more energy to use on the things that matter. Rather than being bogged down and struggling with projects that you know you can tackle, balancing work and relaxation leaves you happy and productive.
For one of the major hacks that can lead you to save time and energy, check out our guide for tackling those time-consuming emails.
