3 Must-Do's When You're Tired at Work

As I write this, I could fall asleep immediately at my desk right now.

What's my excuse for being tired today? A good Japanese anime movie last night and my incredibly comfortable couch.

I was fully aware of how tired I would feel at work, but I decided to keep watching anyway.

Periodically, my mind would drift from the dramatic storyline to an inner conflict I was having with myself about how I should go to bed.

On the one hand, it had been months since I sat down to watch a movie. On the other hand, I had a relatively busy work day in just a few hours.

I even started quoting statistics to myself from a video I did about how sleep increases productivity at work.

The couch still won.

I strongly agree with sleep advice and generally aim for quality snooze time, but there are still days, like today, when I'm tired at work.

As a result, I know I'll have to compensate.

This is especially true because the body instinctively prioritizes anything that's essential to survival, like sleeping and eating. 

Both activities energize the body. That's exactly why the body experiences a red alert when it senses a lack because it's just like the gas light coming on in a car that's low on gas.

The nagging feeling of tiredness and hunger is simply a genius way of continually reminding our tired or hungry self to go to the gas station ASAP.

The problem is that these feelings are also indicators of elevated stress levels.

Fight-or-flight hormones start circulating at a greater intensity to make up for the body's unmet needs, providing a source of volatile and unsustainable energy.

The cognitive price we also pay for this temporary fix is high.

Laziness, bad leadership, unoriginal ideas and even unethical behavior are all highlighted as side effects of not getting enough sleep in the recently publish article "These are all the ways lack of sleep makes you terrible at work" by Isabelle Roughol.

From the brain's viewpoint, these are all energy-demanding cognitive functions that should be downgraded for the sake of survival.

From our standpoint as professionals, it's just the opposite. We see the sleep and the food as the unnecessary parts.

We perceive we are still mostly functioning anyway.

It's good to be optimistic but, it's often a misperception because we're up against millions of years of hardwiring.

Here are 3 things we can do to help the situation:

1. Wait 3 Seconds Before Responding In a Conversation

In a world that emphasizes work over sleep, we've become desensitized to just how exhausted we really feel.

We're not only lacking awareness that we're tired, but research found that the actual connectivity patterns change in the brain when someone is sleep-deprived, making it more difficult to accurately judge reality and regulate negative emotions.

This means that we become more irritable over commonplace events, but also more likely to have quickly escalating negative reactions.

At work, this commonly is expressed in our communication with others. A normal conversation becomes a heated exchange, before we've barely noticed what's happened.

Olivia Fox Cabane, in The Charisma Myth, says that you should wait 3 seconds before responding to someone in a conversation to maximize your charisma because it indicates you're not waiting to jump in and say something, but actually listening.

We can take it a step further to ensure you're not being overruled by sleepless emotions and use those precious 3 seconds to double-check what you're about to say in your weary state.

If you realize you are going to say something negative, decide to delay on saying it. Either hold off until the next day or go confirm the accuracy and delivery style of your comments with a more-rested colleague.

Maybe you'll still say it, but at some crucial moment when you can't take the words back, this habit will likely prevent an irritable outburst to a colleague or even family member because negativity naturally runs wild when we're tired and talking.

2. Choose Movement Over Stimulants

Thanks to the elevated stress response that comes naturally with being tired, the body is in an already stimulated state because fight-or-flight hormones act like a primal coffee.

You know what also stimulates the adrenal glands and gives us another surge of fight-or-flight hormones? Actual coffee.

Between the coffee, lack of sleep, and normal stressors that are common at work, the body quickly goes on a rollercoaster propelled by aggressive stimulants.

It becomes inundated with more and more stress hormones that further limit the brain's logical and cognitive functions. The body is repeatedly having a similar response as it would, if preparing to run from a lion.

This is one of the reasons caffeine is best in moderation, especially on tired days, and ultimately is not an ongoing reliable solution for tired days.

Throwing back continuous cups of coffee perpetuates a vicious cycle of overstimulation, interfering with quality sleep later on that night, at best, and potentially perpetuating chronic stress in the long term.

Caffeine tricks the body's sleep receptors into thinking it's not tired by keeping them occupied with caffeine. If we're constantly replacing sleepless nights with caffeine-fueled days, we may not realize how much the body really needs sleep.

In the short term, as the body filters the caffeine out of its system, those sleep receptors start to free themselves and are bombarded by the "I'm tired" chemical, adenosine, which is in abundance when we haven't slept properly. We feel a huge drop in energy and possibly even become more tired.

Similarly, we can experience extreme highs and lows from the sugary foods we're inclined to eat when we're tired.

This UC Berkley study found that our desire for junk food goes through the roof, after missing those zzz's. The sparkling sugar, on that box of mini donuts, and the crunchy potato chips, loaded with fat, are quick and easy sources of energy. When our tired impulses are uninhibited, we don't have any interest in choosing healthier options.

What's a common theme we're seeing?

Our body is wanting further stimulation that provides a sense of energy.

Therefore, the best way to give our body what it wants is through movement.

For example, this study found that a brisk 10 minute walk provided a more reliable and long-lasting surge of energy than a sugary snack, offering a noticeable boost in energy for 2 hours. Comparatively, after snacking on sweets, there was an initial increase in energy and decrease in tiredness, but an hour later tiredness increased and energy was reduced.

Exercise also improves sleep quality later on that night, when it's important to recharge.

If we're aiming to optimize our work and minimize highs and lows, we should keep the chemical stimulants to a minimum and opt for motion.

Additionally, we can do little things like splash cold water on our face or turn up the lights. These natural stimulants remind the body to stay awake, without the same downsides.

3. Use Kindness and Gratitude to Enhance Your Tired Brain

One of the problems with lack of sleep is how it affects the prefrontal cortex or the part of the brain that allows us to exercise willpower and, as mentioned, effectively regulate decisions, behaviors and emotions.

This is likely why the previously mentioned article by Isabelle Roughol explains people become lazy or make unethical decisions, among other things. They've impaired the part of the brain that's crucial to those functions. This is why being tired is like being drunk, which also impairs the prefrontal cortex.

Performing acts of kindness and expressing gratitude at work are ways to potentially reactivate the lagging prefrontal cortex, when you're tired.

So instead of buying that fifth fancy espresso for yourself, give it to your colleague as a kind deed.

Or, write down a list of 10 little things you're grateful for, when feeling especially sluggish.

You're doing your best to help a tired brain boost its executive functions, which will help you do better work.

Ultimately, we live in a world where 2 out of 3 professionals experience some form of burnout from excessive stress.

When we don't sleep, we're essentially building a layer cake of stress, adding one stressful layer on top of another.

Sometimes we don't have a choice, but sometimes we do (like when watching a late night movie). Admittedly, I had to finish this article the next day, after I was more rested, because progress was so slow in my tired state.

Therefore, we can use the above techniques to make up for a lack of sleep, but it's even better to use them when we're already rested. This helps us not just to survive the day at work, but to better manage the stress that's common anyway.