Tiredness. The problem of the century! How to fight fatigue? I asked this question on Google and got a lot of answers, which indicates that the topic bothers many of us. These answers are probably correct. Who am I to doubt research done on this subject? However, none of these answers satisfied me. Before I explain why,
Here are 10 tips I received:
1) Get enough sleep.
2) Do sports activities.
3) Maintain a proper diet.
4) Consume anti-fatigue foods, which include for example magnesium and vitamin C.
5) Avoid excessive coffee drinking, and prefer tea or herbal tea.
6) Ensure proper lighting of the room.
7) Avoid overwork.
8) Keep the negative emotions away.
9) Relax (take big breaths with eyes closed, do meditation or yoga, take a hot bath with Epsom salts)
10) Do concrete and easy operations such as: breathe oil of peppermint, brush your hands vigorously with a nail brush.
Why are these tips not right for me?
Because all these tips only apply to a lifestyle that needs to be managed so as not to suffer from fatigue, but they don't answer my questions: Why are you tired and what to do when you are tired that will help you immediately?
Some of these tips may seem logical, but they are not always true and also not true for everyone. Some people who are very dynamic, do not usually suffer from fatigue, and at the same time need only a few hours of sleep. On the other hand, there are people, and I was one of them, who sleep enough and even too much, who hardly work, and yet complain, and who am I to doubt them, that they are very tired.
Some people are very active and not tired even though they are not engaged in sports at all. I personally hate sports and when I did it because I had to, for example in high school gymnastics classes, I was more tired after that. As for nutrition, these tips will make you endlessly hesitate in the supermarket before you buy an apple, because you do not know if it contains magnesium, vitamin C or not. Some of these tips seem to me like grandma remedies like "brush your hands vigorously with a nail brush".
So, if so, why are we tired and what to do when it happens?
The answer is so simple and logical that you would say, "How come I never thought of that before!" We are tired when we are bored, when we are not doing what we want. And the solution then is very simple: we must ask ourselves honestly and sincerely what we like to do and what not. And when we feel tired, we need to move on to activities that will make us have fun. You might tell me we cannot always choose what we do, for example at work. I have two answers to that:
1) Even at work, we can organize our work so that we will usually engage in activities that we enjoy.
2) We will be able to cope more easily with fatigue, and will suffer less from it when we become aware that a particular activity, we are currently engaged in bores us.
Note: All of the above refers to psychological fatigue which is much more common than physical fatigue, for which the advice given may be more appropriate.
Example: Yesterday, I listened to a lecture on Zoom, which I found boring, and I was dead tired.
If I had listened to the advice I gave at the beginning of the post, I would have continued to listen to the lecture, and produced nothing from it. Or I would have gone to bed until the next day and conclude from this story that I am chronically tired and that there is nothing to be done about it. Or trying one of the hallucinatory solutions given.
Instead, I analyzed the problem correctly, and concluded that the activity I was dealing with was the one that made me tired. If so, what did I do? I was really tired, so I had no choice: I went to bed for two hours. When I got up, I chose an activity that I was sure would interest me: learn a certain program that would help me write my blog. It was not easy, but I worked and had fun from 2pm to midnight. At the end of the day, I was not tired at all. No sports activities, no magnesium, garlic and no vitamins!