The surprising habits that are making you tired

 

Source: www.ineedmotivation.com

• Most people have experienced feelings of tiredness despite a good sleep 
• Drinking alcohol and using our phones before bed can contribute to fatigue
• Changing a few small daily habits is an easy way to increase energy levels 

When energy levels take a mid-afternoon nosedive it can leave you feeling irritable and groggy. Understandable, maybe, if your day has been preceded by a very late night. But why is it we sometimes still feel tired even when we have enjoyed a nice, long sleep?

From chaotic desks to eating dinner too late, it turns out that losing sleep is not the only thing that can leave us feeling lethargic or fatigued.

1. DEHYDRATION 

It's important to keep an eye on water intake, especially in the summer months Even mild dehydration, defined as as little as 1.5% loss in normal water volume, can alter a person's mood, mental function, and indeed energy levels.

According to researchers at the Natural Hydration Council, dehydration can lower your blood volume and, as a result, the body has to work harder to supply the body with nutrients and oxygen, making you feel tired. The NHS recommends that women should drink about 1.6 litres of fluid a day, and men about 2 litres per day. TIP: Keep a bottle of water on you at all times and remind yourself to fill up throughout the day.

2. ALCOHOL

 

Many people think that having a glass of wine or a couple of beers at night will help them sleep, but contrary to popular belief, this can actual hinder a good night's rest.

While the initial effects of drinking can contribute to drowsiness, studies by Washington State University have proven that alcohol consumption will lead to a lighter, lower quality of sleep, interrupted by frequent awakenings. This leaves you waking up feeling just as tired as when you went to bed.

TIP: Ditch the nightcap and opt for a glass of milk instead.

3. MOBILE PHONES 

Many of us are guilty of getting into bed then checking our phones until we feel tired. But it turns out that this can be more disruptive for our sleep cycle than we think. Scrolling through a mobile phone has the tendency to mentally engage users when their brains should be winding down and preparing for rest. Furthermore, the blue light emitted from devices such as smart phones and televisions inhibits the hormone melatonin, which regulates sleep and waking cycles.

These factors make it more difficult to fall asleep in the first place, can lead to feelings of drowsiness the next day and, according to a study by Michigan State University, those that use their smart phones past 9pm will often pay for it the next day by feeling fatigued and restless. TIP: Set your alarm and turn over your phone after nine o'clock. 

4. NOT ENOUGH EXERCISE 

Nobody feels like exercising when they've finished a long day at work, but it turns out skipping a workout to conserve energy has exactly the opposite effect.

A study by the University of Georgia proved that adults who exercised three days a week for 20 minutes at a time reported feeling less fatigued and more energised over a period of six weeks.
The overall study showed that those who exercised lightly reduced fatigue symptoms by a huge 65 per cent.

TIP: Try and go for a gentle half-an-hour jog at least three times a week in order to gradually get those energy levels up.

5. OVERTRAINING

Surprisingly, an overly vigorous workout doesn't always lead to deeper sleep or a better nights rest. According to Dr. Richard A. Dicenso over-exercising can push the body's response system too far, causing it to send out stress hormones such as cortisol, which makes it hard to fall asleep and can even lead to long-term fatigue.

TIP: Opt for light exercise rather than burning yourself out with long periods of heavy training.

6. EATING DINNER TOO LATE 

Getting home after a late night will tempt many people turn to the fridge for some late night indulgence, but this could lead to you feeling exhausted the next day. Consuming a heavy meal too close to bedtime can be disruptive for digestive systems, causing indigestion and even heartburn, making you too uncomfortable to fall asleep.

TIP: Ensure your evening meal is consumed way before 8pm to avoid any digestive upset. 

7. LOW IRON LEVELS

If you're a woman and you're feeling more exhausted than usual it could be down to an iron deficiency. Iron helps transport oxygen around the body via the red blood cells. According to WebMD, without sufficient oxygen in the body, muscle use and even brain function can be depleted, leading to low levels of energy.

TIP: Up your intake by regularly including iron-rich foods in your diet, such as cereals, bread and brown rice, and also green leafy vegetables such has watercress and kale.

8. MEDICATION

Starting a new course of prescription medication can sometimes leave you feeling drowsy and lethargic. Beta-blockers, for instance, are drugs commonly used for high blood pressure and work by blocking hormones such as adrenaline to decrease the activity of the heart. According to the NHS this automatically leads to greater feelings of tiredness.

TIP: If you're concerned about the side effects of medication ask your doctor if any alternatives are available to counteract low energy levels. 

9. CAFFEINE

While many people opt for a cup of coffee to provide them with a pickup, it turns out that too much could be detrimental for energy levels.

Caffeine is a stimulant found in coffee, and according to Natural News, signals for the production of adrenalin, which keeps the brain alert and awake. When the adrenalin wears off later, especially after excessive coffee consumption, you can be left feeling fatigued, irritable and general drowsy.

TIP: Limit coffee intake to one a day, preferably in the morning, in order to allow the body to regulate the level of adrenalin by the time you're ready to hit the pillow.

10. CLUTTER 

As well as making it harder to find things, a cluttered desk can also lead to a mid-afternoon drop in energy. A study at the Neuroscience Institute at Princeton University has shown that 'multiple stimuli', ie chaotic clutter, can cause the brain to feel overwhelmed and restrict your ability to focus which can lead to you feeling frustrated and in turn, fatigued.

Sprucing up your working space, meanwhile, means that paperwork and everything you need is more accessible, and also removes any potential distractions.

TIP: Clear up a small portion of your desk and see if it makes any improvement in mood and productivity.

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6 Proven Ways To Make New Habits Stick

Source: functionallies.com

If you have been trying to cultivate new habits with little success, then you might find these very useful. These habits are not rocket science – they are easy to understand, apply and have worked tremendously for me.

Here they are:

1. Know the Real Reason Why Your Habit Didn’t Stick Previously

 

Address the root cause of the issue, not the effect. Desperately battling with yourself every morning to wake up at 5:30am is to address the effect. Understanding why you keep failing to wake up at 5:30am is to address the cause.

For example, I couldn’t wake up early for the longest time ever, and all I kept doing is to keep trying and failing the next day. This would continue on for several months until I finally realized it was just going nowhere. I began to start analyzing my situation to understand why I couldn’t wake up early, through a self-questioning process. I probed into the situation, and asked myself “why” this was happening to drill down to the root cause.

Below is an example of the drilling process:

• Why can’t I wake up early?
  • Because I’m tired.
• Why am I tired?
  • Because I didn’t have enough sleep.
• Why didn’t I have enough sleep?
  • Because I slept late.
• Why did I sleep late?
  • Because I had too many things to do.
• Why did I have so many things to do?
  • Because I can’t finish them.
• Why can’t I finish them?
  • Because I schedule more tasks than I can accomplish for the day.

Getting down to this root cause helped me realize two things (1) All our habits are tied to one another (sleeping time, waking time, timeliness) (2) I underestimate the time taken to finish the tasks (and subsequently overestimate how fast I can do those tasks). Many times, I would target to finish multiple projects in 1 day, which wasn’t possible at all.

This meant that to make my waking early habit stick, (1) I need to change habits that are related to waking early (see Tip #2) and (2) I have to be more realistic in my planning. Rather than stuff in so many tasks for a day and not finishing them, now I go for a challenging yet achievable schedule and complete my tasks accordingly.

Keep asking why to drill down to the root reason. Once you get to the real cause, you can immediately resolve the issue.

 

2. Pick Habits that Reinforce Each Other

 

Our habits are not standalone; they are interlinked. Some habits have a stronger linkage with each other than others. For example, sleeping early and waking early are obviously linked to each other, while sleeping early and reading a book a day might not be so closely related. If you want to cultivate a habit, identify the other habits that are tied with it and make a holistic change. These habits will reinforce each other to help make the change seamless.

For example, my new habits to: (a) Wake up early at 5am (b) Sleep before 12am (c) Be on time (d) Meditate (e) Have raw food diet are all interlinked.

• Waking up early means I more time to do my tasks, which helps me to sleep earlier in the night. This helps me to wake up early the next day.
• Being on time helps me to get my tasks completed on time, which helps me adhere to the day’s schedule. This means my sleeping time and subsequently my waking time does not get affected.
• Meditating clears out mental clutter and reduces the amount of sleep I need. Usually I sleep about pro6-10 hours, but on the nights I meditate, I require about 5-6 hours.
• Switching to a raw vegan diet has helped to increase my mental clarity, which meant I don’t need to sleep as much as before. I’m not saying that you need to go raw vegan just to cultivate a habit of sleeping/waking early, just that I noticed this particular benefit when I switched to this diet. You can sleep and wake up early perfectly fine by changing other habits.

 

3. Plan For Your Habits (Right down to the timings)

 

Having a schedule lets you know when you are on or off track for your habits. For the 1st day of my new lifestyle, I did a full-day planning and continued thereafter for all other days.
What I do is this:

1. On the night before, put together a list all the tasks I need to get done for the next day. This includes what’s on my calendar (I use Gcal).
2. Batch them into (a) Major projects, (b) Medium sized tasks and (c) Small, administrative activities
3. Slot them into my schedule for the day. Major projects would have most amount of time assigned. The principle I usually go by is 60-30-10 (% time spent) for a-b-c groups respectively.
4. Be aware of how much time each task requires. If it helps, most of the time we underestimate the time we need. Make it a realistic yet challenging time to work towards. Usually I assign a 5-10 minutes buffer time in between tasks to account for the transition from 1 task to the next.
5. Assign exact timings for when each task starts and ends. For example, 9am to 10:30am for Project A, 12:30-1:30pm for lunch, 6:30-7:30pm for commute.
6. If there are more tasks to be done than my schedule allows, I’ll deprioritize the unimportant ones and put them off to another day.

With all this planning done, when the next day comes all I have to do is to follow the schedule to a tee. I keep a close watch on the timing to ensure I’m on time. 5 minutes before it’s up, I do a wrap up and start transiting to the next task on the list.

The beauty of having a precise schedule is it helps me know exactly when I’m taking more time than desired, and this helps me work on being more efficient. There are some timings which absolutely have to be protected, such as my sleeping/waking times and appointment times, so in that sense the time allocated on my tasks are fixed. That means I have to work more efficiently.

It may seem like a hassle, but it really isn’t. It just takes me about 10 minutes to get each day’s schedule done. Not surprisingly, I have allocate time in my daily schedule to do my scheduling for the next day (11-11:10pm). All you have to do is create a template once, and then you can reapply this template for the other days. There will be similar items across all out days that can be reapplied, such as waking/breakfast/commuting/working/dinner/sleeping times, so it’s really very straight forward.

If you don’t plan for when exactly to get the habit done and instead just arbitrarily say that you want it to be done sometime today, then there’s a very high chance it might not get done. This is why most people’s habits don’t stick. Other things will invariably keep popping in and you’d engage them without realizing it and throw your schedule off track. From there, other things get pushed back and you never get to carry out your habit.

 

4. Stay Ahead of Your Schedule

 

I found it’s extremely motivating to stay ahead. Waking up early at 5am means I’m ahead of most people in the world (and myself too, if I were to stick to my old schedule), and that motivates me to work fast and stay ahead. What helps me continue this momentum is that I end my tasks earlier and start the next task before the scheduled timing. By ensuring I stay ahead of my schedule, I’m naturally motivated to work on all the things I have planned, including my habits. There’s no resistance to get them started at all.
If a task is taking more time than needed, then I make a choice. Either I:

1. Hurry up and get it done
2. Deprioritize the unnecessary or
3. Borrow time out for my later tasks to continue working on the current one. This also means I have to work faster for the remainder of the day.

This decision-making process is important, because otherwise you will end up playing catch-up for the rest of the day, which affects all your planned habits/activities. Subsequently, it also affects your will to maintain your habits. Stay ahead of your schedule and you will find it easier to stay motivated.

 

5. Track Your Habits

 

Tracking keeps you accountable to your habits. I have a whiteboard in my bedroom which I use to track my habits. On the whiteboard, I drew a large table, split by days (21 days to cultivate a new habit) and by habits. For the days where I do the habit, I will give it a check. For the days I don’t, I make a cross. It’s very satisfying to do the checks every time you finish a habit! You can also track your habits on paper or in your computer.
Here are some great habit trackers online:

• HabitForge – Tracks new habits through a 21-day period. If you miss the habit for 1 day, it’ll restart.
• Rootein – Unlike Habit Forge, this is an ongoing habit tracker. There is also a mobile version for you to track your habits on the go.
• Joe’s Goals – Same as Rootein. There’s an option to place multiple checks on the same goal for extra-productive days.

 

6. Engage People Around You

 

Engagement can occur on 2 levels – (a) Active engagement, where you inform your friends who might be interested in and cultivate the habit together with them or (b) Passive engagement, where you let others know about your plans and having them morally support you.

I had both forms of support in my habit change. 2 days before I started my lifestyle revamp program, I posted an article on my blog, The Personal Excellence Blog, on the new 21-day Lifestyle Revamp Program I was taking on. I wrote in detail about the rationale behind the program, the benefits, the habits I was taking on and how I was going to achieve my goals. I also invited them to join me too in cultivating new habits. Much to my pleasant surprise, many readers responded in enthusiasm on new habits they wanted to cultivate and joined me in the 21-days of change.

For my raw food diet, I told my mom that I’m just eating fruits and salads for the next 3 weeks, and she began to stock up the house with fruits like bananas, grapes and strawberries. In fact, I just finished a box of strawberries from typing this post. Yesterday, I went to watch How To Train A Dragon with my friend, and filled him in on my raw food diet. He then kept a look out for the restaurants we could dine in for that night. In the end I had warm baby spinach salad for dinner. My first time having it – can’t say I like it, but it’s nice for a change :D.

Don’t feel that you’re alone in your habit change because you aren’t. There are always people around you who are more than willing to support you.

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