Depending on your work style, you might like to adhere to certain habits and routines because they give you a better idea of the things you have to do for the day. For people who are accustomed to a fixed schedule, you might not notice how some things you are doing can actually be the reason behind the stress and fatigue you experience every time your workday ends.
1: Oversleeping
If you’re sleeping in because it’s a weekend and you’ve had a very tiring week, oversleeping might sound like a logical thing to do, but sleeping beyond the average sleeping hours can have detrimental effects on your body. If sleeping re-energizes the body, oversleeping doesn’t make you even more energized; instead, it can cause exhaustion in the morning.
When your body moves less and stays solitary beyond the hours it needs to be, you are exposing your body to muscular issues and discomforts. The science behind this is simple: your body would naturally wake up if you had enough high-quality sleep. Poor sleep quality would manifest in less sleeping hours or excessive hours of sleep.
2: Trying to Constantly Put Your Best Foot Forward
There is a reason why customer service-type jobs tend to be the most stressful. Constantly trying to smile, putting your best foot forward to impress people, and exerting a lot of energy to conceal your true emotions can tire you out throughout the day. Not only is it emotionally-tiring, but it can also affect you mentally, too.
While there is nothing wrong with constantly trying to be a cheerful person, working hard to impress people can be a stressful activity. If you belong to an industry where your main duty is to ensure that people leave with a smile on their face all the time, learn to de-stress whenever you have the chance, detoxify, or meditate in between breaks.
3: Sitting for More Than 3 Hours at a Time
Sitting might look like an easy thing to do-- how difficult is it to fold your knees on a chair anyway? What many people might not know, however, is that sleeping can be just as dangerous as smoking. In fact, doctors and physiotherapists have often compared both and considered them equally life-threatening.
If your lifestyle or work requires you to stay in front of the computer for hours, think about standing up after 3 hours of sitting or using a standing converter desk so you can switch between these two positions and work in a manner that is most comfortable to you.
4: Drinking More Than 2 Mugs of Coffee Every Day
If coffee is your fuel, don’t overfill yourself too much especially after lunchtime. As various research have shown, drinking too much coffee can contribute to the disruption of your circadian rhythm, which in turn results in disrupted sleeping hours and exhaustion that hits the hardest after 24 hours of your second cup.
If you really can’t help it and you need to have something on your desk to munch on or drink while you work, considering switching between tea, water, or unsweetened fresh juice in the afternoon as a refreshing drink to get you through your stressful work tasks.
5: Social Media Addiction
According to GlobalWebIndex or GWI, the average adult spends at least an hour and 45 minutes on their phone every day. A great deal of that is spent on checking their social media accounts and messengers. For individuals who are constantly connected to the internet, however, their social media usage is considerably higher than those who belong to industries that are less dependent on computers.
Your social media addiction could be causing you unnecessary exhaustion. People not only waste time, but they also waste their energy. Unless your work requires you to be connected to social media accounts regularly, try to control your social media usage by using application or website managers.
6: Excessive Phone Usage
In connection with the reason above, excessive phone usage may also result in more wasted hours at work, distractions, and stress. The constant calls, messages, and emails you may be receiving well into your weekend can silently creep into your hours of rest, and keep you from enjoying your free hours because you are responding to conversations or calls, which may or may not be necessary. Learn to limit your phone usage, and most importantly, learn to gauge the quality of your conversations. Naturally, respond to important calls and conversations as soon as you can, but also learn to schedule the unimportant ones during your downtime.
7: Work Meetings
Truth be told, not all work meetings are necessary, and some of the points you might be thinking about sharing in a meeting could be summarized and sent in an email. Before you think about scheduling a company-wide meeting just yet, think about the minutes you could potentially lose in setting one up versus the minutes you could save when you could just prepare a company memo. Unless your meeting requires everyone’s participation, consider emailing your team first.
8: Sleeping Late
“Just one more episode…” “Just one more page…” You might mutter either of these phrases to yourself if you’ve become too engrossed in your favourite series or novel, but pulling an all-nighter is rarely a good idea. Sleeping late might sound fun (and something an adult could do), but you probably wouldn’t like the idea of having a slow start to your morning.
That being said, try to sleep on time when you can and schedule your interests in hours that are more convenient and in hours that would not affect or overlap with your fixed sleeping hours.
