5 Ways to Bounce Back From Workplace Fatigue

Feeling too tired to work? You're not alone.

"Fatigue is a lingering tiredness that is constant and limiting," according to Web MD. "With fatigue, you have unexplained, persistent, and relapsing exhaustion. It's similar to how you feel when you have the flu or have missed a lot of sleep. If you have chronic fatigue, or systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID), you may wake in the morning feeling as though you've not slept. Or you may be unable to function at work or be productive at home. You may be too exhausted even to manage your daily affairs."

In fact, 35% of Americans don’t get the recommended seven hours of sleep each night; instead, they get an average of 6.8 hours of sleep each night, according to research from The Good Body.

What causes extreme tiredness?

Wondering, Why am I always tired and have no energy? There are tons of reasons why you might feel exhausted. It can stem from too much exercise to a poor diet with too few nutrients to stress to underlying health conditions like anemia or rhinitis.

Extreme tiredness is partly because roughly 20% of Americans have a sleep disorder like insomnia (60 million), sleep apnea (22 million), restless leg syndrome (12 million) and REM sleep behavior disorder (three million).

Meanwhile, others who have trouble sleeping may struggle with depression; three-quarters of those who suffer from depression suffer from a lack of sleep. And others might be coping with pain; about 20% of American adults with pain or physical discomfort struggled with disrupted sleep at least a few nights a week.

And then, of course, there are those who are simply burned out at work and, therefore, have trouble sleeping because they can't turn their heads off when they get in bed or because they're working late or odd hours and don't have time to sleep. In fact, according to a recent Gallup study of almost 7,500 full-time employees, 23% of employees report feeling burned out at work either very often or always. An additional 44% report feeling burned out at least sometimes. This means that about two-thirds of full-time workers experience burnout while at work.

Whatever causes people to lose sleep, sleep deprivation can affect people's health, wellbeing and productivity, which means that it has far-reaching and costly economic consequences. Sleep deprivation costs the US $411 billion annually, according to The Good Body. The research suggests that, if people sleep just one extra hour per night, it could add over $200 billion to the United States economy.

But the reality is that, sometimes, there's just not enough hours in the day to get everything you need to do done and get to bed at a normal hour so you can get adequate sleep. And so, sometimes, you're just plain tired.

What are the symptoms of exhaustion?

What can you do when you're too tired to work?

If you're too tired to work, here are five steps you can take to wake yourself up.

1. Meditate.

2. Exercise.

3. Drink some tea.

4. Have a coffee.

5. Check off the little things.

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