“Rest when you’re weary. Refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit. Then get back to work.” – Ralph Marston
What do we do when we are tired? I am sure most of us have experienced this before. This has triggered me to share some good habits with you. Feel free to practice them and let me know how it goes.
“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.” – Leonardo da Vinci
Here are some of the good habits:
- “Solvitur ambulando” is a Latin phrase which means “it is solved by walking”. When we feel tired, it could be due to a few factors; we are bored, ran out of ideas or could be lack of oxygen. By breaking what we are doing at that moment to go for a walk, we can reboot, refresh and re-energize. One of the brilliant articles to read: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hemingway-thoreau-jeffers_b_3837002
- Drink water is a healthy and good way to increase our brain capacity feeding it with oxygen and transporting nutrients to parts of our body. At times when I was too focused in completing my tasks, I forgot to drink water then I felt lethargic, not able to focus and leading to headache. Water does not only hydrate us, it contributes to many health benefits. (all right, take a break and have some water, now…)
- Aromatherapy has psychological and physiological effects on us. With the right essential oil (I believe it depends on individual, the one they use in the office… is not to my liking, I prefer lemon or something zesty), it will help to boost our mood, helps with stress reduction, calming us and assist in triggering sense of focus. There are many options that are available or the easiest is to rub the essential on your palm and enjoy the scent.
- Snack healthily with nuts, dried fruits, fruit or vegetable slices, peanut butter, etc… here is one of a good resources: http://www.eatingwell.com/article/15314/10-ways-to-snack-smarter/
- Power nap... in fact, I just woke up from my power nap and writing this blog, haha. There are a lot of “different schools” of thoughts on this topic… according to science, generally the range of duration will be from 10 to 30 minutes. As long as you do not go into “sleep inertia”, when that happened, you will wake up feeling worse. How long for you? Please experiment.
- Stretching or quick exercise i.e. jumping jacks, walking around, planks… there are so many exercise we can do. Find the one that you are able to do with the space constraint and with the resources that you have (chair or table).
This site is interesting: https://draxe.com/exercise-to-do-at-your-desk/ - Have short breaks in between tasks; pause, look around (focus exercise), meditate, mindfulness (awareness), puzzles, read articles, talk and socialize, breathing exercise, doodling… make coffee or tea and enjoy sipping. Take a break, have a Kit Kat (not that I am getting any sponsorship from them :-p )
- Most important of all, should we want to stay energize, focus, refresh and healthy… have enough rest and sleep. How many hours? Different people will be different. You will need to experiment and take note of whether your sleep is a good light or deep sleep. For me, I will need at least 7 hours of sleep to be performing my best.
“Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” – Jim Rohn
“Your habits, your future!”