How are people so energetic after work and after the work week?
QuestionAfter every workday I feel mentally exhausted and end up in the same repetitive routine. Same thing on the weekends. After the work week I'm exhausted and don't want to do anything. Saturday is a full recovery day, on Sunday I have a little energy to do something, and then it's back to the work week.
Meanwhile, some of my colleagues are very energetic and always doing something. The movies, the gym and so on. They even do sport before work, at 6am, and get to work by 8.
My evenings after work are pretty much laid out: get home, eat dinner, bathroom, brush my teeth, wudu and pray, watch a TV show, then go to bed. On Saturdays I end up doing nothing, or forcing myself to watch something.
Working out before work gives you extra energy, and you keep that energy through the day. I know it makes no sense, but that's how it works. I couldn't believe it until I tried it.
And drinking enough water and eating enough protein. It really is like a light switch of energy.
The hardest realisation in adult life is that motivation and energy only come after action, never before. It absolutely sucks. I hate it.
Inertia. An object in motion stays in motion. Any time I'm being a whiny baby I make myself do one small chore, the dishes or the bathroom, and 99% of the time I keep going afterwards. The 1% is when I know I'm actually burnt out and need to sleep or have a zero day.
Exercise has been mentioned already. But another thing is that the routine is a trap. After a while you stop thinking about it and it becomes automatic.
Try to do a side quest every day. Just some small thing that's different. Go for a walk. Have a coffee or a sandwich or an ice cream at a cafe you've never been to. Go to the park or the beach and sit on a bench for 20 minutes. Go to the library and look at random books. Go into a store you've never been in, just to look. Don't make a big deal of it, it's just a silly side quest. But it breaks the monotony and makes the main quest fun again.
Desk job fatigue is different from physical tiredness. Your body might be sitting all day, but your brain can still be completely drained by the end of it. The morning workout suggestion makes sense.
Sleep quality matters a lot here too, not just total hours. I've had periods where 7 to 8 hours still left me low on energy in the afternoons, and improving my sleep habits made a noticeable difference. When you wake up, do you feel properly rested, or just rested enough to get through the day?
I do it tired.
What kind of work do you do, a desk job or something more physical? I'm asking because the fix is totally different depending on whether it's mental fatigue or physical exhaustion.
Desk job, in an office. Accounting.
I know this kind of exhaustion very well. What helped me most wasn't more productivity hacks, although sleep, balanced food and physical activity are a big part of it. It was realising that mental fatigue and physical fatigue don't recover in the same way.
Many of us spend the workday taking in information, solving problems, making decisions and meeting expectations. Then we come home mentally exhausted and spend the evening consuming more content. It feels relaxing, but you're still processing someone else's story. After a mentally demanding day, more input doesn't leave me refreshed.
Sometimes the brain just needs permission to exist without a purpose. A walk with no destination. Doodling badly. Painting something ugly. Playing music. Gardening. Being bored. Anything where the goal isn't performance or productivity. Oddly, the less I care about the result, the more rested I feel afterwards.
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