Is Your Office Job Making You Tired?

While it’s normal to feel drowsy or tired every now and again, consistently feeling tired or fatigued can affect a person’s life. When you have little energy and are constantly tired, even the most basic tasks will take a toll on you and leave you feeling worn out.

If you are feeling tired, the first thing you need to do is pinpoint the reason. Approximately 10% of people who experience fatigue actually have some sort of illness; the rest will start to feel more rested by making lifestyle changes.

For some people, the cause of their fatigue is related to their office job. Believe it or not, conditions at your office job could be the reason you’re feeling fatigued. These are a few possible reasons for job-related fatigue:

A lack of natural light

Natural light is an important component in keeping you awake and energized throughout the day. A lack of natural light causes your body to start to revert to sleep mode, which can make you feel drowsy and tired. Natural light also affects your mood. Rates of depression are higher in the winter, where the days are shorter, than in the summer. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a form of depression that peaks in the winter. If a lack of sunshine has you feeling depressed, fatigue could be the culprit, as it is one of the main symptoms of depression. An office setting or indoor job with little light could be causing you to feel tired.

Routine

If your job is the same routine every day it can cause you to be tired. Sitting at a desk and typing or doing monotonous work, even though you aren’t doing anything particularly physical, can be draining as well. Interestingly enough, when you are bored, your body often registers this as fatigue.

A lack of physical activity

If you work in an office or have a job that places you behind a desk for the majority of the day, you are not getting much physical activity. Exercise is important for a number of reasons, helping your circulation, which can help you feel more alert, and making you more energized overall. An office or desk job makes this difficult.

Solutions

If you think your job could be making you tired, the following tips can help you to re-energize yourself:

• Get up when and move around possible. Don’t spend too much time in front of your computer. For every hour in front of a computer screen, take a 10 minute break away from it. Get up and get a drink or walk to the person you need to talk to instead of sending an email or making a phone call.
• Get outside a couple times a day. Try and get away for a quick walk around the building or outside once or twice a day. The sun will do you good and the exercise will energize you.
• Shake up your routine. Try not to get too bored at work by listening to music, taking a break, read funny emails, or going somewhere on your lunch that will break you away from the routine. This can keep you from getting too bored and tired.

Whether you realize it or not, your job might be making you tired. While having an office job can make you feel more tired than usual, the suggestions above may help you curb the fatigue you experience at work.