Maintaining Energy
By Rehan Khan
25-04-2024
When I start to become distracted, struggle to focus, and get sidetracked by the trivial, it’s a sure sign I am short of sleep. I often slip into coasting, not thinking about what I should be doing. Some of the other signs that indicate my energy levels are low are the following:
Regular task switching and struggling to concentrate.
Intentions falling away and becoming more haphazard.
Completing tasks more slowly, due to such things as having to re-read a paragraph more than normal.
Gravitating towards trivial tasks, such as checking email and social feeds.
To overcome this, I have a set of activities I try to initiate by way of taking a break from the work I’m doing.
These involve: going for a walk, doing some exercise, or listening to an audiobook or podcast. Here are some other suggestions that you might also want to try:
Taking a brisk walk. If it’s in a green area, that’s even better.
Listening to or reading an enjoyable story.
Chatting with some friends.
Meditating or praying.
Listening to some relaxing music.
Serving others, whether they are family members or people in need.
Spending time on a craft, such as woodwork, painting, or photography.
How often you need to take a break will vary on several factors, including what type of person you are – outgoing or more introverted. Research points to significant advantages acquired from taking regular breaks as well as a lunch break. The benefits being:
Improved productivity. Breaks can boost productivity as you can reset your focus and energy levels when you step away from work. A lunch break can also help you to avoid the afternoon energy slump, so long as you have not overeaten!
Well-being. Taking a break away from work can help to reduce stress, especially if you can combine it with a healthy lunch and a walk.
Creativity surge. Stepping away from work can bring a fresh perspective. If you are looking at the same thing the whole day, it can become difficult to make progress. A break stimulates more creative thinking.
Healthier habits. Breaks can allow for more healthy eating habits, exercise, meditation and care for oneself.
If you can build in a 10- to 15-minute break every hour, or a 20- to 30-minute break every 90 minutes, then you are going to help yourself not become distracted. Our energy levels, much like REM sleep, operate in 90-minute intervals, and taking a break after this period aligns with our bodily rhythms.
Along with ensuring you are getting sufficient sleep every night and are maintaining the right energy levels throughout the day, there are a couple of other things you can pay attention to that will help you become less distracted. These are related to what you eat, what you drink and how much exercise you do.
Eat more unprocessed food: It takes longer for the body to digest unprocessed food. The body converts whatever we eat into glucose – a sugar our body and brain burns for energy. Unprocessed food takes longer to digest, as our body switches it to glucose at a much slower rate, providing us with a steady drip of energy throughout the day. Processed food gets converted into glucose quickly, but it does not provide us with as much energy over a longer period of time.
Caffeine and water: Caffeine prevents your brain from absorbing a chemical called adenosine, which normally tells your body it’s tired. It takes about 8–14 hours after you have consumed caffeine for your body to metabolise it out of your system. Whilst travelling overseas on business trips, I’ve often drunk coffee mid-morning when I have a night-time flight, so that as the effect starts to wear off, I’m ready to sleep on the airplane. Or if I’ve taken an overnight flight and landed the next day and had to go into work, I’ve taken a coffee shortly after landing so that my body can last till early evening, when I head straight to bed and crash out for a long night’s sleep. I would also suggest that you drink water first thing in the morning. There are a number of studies on the benefits of drinking water. Some suggest that it fires up our metabolism in the morning. Another study found that people who drank water before meals lost weight because water partly fills the stomach. Water also helps us think more clearly and reduces the risk of certain diseases and ailments.
Exercise: When we workout, especially with aerobic exercise, our brain releases a number of chemicals that allow us to fight stress. We also increase the blood flow to the brain, which is positive for our mental performance – we feel less tired and have more focus. When we exercise, our brain releases BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), a chemical that helps create new brain cells – a lot of this growth happens in the hippocampus, the part of your brain responsible for memory. Exercise can even boost mood and build cells in brain regions damaged by depression.
There are several measures we can take to prevent ourselves from becoming distracted. All of these are well within our capacity to perform but we will only do it if we assign importance to it.
