Working when you're tired

[Zak33]

Lo dudes.

When I'm knackered but still grafting I find one of two things happens and wondered if it happened to you too?

A) It switch's me back to alert and sometimes hyper... leaving me worknig very fast and effectively but unable to then relax or sleep

or

B) I just work slower, less and less efficiently and get stuff wrong

and I can't work out why one or other occurs!

any ideas?

[blueball]

It is due to the "Performance-Arousal Curve" <- NB safe for work

[billythewiz]

The fatigue can be countered with a Blood Alcohol Concentration of between 0.129% and 0.138%.

http://xkcd.com/323/ <-- safe for work so long as you have a boss that lets you surf and post on Hexus all day long !

[0iD]

All the time, big dip in energy then hyper alert. Especially on nights.

[Zak33]

blueball /\ you are one clever bloke... so ... how do I keep it like that and not a wobbly mess?

[jackobyte]

average work day for me is start at 1500 and end 0700 next morning.
2 jobs with one working 12 hour nights for 4 nights a week average sleep:
winter 4-6 hours a day
summer 3-5 hours a day
pending how deep i sleep and if outside day noise disturbs me i can be lethargic around 0300hrs then pep up again.Other times i'm awake and alert
(our company need lerts) but brain occasionally disengages itself from body and forgets what job i was doing 5 mins ago.
also coffee and red bull no use feel crap if used funny enough after the second day off is when i feel more tired after a good 8-9hrs sleep.
also ratty at times which missus get annoyed at but hey stops her moaning at me if she ain't talking to me !!!

[Zak33]

jacko.... man that sounds TOUGH !! Mine aint that bad.

I never use redbull, or relentless etc.. just good coffee. But only upto mid afternoon. Tea after that.

[blueball]

blueball /\ you are one clever bloke... so ... how do I keep it like that and not a wobbly mess?

All the top athletes/sportsmen study this. It's about getting your mind to the right level and keeping it there. Takes practice. You'll see them, especially golfers, trying to visualise what they are going to do and how to do it. I'm afraid I don't have enough knowledge of it to be of much more use to you than that.

Basically you need to get into the region of the graph pointed to by the "Stress Management" text and then try to keep your mind there. A lot of athletes dip in and out of the area as you cannot stay there for too long. A golfer will only psyche himself up for shots and will try to smile and relax between shots.

[Jay]

All the time, big dip in energy then hyper alert. Especially on nights.

Same here as well

[jackobyte]

jacko.... man that sounds TOUGH !! Mine aint that bad.

I never use redbull, or relentless etc.. just good coffee. But only upto mid afternoon. Tea after that.

can be a bit rough at times, i use fruit teas now and fruit juice,plenty of water, found they help also added more fruit instead of chocs and biscuits.Still miss the chocs though !!!!!!!!!!!

[scaryjim]

I can't work when I'm tired. Just doesn't happen. I phase in and out and lose concentration - if I'm trying to code I'll get about 5 lines written in an hour: I don't make mistakes generally, I just don't get anything done.

On the other hand, if I get stuck into something productive I can happily go an entire day without breaks or food without getting tired in the first place.

And I tend to swing regularly between those two extremes without much space for middle ground. Probably not particularly healthy, tbh...

[dave87]

I find when tired I'm more likely to get the wrong end of the stick, or have to read things a couple of times before they make sense - the other thing is it gets harder to review documents on screen, so I end up printing them out so I can have them in front of me and write/draw/cross out things - before then implementing those changes on the computer.

If I get stuck into something though - like the scarier jim mentions, it'll retain my attention and focus for a significant length of time...

[Lucio]

I'm fantastically lucky to work for a company that has a director who has an intuitive understanding of people's stress levels in the job and takes active steps to manage them. Whether it's from winding someone up with a bit of banter, or quietly reassuring them that things are being done to deal with the underlying issues, he's done what's needed (most of the time, he is after all still human!)

[Phage]

Same as Dave and ScaryJim. I start at 8 and run through to 6, but after that it's all downhill. Stupid errors get missed, and I end up trying to do the same task over and over again.

I found working two jobs OK, provided that one of them didn't require a huge amount of thought !

[Behemoth]

B) I just work slower, less and less efficiently and get stuff wrong

and I can't work out why one or other occurs!

any ideas?

It's the above me of me, when I'm stressed I get tuired quite quickly, or if I'm just tired then I teasy when things don't go the way I want them.

[Mutley]

I'm absolutely knackered at the moment, but I find there are two types of tiredness:

1. General everyday, 'went to bed too late' tiredness. Some coffee to perk you up for the day, followed by an early night usually helps.

2. A deeper exhaustion, like a heavyness which dulls the senses, makes it very hard to concentrate for more than a minute, or hold any thought in your head. Very low energy. This isn't fixed by a good nights sleep.

I'm in (2) at the moment. And I find it very hard to work like this (I work in IT). It seems to be cyclical as well. Coffee or any wake-up drink does little, and can in fact make it worse.