Why does thinking make you tired

Did I remember to send that email I said I would send? Do I need groceries right away or can I wait a couple of days? When can I get the kids in for their flu shots? Menchola says to watch for:. Your mental health is suffering. You have big decisions to make. Your routines are out of whack. Menchola says. Routines can be comforting because your actions become automatic.

When your routines are disrupted, you must make decisions about things you did not have to think about before. For example, the pandemic has forced us to rethink many routines: Do we come in to work or work remotely? Should we go to the grocery store? Do we keep visiting grandma on Sundays? Who will help the kids with their remote classes? Who already knows how to do this?

Search for your answers. For parenting advice, turn to experienced parents you trust. For work issues, connect with a colleague or mentor. The result is mental fatigue. Research shows that mental fatigue results in an inability to concentrate and an increase in simple mistakes. Unchecked, mental fatigue leads to feeling stressed, irritated that you can't keep up and even depressed. What's more, being in a state of mental fatigue not only affects your well-being, it also spills over into your interactions with family and others you associate with.

It's draining for them to be around someone who is continuously mentally exhausted. If you think you may be mentally fatigued, here are seven tips to help you prevent and combat it. Be ruthless about how you spend your time. Instead of mindlessly moving from one task to the next, focus on activities that grow your business. Stop burning away hours reading Facebook updates or answering useless emails.

Instead, keep those activities for a scheduled, timed break, then move away to something more worthwhile. Don't meet with acquaintances who want to get together for coffee—these are often people who have time to waste and want to waste it with you. Use the time you've saved to learn new things, and pursue activities that increase your well-being and the quality of your life.

Focus on strengthening your bonds with family, friends and associates. Do what fuels your mind and fills your heart.

If you rescue wasted time consistently over the course of a year, you'll be richer for it and will feel more energized. Timebox is a term that originated in the software development industry. It's defined as a period of time during which a task must be accomplished.

Entrepreneurs like Steve Pavlina use timeboxing as a way to manage work projects. Because timeboxing forces you to limit the time you allot to certain tasks that run the risk of taking far more time than they're worth, it counteracts any perfectionist approaches to the wrong tasks and ensures that you do the best job you can within a set time frame. Focus Will is a music service that's based on the latest research in neuroscience.

The selected music helps you focus, reduce distractions and retain information. As the company behind this intersection of art and science explains, most people can only concentrate for about continuous minutes: "The focus will system makes it easier for you to get into the concentration flow, and then keeps you there.

It works in the background by subtly soothing the part of your brain, the limbic system, that's always on the lookout for danger, food, sex or shiny things.

By staying focused, you can get more done in a shorter amount of time, so you can free up more time and reduce your chances of mental fatigue. Entrepreneur Sean Ogle described the program as "magic. Probably not, but a regular refresh will help you sustain your focus over a longer period of time instead of crashing by midday.

Something beats nothing. High performers work for fifty-two minutes and then break for seventeen minutes. Moving beats stationary. Social beats solo. Research in South Korean workplaces shows that social breaks—talking with coworkers about something other than work—are more effective at reducing stress and improving mood than either cognitive breaks answering e-mail or nutrition breaks getting a snack.

Outside beats inside. People who take short walks outdoors return with better moods and greater replenishment than people who walk indoors. Fully detached beats semi-detached.

Tech-free breaks also increase vigor and reduce emotional exhaustion. Or you may want to use an afternoon break to just sleep. A minute nap at a low-energy point between noon and 4pm works best for most people.

When you have one program open running one task, all the RAM is dedicated to that one thing and everything zips along nicely. But then you open another window.

And another. And then a new internet tab or twenty. Each additional demand on your computer slows things down. Here are some of the ways you can lighten your mental load:. This could be fully completing the task at once or determining the next actionable steps to move it along. The best way to deal with mental fatigue is to take proactive steps to minimize it in the first place and then work around it as best you can.

But sometimes you just have to slog through your energy troughs. Set a timer and get to it. Once the timer goes off, identify the next micro-task and work on that.

If you have to force your way through a mental slump, break work down into micro-tasks you can finish in 10 minutes or less. Acknowledging that fatigue is a natural result of challenging your brain can be freeing in and of itself. We need to learn to work with our natural rhythms instead of simply trying to overcome them. Becky is editor and logophile-in-residence at Doist.