Why you feel tired and sleepy when you do work
I defeated the snooze monster today.
I was reading a publication on green energy and found myself yawning and tired.
Knowing that tiredness is an emotion, see this video by Dr. K, I created distance from the emotion by taking a mental step back to observe what the emotion was trying to do.
First, I notice that it was protecting me from wasting my energy on a seemingly fruitless activity. But why it is fruitless?
I reassessed the reason I was reading it. I initially thought it was because it is useful to my work. I dig deeper and ask "why is it that despite reminding myself of its significance, my brain refuse to provide the energy to complete the task?".
I found that it was because the act of reading it became a passive activity after the first few lines. To contrast, the active version is to read to find an answer to a problem. It is more like searching instead of reading.
I was also surprised to find that I wasn't even clear what or why I was searching.
To sum up, you will have energy when there is a clear goal (what and why). This clarity gives you a sense of purpose and direction.
Framework, to defeat the snooze monster, there are four steps:
Step 1 - Create distance by taking a mental step back
Step 2 - Be explicitly clear on the task goal.
Step 3 - Search, don't read. Active, not passive.
Step 4 - Watch the energy returns