Here is your boring fact of the day, Henry Ford invented the 9-5 working day. Now I don’t know old Henry but that is some invention to have became such a part of our culture.
Now while the overriding idea of the 9-5 makes sense (having structure is good for us and our companies) it doesn’t play into our body clocks (circadian rhythm) as well as we may like and thus isn’t the optimal regime for all of us to work in.
Something else you may not know is that our internal body clock actually fully kicks in NOT when we wake up but when the first bit of light hits our optic nerve be this natural or artificial light.
This light hitting the optic nerve stops us producing melatonin (the thing that makes us sleepy) and starts seratonin production), roughly 12-14 hours later our melatonin is up and we have stopped producing serotonin, throughout the day we also build up sleep pressure through something called adenosine.
In this circadian rhythm or internal body clock we tend to have ‘dip’ around mid-afternoon.
Most of us will have experience of this, an hour after lunch and you are struggling to keep your eyes open in a meeting never mind make decisions that take a lot of cognitive function.
Now, this CAN be a result of sleep debt from lack of good sleep in the days prior and it could also be a result of poor nutrition throughout the day but what was fascinating for me to learn is that it doesn’t have to be.
A lot of us can sleep and eat well and yet we still experience this dip, it’s just part of who we are.
So how do we combat it?
There are two options I am going to consider with this.
Group 1 is people who have a direct ability to influence their working day and environment.
Group 2 is people who are having to do their best as they can’t change their working day.
For group 1 there is a couple of things that I would recommend:
-Take lunch slightly earlier.
-Return to work almost as soon as you have finished eating.
-Work for 60-90 minutes before having a mid-afternoon nap OR a workout (gauge on how you feel).
-The nap should be no more than 20-30 minutes.
-Consider a nootropic supplement upon waking or finishing working out.
-Go outside and get 5 minutes of light and movement (basically walk outside) upon waking and then get back to work.
For Group 2 it looks like this:
-During lunch get outside and move.
-Upon returning to work do your very best to work near sunlight or failing that consider a SMART light.
-Have a nootropic supplement WITHOUT caffeine.
-Every 45-90 minutes get up for just a couple of minutes of movement.
Some of the above is science based and some is anecdotal. I am not going to go through it all line by line as it would turn it from a blog to book but I truly believe these things can help make you much more productive and avoid that midday slump.
On a final note as difficult as it is (and believe me I’ve been there) try and avoid caffeine. Caffeine kicks the problem down the road as it affects our sleep that night which in turn makes the afternoon slump the next day worse. We then crave caffeine and the cycle goes on an indefinite loop hence my suggestion for a nootropic (feel free to message for recommendations).
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