How To Stay Awake At Work: Part 2

We’ve all had one of those days where it’s a battle to stay awake. Whether you stayed up too late last night watching your new favorite TV show on Netflix or had a horrible night of sleep—consequentially, you’re most likely a human bobble head at work the next day. Drooling and snoring at your desk isn’t a good way to get noticed.

Here are six tricks you can do to stay awake when the sandman pays you a visit at work:

Chew some sunflower seeds:

This is one of my family’s old school tricks. When you are feeling tired get a bag of your favorite sunflower seeds. Put some seeds in your mouth, crack open the shells, spit them out, and eat the seed. This keeps you awake without distracting or taking you away from your desk and work. Just make sure you have a disposable cup so your can  spit out the shells incognito.

Better posture:

Bad posture is something small you can fix and makes all the difference. Don’t slouch over or lean back on your chair. Put both feet flat on the ground and keep your back straight to stay awake.

Take a power nap:

During a break take a fifteen-minute nap. A quick nap helps relax and recharge your brain. Find somewhere quite where you can relax and not be disturbed. Take your phone with you and set a timer or an alarm for fifteen minutes. You’ll feel like a new person when it goes off and you go back to work.

Listen to new music:

Music can help you out. I’m not talking about putting your headphones in and blasting some loud music to keep you awake. When fighting tired eyes the best approach to using music is to play music you haven’t heard before. A new band or new album, Pandora is a great place to do this. Listening to new songs can help stimulate your brain to stay awake because your brain subconsciously focuses on the new instrumentals and lyrics trying to put them together.

Fun movement games:

One of the things we do at Lendio is play a couple of games of Ping-Pong after we eat lunch. Playing some Ping-Pong involves movement from your legs and arms keeping your blood flowing all over and not just in your stomach. This will keep your brain more awake than if you just ate your meal and went back to work. By doing something involving movement it helps keep the lunch food coma from creeping up on you. Why not make it fun as well?

Regularly changing up your routine is the one of the best things you could do to combat the mid-afternoon bobble head. Try these out and let me know which one best helps you out. If none of these tricks help you out, there are more tricks on my other blog post, “How To Stay Awake At Work”.

Mike Alder is a University of Utah business marketing student and marketing specialist at Lendio. Passionate about entrepreneurship, small businesses, and inbound marketing. Mike shows his passion by sharing stories of successful entrepreneurs and companies with small business owners on the Lendio blog. He makes these big success stories easy-to-apply in simple and easy to read language for the everyday small business owner and entrepreneur.

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