The Five Kinds of Fatigue and What to Do About Them

Fatigue isn’t one thing. I separate it into five kinds of energy: physical, emotional, motivational, cognitive and connective. They tend to rise and fall together, but each one can run down on its own, so the first step is to notice which kind you’re short of.

We live in a world of chronic cognitive fatigue. Everyday life has become so complex that it wears all of us down, so don’t assume you’re the only one struggling. Pace yourself, and fix your roof in the sunshine: put your practice in place while you have the energy, so it’s there when you don’t.

The five kinds of fatigue

Physical fatigue

You feel sluggish for no obvious reason, and your usual exertions become laborious. That’s often down to sleep deprivation. Your number one tool is hypnagogic meditation: you spend a short while in the dreamy place and come back with your energy restored. If you’re tired because you’ve done something physically hard, you may need to rest.

Emotional fatigue

You notice it because you get snappy, grumpy or easily distressed. Hypnagogic meditation takes the edge off the sleep deprivation that is often behind it. Then use labelling: notice the snappiness, name it, and return to the breath.

Motivational fatigue

Keep a log of your highs and lows for at least three weeks and look for the patterns. Then do the things that need motivation at the times you’re naturally most motivated.

Cognitive fatigue

It ranges from doing complex analysis in your head to forgetting people’s names and brain fog. Pace yourself, and save problem-solving for your high-energy times. Plan those times. Put them in your diary or calendar. Plan to plan.

Connective fatigue

This is your ability to walk into a room of strangers and speak to them. Pick your battles and choose your connective opportunities, but stay on the edge of your comfort zone and process the uncomfortable interactions afterwards. If you don’t, your comfort zone will shrink.

Sleep and fatigue

Sleep deprivation often underlies both physical and emotional fatigue, so it’s worth discussing some useful approaches to sleep.

Don’t try hard to fall asleep. It’s the law of reversed effect. The harder you try, the less you get. The brain assumes the result matches the effort you put in, but trying to sleep keeps your mind active and your stress up, which keeps you awake. Nobody would tell you to try harder to fall asleep.

So if you’re in bed, your mind is active, and you feel stressed and anxious, forget about trying to fall asleep. Meditate instead. While you’re meditating, you’ll stop trying to fall asleep, and you’ll quite possibly drift off. If you don’t, it doesn’t matter, because you’re getting rest through meditation, and that’s just as good as rest through sleep.

Keeping a sleep diary or an energy log

A sleep diary is part of sleep management. It shows you your own patterns, so you’re not relying on a general rule. It also shows you that good nights and bad nights come and go, and that this is normal.

I sometimes keep an energy log myself, in a spreadsheet. It’s a list of dates with two columns next to it: lows and highs. When you notice your energy is low, note the time in the lows column; when you’re full of beans, note it in the highs column. If there’s more than one low or high in a day, add a second row.

Keep it simple. For sleep, note when you went to bed, roughly how well you slept, and your energy the next day. Keep it for about three weeks, which is often how long it takes for a pattern to show. Then look at what tends to come before your better nights and your worse ones, and plan around that. Put those changes in your diary or calendar. Plan to plan.

A sleep app can do the noting for you, but treat the numbers lightly. If checking a score makes you anxious about your sleep, it may be doing more harm than good. Take the patterns from it and leave the score.

You can learn more about this massive subject in a previous article on deep rest.

Or book into our Calm Under Pressure training day on Saturday 14 November. There is a full module, How to Rest Deeply in a World That Never Switches Off, among other useful and relevant topics.