How to Stay Productive At Work After a Bad Night’s Sleep?

Everybody dreads it. Nobody wants it. People will go to great lengths to avoid it. But unfortunately, a bad night’s sleep can hit any of us unsuspecting at any time.

It saps our energy, makes us grouchy, and makes the day unnecessarily harder.

After struggling to get to sleep, you wake up, you get a sense of dread or anxiety about getting through the day, you worry about whether you’ll be focused enough, and you wonder how many coffees you need to consume.

Considering all this, should you even bother trying to be productive at work after a bad night’s sleep?

Er, yes! It is very possible to have a good day after a bad night!

We are agile and resilient creatures with way more energy in the tank than we realise. Put these effective strategies to work, and you’ll be absolutely fine.

If you think positively, you can salvage your day

Focus your energy on the things you can change, ignore or embrace the rest. The past is history, last night’s sleep is simply a bad memory, and you’re going to just do your best to forget it.

Fretting and getting frustrated is going to make things worse. You need to tell yourself that you have the opportunity to go and have the best day of your life, a lack of sleep can’t stand in the way of that!

Ride the wave…

Think about yesterday, were you raring to go all day long? Or, like most people, did you chill a bit, do some stuff, and exert your energy only at the times when you were required to?

So, when the next day comes after a bad night’s sleep, you’re going to pay more attention to the dips and troughs of your energy and try to manage it effectively.

Conserve it when you can (by chilling out or procrastinating tasks for another day), use it when you need to (by summoning that mysterious reserve of energy).

Don’t fight tiredness: ride it, sit down, have a hot drink or get some water or food. After a short break, you’re going to bounce back harder!


Stick to your usual routine

Just because you’ve had a bad night’s sleep, don’t sabotage yourself.

Stick to your normal routine, get up, do your morning stuff, prepare you usually would. Eat something, get dressed, do whatever you would usually. Not sleeping can feel like your body is trying to sabotage you, so why would you give in and sabotage yourself by choice by abandoning your usual way of life?

Don’t rely on sugar and caffeine

If you go and drink 7 coffees to counteract your bad night’s sleep, you’re setting yourself up for another night of poor quality sleep due to all of the caffeine in your system. If you pump yourself full of sugar all day, you’re going to crash twice as hard and feel every bit worse off.

You’ve got to get through your day as naturally as you can, keeping one eye on the latter part of the day where you can unwind, have a light dinner, and crawl into bed. You’re envisioning of this chill period should inspire you to stay clear of absorbing whatever form of caffeine you crave.

One essential tip to consider:

Moving forward, try to work on methods for sleeping well, instead of working out how to deal with the consequences of sleeping badly. If you can tackle the root of the problem, you are sure to find ways of dealing with a bad night sleep that will always work for you..


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