4 tips on staying productive at work

If a nap is out of the question, what are some ways the average worker can cope with the urge to sleep after lunch? As much as we would like to close our door and take a siesta, we would also prefer to still have a job when we wake up. First, let’s take a look at why you are sleepy.

What’s causing the afternoon slump?

For starters, you can place the blame on your body’s circadian rhythm, or your body’s internal clock, which controls when you sleep and wake up. There is a natural lull in rhythm occurring around lunchtime making you prone to sleepiness. Your blood sugar levels gradually begin to fall about an hour after you eat. According to sleep.org, a website dedicated to providing the latest research by The National Sleep Foundation, the four reasons why you get tired at 2 p.m. or factors that could play into this include: Eating a carb-heavy lunch, sitting still for hours, dehydration, or a drop in body temperature. Here are some ways to minimize the post-lunch fatigue and power through the last few hours of your work-day.

Get some exercise

Grab a buddy and take a leisurely stroll through the Myriad Gardens. At this time of year, Oklahoma temperatures average in the 80’s, which in our opinion, are great walking conditions. Getting 10 minutes of sunlight could regulate your melatonin levels which in return will increase your energy. Sunlight also increases serotonin levels, the body’s natural happy hormone.

Grab a pick me up

Downtown Oklahoma City is home to several tasty local coffee and juice bars. All are mostly in walking distance from the heart of downtown. Don’t want to walk? Grab an uber or rent a bike from Spokies OKC.

• Clarity Coffee
• Coffee Slingers
• Elemental Coffee
• Okay Yeah Co.
• Hanks Coffee Shop
• Kitchen 324
• Wheeze The Juice (2 locations!)

Change of scenery

Are you able to work offsite? Moving your meeting to change up the scenery could help give you the extra push to finish the day strong. Several Downtown OKC spots, including us here at the RSC @ OKC’s Innovation Station located off of May & Robinson, offer co-working space. Plus, we are offering co-working in our space for FREE all summer. Try this trick – schedule your next meeting around 2:00 p.m. off-site. You’ll be surprised how quick your afternoon flies! 

Eat smaller meals

It can be tempting to go all out during lunch and binge eat. By noon, it has been around five hours since you possibly ate breakfast. We get extremely busy working, by the time we sit down to eat lunch, we act like a pup who just was gifted steak dinner leftovers. Afterwards, we are exhausted from over-eating. Personally, I dislike leftovers with a passion and have a personal vendetta against meal prepping chicken and broccoli daily so selecting the perfect nutritional meal and not the most delicious, carb-loaded thing on the menu can be tough sometimes. Who can relate? Our last tip in order to avoid the afternoon slump would be to eat smaller nutritional meals throughout the day. Eating smaller meals helps your metabolism stay active, keeps hunger away and controls blood sugar.

Do you have any specific tricks that help you get through the afternoon slump? Have you tried a new local coffee shop that we need to know about? We would love to hear your feedback! For more information about RSC @ OKC’s Innovation Station, contact us here.