You're Not Lazy Mate! You're Mentally Exhausted!

Have you ever woken up one morning feeling completely drained and unmotivated to start the day? Or that list of tasks in your mind seems to be getting longer by each passing second and it just feels too overwhelming?

Well, you might be experiencing mental exhaustion.

Mental Exhaustion or being “mentally drained/mental fatigue” can happen to anyone at any time and is usually caused by pushing ourselves beyond our limits through overworking. Nowadays with society becoming fast-paced and overly productive (toxic at that), popular belief has also shifted to normalise the fact that people are putting too much on their schedules. Most people aren’t aware of the concept of mental exhaustion or confuse it with being lazy because both are similar on the surface level.

But let’s set the record straight, mental exhaustion is real! And is now categorised as an official medical diagnosis.

So, with that let's differentiate between laziness and mental exhaustion:

Difference Between Being Lazy and Being Mentally Drained.

The dictionary term of being “lazy” is defined as someone who is unwilling to work or use energy. Being lazy is just a matter of making a choice to not do a particular activity and may be a momentary state or an issue of character, but it is not a psychological disorder.

On the other hand, mental fatigue is much deeper than that. Mental fatigue is defined as a condition triggered by prolonged cognitive activity. Basically, it sends your brain into overdrive, leaving you exhausted, hampering your productivity and overall cognitive function.

Mental exhaustion can affect physical well-being, causing a person to feel physically exhausted. Similarly, physical fatigue or chronic stress can also result in mental exhaustion. With mental fatigue, you tend to feel numb and not care about how well you perform your daily tasks, this can affect your work/school and or relationship life.

Signs & symptoms of mental exhaustion

Mental exhaustion causes physical as well as emotional symptoms. It can also impact your behaviour, which others may notice even before you do.

Symptoms of mental exhaustion can vary from person to person and often begin to show gradually, creeping up on you during periods of extreme stress. If stress continues to weigh on you, you may reach a point when you feel as though you’re in a dark hole and can’t see your way out.

Even if you’re not experiencing all the signs and symptoms, it’s important to recognise these are signs that could indicate you are on the path to mental exhaustion:

• You don’t feel motivated.

• You can’t focus or concentrate.

• Finding small tasks overwhelming.

• You get easily irritated.

• Resting isn’t restoring your energy levels/feeling constantly tired after resting.

Top tips to overcome mental fatigue

Adopting the following strategies can help ease mental fatigue:

• Stay organised. Both your physical and mental space needs tidying up from time to time. Getting rid of all non-essential stuff is crucial to stay focused, motivated, and productive. The best way to keep things organised without feeling overwhelmed is to assign a proper place to everything and clear up the mess right after you've finished a task. For instance, do the dishes as soon as you've had your meal, organize your desk every day before heading home, make your bed immediately after waking up, etc.

• Be realistic. Make a list of important tasks you need to accomplish the next day, before going to bed. Keep the to-do list simple and realistic. This will keep you from overcommitting, ensuring you've enough time to check off all the items on that list. Similarly, set realistic personal and professional goals.

• Batch tasks. Do repetitive tasks in bulk so you don't have to do them often. For example, if you have enough space, buy things like laundry detergent or office supplies only once every few months rather than doing these types of tasks more often than necessary. Or print out multiple copies of completed forms rather than each time you need one.

• Rethink the way you expend your energy. Work on systems that will help permanently reduce stress and excess decision making. Have backups where forgetting would otherwise cause stress. For instance, keep extra charging cords at home and work, keep some money in your car's glove compartment for emergency purposes, create a master packing list for travel and print multiple copies so you don't have to keep writing new ones.

• Learn how to tackle rumination and avoidance. People who are heavy worriers tend to believe that worrying helps them make good decisions. However, rather than helping you problem-solve, rumination and worry usually just make it difficult to see the forest for the trees. Rumination can be about minor issues; it can also be more heavy-duty self-criticism.

Other than that, eat healthily, cut back on caffeine, exercise regularly and get enough zzz's (can't stress that enough!).

Lastly, here are some sure-fire strategies to prevent brain fatigue and improve mental clarity:

• Take frequent breaks: Whether it’s a 15-minute break, a weekend getaway, or a staycation, taking some time off to unwind can do wonders for your mental health. Take intermittent breaks even at work. Allow your mind to wander, preferably while being physically active (like a stroll near the building). Taking breaks to help prevent tunnel vision. You'll more easily see simple solutions to problems and won't get caught up in spending excessive time on unimportant things.

• Meditate: Spending as little as 20 minutes to practice meditation each day can go a long way. Studies show that meditation not only improves focus and memory but also changes the way your body responds to stress.

• Say yes to self-acceptance and self-care: Start practising self-care, no matter how self-indulgent it sounds. Do at least one thing every day that makes you feel genuinely happy.

• Work on your patterns of self-sabotage: To stop sabotaging yourself, you need to figure out your patterns of behaviour and then find creative ways to counteract them and form new habits. For example, people who are prone to anxiety tend to be hypervigilant to signs of threat and detect threats that aren’t there. This happens to be one of my personal patterns of self-defeating thinking. Knowing my thinking bias, I factor it into my judgments. I explicitly say to myself, "my brain is reacting to this as if it’s a threat when most likely it’s actually an opportunity".

And remember, the more you work on systems for reducing stress and excess decision-making, the more mental energy you'll have.