Poll of the Day > Can you be tired without being sleepy?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Are these two separate conditions or are they just the same thing?

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It's called fatigue and some people get to deal with it on a daily basis regardless of how active they are.

Notschmendrake posted...

It's called fatigue and some people get to deal with it on a daily basis regardless of how active they are.

Yep, like actual narcolepsy which is extreme, chronic fatigue rather than just falling asleep at random.

For those of us without the condition, fatigue remains a real thing. You can get exhausted, be too tired to do much of anything with your alleged free time, and not feel the need to go to sleep. It's like the difference between anger and frustration. The average person is bound to experience these sensations, both, but telling the difference isn't spot-on for varying periods of time. Fatigue sucks, both physically and mentally, and sometimes going to sleep does barely anything.

But hey, at least we get two days a week to do laundry or other chores, do grocery shopping, try and fail to squeeze in a legit good time for a few hours, and prepare to do the other five days all over again. Honestly, tweaking our hours and pay to allow for the average person to live off of four 8-hour days a week, allowing for a third day off, would be a huge help for everyone.


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Can also be plain old lazy. if you dont move your blood around and just sit you'll feel tired

Story of my life these last 20 years. I do get sleepy sometimes, but that's rare unless it's just before bedtime.

yes?

that's called fatigue or exhaustion

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Yeah I'm tired of life but I'm not falling asleep

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I don't think that's necessarily the best way to communicate the point, but there is a noticeable difference between how mental exhaustion and physical exhaustion feel, if you end up in a situation where you can isolate them and predominantly feel one or the other.

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Yes, and you can also be sleepy without being tired

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Um...duh? Have tried doing anything physical?

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Sure, just take some meth.

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Feeling completely worn out and exhausted yet not being able to force yourself under and get the sleep you need absolutely sucks.

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Notschmendrake posted...

It's called fatigue and some people get to deal with it on a daily basis regardless of how active they are.

As someone who works in customer service, I am all too familiar with workplace fatigue.

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Kinda? Obviously insomniacs are a thing.

Entity13 posted...

But hey, at least we get two days a week to do laundry or other chores, do grocery shopping, try and fail to squeeze in a legit good time for a few hours, and prepare to do the other five days all over again. Honestly, tweaking our hours and pay to allow for the average person to live off of four 8-hour days a week, allowing for a third day off, would be a huge help for everyone.

Even if they lowered to four days a week, you'd have people complaining about being tired and not having enough time asking for three 8-hour days a week.

And, honestly, if somebody did just want to work 3-4 days a week, they could take longer shifts. There are plenty of careers offering that.

GGuirao13 posted...

As someone who works in customer service, I am all too familiar with workplace fatigue.

I will say that the call center I worked at in college was probably the worst job I ever had, and I had a pretty wide variety of jobs between my teens and the time I graduated college.

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No

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Zeus posted...

Even if they lowered to four days a week, you'd have people complaining about being tired and not having enough time asking for three 8-hour days a week.

If three 8-hour days ends up being enough to get all the work done, why would that be a bad thing?

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adjl posted...

If three 8-hour days ends up being enough to get all the work done, why would that be a bad thing?

Money, probably...
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LinkPizza posted...

Money, probably...

That's presuming productivity remains the same and wages are adjusted to still pay people as though they worked full weeks (meaning there's no change in the amounts of money involved either way), as is generally the premise of any compressed schedule ideas. Zeus seems to be suggesting that the idea is fundamentally wrong, not that it's a bad idea because it would compromise productivity. There have, in fact, been a number of 4-day week experiments (most recently, Iceland conducted a major one (https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57724779)) that have found that productivity either remains the same or improves overall, while work-life balance, mental health, and other measures of general well-being get a whole lot better.

He is correct that, if 4-day weeks become the norm, there will be people proposing a 3-day week instead, but that's going to go one of two ways:

• Studies will be conducted that find that it does result in productivity losses that are not outweighed by other benefits, in which case the idea will be shot down on those grounds
• Studies will find that productivity remains the same, in which case there's no reason not to adopt the idea

Either way, there's no reason to bring up the idea as though the mere thought of people asking for it is enough to justify refusing a 4-day week. Data can be collected to determine whether or not it's a problem, and an informed decision made from there instead of relying on knee-jerk emotional reactions to deviating from an established norm.

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