Every so often, I feel tired all the time. If I’m lucky, and I notice that I feel tired all the time, I make a point of reviewing the things I’ve learned from the likes of Lyn Alden’s article on energy and Ari Whitten’s Energy Blueprint series of lectures.

According to many pundits, weak mitochondria = lower energy. Whether or not this is true, many of the activities that health pundits recommend make me feel healthy and energetic. This may be the placebo effect, but I like the placebo effect too, so it’s not a big deal if it is. Since “energy” is pretty subjective anyway, if it feels like they work, might as well do them!

Health

So much has been written about this, I’m going to mostly just breeze over this section. It also tends to be pretty specific to the individual.

For me, it means:

1. Get enough sleep. I default to 9 hours, which is an hour or two more than most people.
   • To do this: a dark, quiet environment (earplugs help, and an eye cover); a strict caffeine cutoff; no late screentime; enough time to wind-down reading/writing before bed; avoiding eating late in the day.
2. Get enough exercise
   • For me, this means going for a run ~3 times a week (~1,500 kilometers per year), walking most of the days I don’t run, and whenever possible riding my bicycle instead of driving. I’ve heard that though cardio is great, strength/resistance training is as or more important for energy and longevity. Kettlebell swings are the least horrible-feeling form of strength training I have found, so I do them ... intermittently.
3. Eat well
   • For me, this means a vegetable-based diet of unprocessed foods, with some fish, enough protein to rebuild from long runs, lots of fibre and healthy fats, and small amounts of whole grains. 98% home-cooked, from scratch. I find it’s especially helpful to eat a high protein and or high fiber breakfast, because it tends to help me feel satiated for the rest of the day and avoid snacking on junk food. In my case, this is usually whatever vegetables I can find, sardines or salmon, eggs, or DIY zero-sugar chia + hemp cereal with milk or yogurt (often with almost a cup of chia/hemp/ground flax)

True rest

Few things are more draining than passively slacking off: it makes me feel guilty for not working, without being true rest that restores my health and energy.

When I feel tired, I ask myself, am I still trying to accomplish something? Or am I trying to rest?

If I’m still trying to accomplish something, then it’s not time for doom scrolling. If I’m trying to rest, it’s also not time for doom scrolling. It’s time for resting. There are very few things that are fully restful, and the main one is fully resting. For example, lying on the couch with my eyes closed, trying to nap and knowing I won’t, but still feeling relaxed.

Sometimes, it’s necessary to actually rest like this. Often, switching activities or going for a walk or doing something totally different, preferably away from a screen, is as effective as true rest. For the kind of tired that I tend to feel, running is more restful than sitting on the couch using a computer.

Connection

Connection includes things like hanging out with people I care about, or writing emails to nifty strangers on the internet, but also things like listening to Beethoven or appreciating other art that makes me feel connected to the whole.

• Practice gratitude
• Bask in Sonder
• Do something nice for someone

Challenge

Pushing my edge. I feel most alive when I’m working on a new project that pushes my skills, and or when I’m around new people who I haven’t yet got to know and become comfortable around.

Hormesis. Going for ice-cold swims in the ocean makes me feel very alive. And, although hypoxia can be dangerous, there’s a recent fad of intermittent hypoxia training. Fasting also belongs in this feel bad to feel great category. I’ve also noticed, paradoxically, that sometimes (not always!) I feel most energetic on days when I went for a 20k+ run in the morning.

Status and self-respect. Success can’t be planned, but I find that if I take on the right challenges, usually some of them pay off and make me feel competent and like I’ve accomplished something. And feeling like what I’m doing is worthwhile and effective has more effect on my energy levels than everything else.

Side note: a modest dose of stereotypical self-help and success literature does seem to help. The book that had the most striking effect on my energy level, even though I found it obnoxious, was High Performance Habits by Brendan Buchard. I had also just done a 5-day water fast, and a lot of running, so there may have been confounding factors.

Conclusion

When I feel tired or generally poorly it’s easy to just feel disgruntled, and be aware that I’m tired and feeling poorly, but not do anything about it. But if I can set-up a habit trigger, when feeling poorly, automatically do X, where X is any of the above activities that increase my energy level, I can bootstrap my way to a more energetic and joyful state.