How to Be Productive When Tired (and Still Do Good Work)

The best answer to how to be productive when tired has two parts. First, match the work to the energy you have. Then raise that energy with methods researchers have tested: bright light, 10 minutes on the stairs, cold water on your face, a 10-minute nap. Each one below comes with the study behind it. At the end is the pre-work ritual we use right before sitting down to the hard stuff.

How to be productive when tired starts with the to-do list

In 2011, Cornell sociologists Scott Golder and Michael Macy tracked the emotional tone of tweets from about 2.4 million people in 84 countries over two years. Their paper in Science showed positive mood starting high early in the morning and sliding as the workday went on. On weekends the morning peak arrived about two hours later, when people slept in.

Your own curve will sit somewhere different, but most people have hours when thinking feels heavy. The simplest way to work when tired is to give those hours the jobs that don't need your sharpest brain:

• Clearing email and messages
• Invoices, expense receipts and filing
• Formatting a document you've already written
• Booking meetings and updating your calendar
• Renaming files and tidying the downloads folder

Keep writing, planning and anything with numbers for when you feel sharp, or for straight after one of the tactics below.

How to stay alert when tired

These three take between half a minute and 10 minutes, and none of them costs anything.

Cold water

In February 2023, researchers at Bournemouth University and the University of Portsmouth put 33 healthy volunteers into 20°C water for five minutes and scanned their brains before and after. People came out saying they felt more awake and more enthusiastic. A cold bath doesn't fit into most workdays. Cold water on the face and wrists at the office sink takes about 30 seconds.

Sit in bright light

A team at the University of Groningen (Rüger and colleagues, 2006) sat volunteers in 5,000 lux of bright light or in dim light under 10 lux, between noon and 4pm and again at night. Bright light lowered how sleepy and fatigued people said they felt, by a similar amount in the afternoon as at night. Daylight is the brightest light most of us can get for free. Move the laptop to a window, or take your next phone call outside.

Walk the stairs for 10 minutes instead of buying a snack

At the University of Georgia in 2017, Derek Randolph and Patrick O'Connor tested college women who slept less than six and a half hours a night. On separate days each took a 50 mg caffeine capsule (about a can of soda), a placebo, or walked up and down stairs at a regular pace for 10 minutes, roughly 30 floors. The stair walk left them feeling more energetic and vigorous than the caffeine did, with a small rise in motivation to work. The study ran in Physiology & Behavior.

The snack comparison is older. In 1987 Robert Thayer had 18 volunteers either eat a sugar snack or take a brisk 10-minute walk, then rate their energy. After the walk, energy stayed up for two hours. After the snack, energy rose and then, about an hour later, tiredness climbed and energy dropped.

A 10-minute nap beat the 20 and 30-minute naps

Amber Brooks and Leon Lack at Flinders University in Adelaide limited 24 good sleepers to about five hours in bed, then gave them a 3pm nap of exactly 5, 10, 20 or 30 minutes, or no nap. Their 2006 paper in Sleep found the 10-minute nap produced immediate gains in sleepiness, fatigue, vigour and test performance, and some lasted up to 155 minutes. The 20-minute nap took about 35 minutes to pay off. The 30-minute nap left people groggy at first. Five minutes did little.

So set an alarm for about 15 minutes, which allows time to drift off, and get up when it rings.

Have the coffee right before you lie down

At Loughborough University in 1997, Louise Reyner and Jim Horne gave 12 sleepy drivers a 30-minute break in a two-hour afternoon simulator drive. With 200 mg of caffeine plus a nap of under 15 minutes, driving incidents fell to 9% of the placebo level. Caffeine alone brought them to 34%.

How to focus when tired

Tired attention drifts sooner, so ask for shorter stretches of it. Psych Central's guide to working tired suggests the Pomodoro cycle of 25 minutes of work and 5 minutes off, dropping to 20 and 5 on a rough day. Put the phone in another room before the first block starts, and write the one task you're doing on a sticky note where you can see it.

One spray before the work that counts

Everything above gets you to the desk. The last step happens there, in the 10 seconds before you open the document you've been putting off.

Our pre-work ritual is one spray of Dragon Breath, a 50 ml mouth spray made from chilcuague (Heliopsis longipes), a root from Central Mexico also called golden root. Within about 10 seconds a bright electric buzz spreads across the tongue and mouth. Your mouth floods with water. There's a second of earthy, peppery taste, then the tingle takes over and a clean, fresh feeling stays behind. You come out of it switched on and in the zone to do your best work.

In a customer reaction video, filmed moments after one spray, the customer said, "Definitely energized."

Where people fit it in:

• At the top of the stairs, before you sit back down
• When the nap alarm goes off and you're back at the desk
• Before the afternoon block you kept for writing or planning (our guide on how to stay focused at work covers setting that block up)

The root is wild-harvested from growth zones the Mara team selects with the help of local elders, then dual-extracted in organic solutions. The bottle goes in a pocket or laptop bag, a single spray is all it takes, and the extract stays sealed in Miron violet glass, away from air and light, which loose root or powder can't offer. Each bottle holds 250+ sprays. Start with one, and once you know the feeling, go up to five.

The root itself has a long history in the Sierra Gorda, where Mexican ethnobotanists (Cilia-López and colleagues) record it chewed and used as a spice. Our guide to chilcuague covers where it grows and the affinin in the root that produces the tingle.

Dragon Breath considerations

The recommendation on the product page: if you're pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or allergic to plants in the daisy family, ask your doctor before using it.

Questions people ask

What should I work on when I'm tired?

Admin that doesn't need deep thought: email, invoices, filing, calendar. Save writing and planning for after a nap, a stair walk or time in daylight.

Is it better to nap or push through?

In the Flinders University study, a 10-minute nap after a five-hour night brought immediate gains in alertness and performance, with some lasting up to 155 minutes. Pushing through gives you none of that.

Should I drink coffee before a nap?

In the 1997 Loughborough study, caffeine taken right before a nap of under 15 minutes cut driving incidents to 9% of placebo, against 34% for caffeine alone.

How fast do you feel Dragon Breath?

Within about 10 seconds of one spray, as a bright electric buzz across the tongue and mouth, followed by a rush of water in the mouth and a clean, fresh feeling.