Biohacking Fatigue – 5 Simple Lifestyle Adjustments for Sustained Energy

Even without the busy-brags taking over the Internet, chronic fatigue has become almost like a badge of honor. It’s a closed loop: the more you push through the hours, the more willpower you get to push through even more grueling hours.

The problem is, fatigue doesn't really care about your career, ambition, or the next meeting. It strikes when it pleases.

You can power through a rough week, then another, but eventually, the bill will come due.

Concentration eventually slips. Small decisions take longer, and not even the trusted morning coffee seems to be working anymore.

There's a solution for all this, and no, it's not called a cryotherapy chamber. Forget the inane motivational advice and strip away the expensive gadgets, and what you're left with is the story as old as time: making small lifestyle adjustments goes a long way, starting with how much water you drink.

Drink enough water

If there were a performance-enhancing substance that improved focus, reduced headaches, boosted physical performance, and cost next to nothing, every executive in the world would be using it.

There is. It's called clean water.

Dehydration is one of the sneakiest causes of fatigue. Just like with overworking, symptoms include staring at the same spreadsheet for ten minutes, reading the same email three times, and the like.

The wellness industry is enamored with complexity. They’re trying to sell you supplements that do help, but also cost a bunch. Water is about as unsexy as it gets, which is probably why people ignore it. If you're constantly tired and haven't paid attention to your water intake in months, start there. It's one of the easiest variables to fix.

But how much water are we talking about exactly? That depends on your age, gender, height, weight, and activity level. Free tools like a daily water intake calculator can help you find the optimal amount of water you should take to keep the dehydration demon at bay.

Sleep

Nobody wants to hear that they need more sleep. It's the least exciting advice in the world.

A new supplement sounds interesting. A sleep-tracking gadget sounds interesting. Going to bed an hour earlier sounds like something your parents would tell you. Unfortunately, your parents were probably onto something.

You’ve probably gone through periods where you convinced yourself that six hours was enough. Then five. Then four and a half. And for a while, it seemed fine. Then little things started creeping in. You'd forget details from conversations. Tasks that normally took twenty minutes somehow stretched into an hour.

The scary thing is that sleep deprivation doesn't sound any alarm bells. You don't suddenly become useless overnight and instead become slightly worse every day until that lower level starts feeling normal. Sleep is so often the answer, even when nobody wants it to be.

Get some sunlight

This fix is almost embarrassingly simple. It isn't flashy, doesn't come in a bottle, and surely nobody is selling a masterclass on it for $997.

Making sure that you see the Sun before the spreadsheet should be one everyone’s daily list. A surprising number of people spend their entire day under artificial lighting, trudging their bodies between the bedroom, car, office, and back again.

Deprived of sunlight, your body has no clue what time it is. Natural light plays a huge role in regulating your sleep-wake cycle. Get some sunlight in the morning and you'll often feel more alert during the day and sleep better at night. Skip it for long enough and everything starts feeling slightly off.

Take micro breaks

Newsflash: breaks are not something productive people don't need. Sitting in and grinding like there’s no tomorrow works just as well as you’d expect.

But move away from the table, leave the spreadsheet alone for a minute at a time, and you’ll be amazed how the solution to a problem rarely appears while you’re staring directly at it. It usually shows up while making coffee, walking outside, or doing something completely unrelated. These are the times where you allow the subconscious part of your brain do the work for you.

The modern workday encourages people to remain glued to a screen for hours at a time, particularly if you’re a business owner. The “one more email” culture seeps in because it feels way more productive than it actually is. Then everyone acts surprised when they feel mentally exhausted by mid-afternoon. Getting up for five minutes isn't laziness, but can sometimes be the most productive thing you'll do all day.

Fix nutrition once and for all

Don’t you wish there were a more exciting answer than "eat better"? There isn't.

You already know which meals leave you feeling sharp and which ones leave you wanting a nap fifteen minutes later. Yet we keep mixing the two. Most people don't need a nutritionist to tell them that a pastry and two coffees isn't exactly an elite performance strategy and that late-night pizza isn’t gonna magically solve the latest budget concerns.

The challenge, as ever, is convenience since when work gets busy, and the schedule gets tight, we tend to grab whatever is nearby and promise ourselves we'll eat properly tomorrow. Then we end up repeating the same routine the next day.

Just for this once, try to plan your meal in advance. With dozens of plans and meal prep tips available online, there really is no excuse.

Or even better, just go by the gut. Too much sugar and too much caffeine equals not enough actual food. Simple isn't always easy, but it tends to work.

Simple advice works best

The funny thing about biohacking is that most of the effective stuff doesn't feel like biohacking at all. It's mostly boring, to be frank.

Nobody is building a personal brand around those ideas because there's nothing particularly glamorous about them. It’s much easier to push vitamin B12 in combination with Magnesium and pack it inside a flashy molecular packaging. You should get more vitamin B, but only after you’ve got enough sleep (at least 7 hours, according to the CDC), drank enough water, and eaten well.

Not because they're revolutionary, but because they work.