Reflections on a Weekend... and Exhaustion
There is always something that needs to be done!
When I got up this morning, one of the first things I intended to do was sit down and write a blog post while my mind still felt "fresh."
Lately, I have been feeling "fuzzy-headed" and scattered, quite a lot. More than normal. And it seems like every time I sit down with the intention of getting something specific done, there's invariably something that interrupts me after no more than a couple of minutes.
Have you ever "mapped" how your day actually unfolds?
We say things like "I worked all day!" but in most cases it turns out that "all day" was absolutely not something that happened in a straight line.
This morning, I worked for exactly three minutes and forty seconds before something came along and I had to step away and deal with it.There are definitely days on which we give more time to interruptions than what we actually intended to do!
Of course, honesty and truth in disclusure demands that I point out that the aforesaid is likely something that is more related to being self-employed and working from home than anything else.
Still, I've worked in the corporate world as well, and the interruptions there simply take on a different flavor... emails, meetings, emails about meetings, meetings about emails... you get the picture.
But getting back to the whole "mapping your day" thing, I ended up working for about six hours today... but it took me from about 8:00am till 11:15pm.
I suspect a large part of the reason why most of us do not "map" our days is precisely to avoid coming face-to-face with just how inefficient we actually are... and the extent to which we deal with more interruptions than anything else!
Some experts believe that modern human beings might make as much as 35,000 decisions per day and that's a large part of why we are not only exhausted much of the time, but also end up getting sidetracked so often.
The "exhausted" part — according to recent research — is likely related to the build-up of the neurotransmitter glutamate in our brains.
Most of us who have done at least perfunctory studies of how our brains work are familiar with the "big" neurotransmitters: Dopamine, Serotonin, Norepinephrine, and Epinephrine. Which is mildly ironic, because Glutamate is actually — by a wide measure — the most abundant neurotransmitter in our brains!
And it's the one associated with all that decision making.
Ever feel kind of sleepy and fuzzy headed in the early afternoon... and like all you do is just take a nap?
It's actually pretty natural, because aforementioned glutamate (that builds up in the brain and makes you feel tired) is not fully released until you sleep. Hence why many people are actually more productive if they take an afternoon nap... or even a "power nap."
Who'd have thunk that wanting to nap is not laziness, but actually about optimizing efficiency?"
There's not enough room here to truly do a deep dive on this particular topic, but suffice it to say that our modern busy lives are exhausting (in the brain sense) and we actually do ourselves a disservice by trying to shoehorn our activity/efficiency into standardized daytime hours that are the same for everyone.
It's one of the reasons why I am grateful for self-employment... but also inceasingly aware of the need for "dedicated time" to get specific things done.
In the end, I did get everything done... it just took a lot longer than I intended; the final thing being the creation of this post... which will be released about 16 1/2 hours after I started, this morning!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!
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Created at 2025.09.15 00:28 PST
1424/2688
Well, I had not heard of glutamate in regards to brains and it explains why I am just as exhausted after a morning of trying to work my way through bills/budget as if I'd been outside in the gardens.
I can relate completely! Fuzzy head after trying to accomplish a gazillion tasks before exhaustion kicks in. Yup, that is a normal day for me too. I always call it my brain fog afternoon; I should nap but am too stubborn to give in. lol