Why You Feel Tired all the Time (And What to do About It)

Fatigue comes in two different flavors, and working through each requires a completely different approach

There are times in life when I feel more fatigued than usual. Just about everything—getting out of bed, exercising, writing, reading—requires a significant amount of activation energy. All of these activities usually feel smooth and seamless. But sometimes they turn into a grind.

It’s not that I feel depressed, or even particularly sad. Nor do I have the sense of stagnation or emptiness associated with languishing or burnout. I’m simply tired. If I’ve been pushing hard leading into these times, the solution is relatively simple: rest. And yet, even after resting, sometimes I still feel sluggish.

Two Types of Fatigue

The above situation is not uncommon. It illustrates what I’ve come to think of as the difference between two types of fatigue:

1. When your mind-body system is truly tired, or what I’ll call fatigue that responds to rest.

2. When your mind-body system is tricking you into feeling tired because you’re in a rut, or what I’ll call fatigue that responds to action.

It’s important to differentiate between these two sensations because the response each requires couldn’t be more different—the former calls for shutting things down and resting. The latter calls for nudging yourself in the direction of action, not taking the sensation of exhaustion too seriously but, instead, working your way out.

Fatigue that Responds to Rest:

When it comes to physical fatigue, it may be the easier of the two to discern. This is because feedback tends to be more objective—your muscles become sore, your heart rate increases, or the speed at which you run (or the weight you lift) declines. For more generalized and predominantly psychological fatigue, however, such clear metrics are lacking. This means that you’ve got to feel your way into the right response.

Generally speaking, the cost of pushing through fatigue that requires rest is greater than the cost of acquiescing to fatigue that demands action. Going too hard for too long and pushing yourself over the edge can result in burnout, which research shows can take many months—and, in severe cases, years—to reverse.

The safest bet, then, is to treat the onset of exhaustion as if it were fatigue that responds to rest. Take a day (or a few) off. Sleep a little extra. Disconnect from digital devices. If you can, spend time in nature. Reexamine your regular routine, and if something seems haywire, make adjustments.

If you do all this and yet still feel malaise, then it’s worth seeing what happens if you firmly nudge yourself into action.

Fatigue that Responds to Action:

An extreme example of fatigue that responds to action is the exhaustion that accompanies depression. Your brain is doing everything it can to trick you into staying in bed all day when the best thing to break out of the cycle would be to get up and go, or what psychologists call “behavioral activation,” which is a gold-standard treatment for depression.

This isn’t to say the sensations of lethargy, dullness, and torpor are not real—they are, and they can be quite paralyzing. But those sensations, as far as we know, are not organic, not caused by a lack of sleep, an expenditure of physiological resources, or something wrong in the body, for example. If they were, taking action would make the situation worse. But, as research shows, with depression, taking action—particularly when supported by therapy—tends to make the situation better.

This kind of fatigue that responds to action happens on a smaller scale all the time. For instance, about a year ago, I kept putting off starting my next big writing project. I felt tired! So I rested. And rested some more. After about three weeks of this, with the help of my own coach, I decided to force myself to just get started. Three days later, I was in a great writing groove that lasted for over a month. More rest would have only deepened the rut. I needed to work my way out of it.

How to Stop Feeling Tired

There is one more layer of nuance here, and it’s an important one. Sometimes, breaking the cycle of fatigue requires combining both of the above strategies. You may be experiencing fatigue that requires rest. But after a week of rest, your mind-body system may be recovered yet still latched onto the inertia of doing nothing. At this point, the strategy shifts. In sports, this is why so many tapers end with a few short, intense efforts. Studies show that these efforts wake the body up and snap it back into action.

Your best bet is to think of managing exhaustion as an ongoing practice. Over time, if you pay close attention to how you feel, what you do in response, and what you get out of it, you’ll become better at differentiating between fatigue that responds to rest versus the variety that responds to action. The first step is learning that not all sensations of fatigue mean the same thing.

For those accustomed to always pushing through exhaustion, perhaps you need a bit more rest. For those accustomed to always resting, perhaps you’d benefit from more of a just get-going, “mood-follows-action” mentality. Think of these approaches as two tools in the kit. There’s a time and place for each.