Name: Why You're Always Tired (and how to fix it)
Uploaded: 2025-07-21T18:38:06.000Z
Duration: 14 min 15 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Basic passive voice

A portion of this video was sponsored by Google Career Certificates.

Adverbs of manner

If you're anything like me, you've spent years of your life either waking up tired every single day or just generally feeling drained all the time.

Except I honestly don't feel that way anymore.

I spent the past few years obsessing over sleep research and my own habits to figure out how to feel less tired and be more energized, and that's what I'm gonna share today.

The top research and expert-backed tips that I followed to not only feel more alert and alive, but it'll also help you fall asleep way faster for those who struggle with that too.

Consider this the ultimate guide to feeling less tired that you and I can reference back to whenever we're hitting those slumps in life.

First up, we have to get two obvious things out of the way.

Number one, are you getting enough sleep?

I know this hardly feels like a tip worth sharing.

Hmm, maybe you should sleep more if you're tired.

But a lot of people don't know how much sleep their brain and body actually needs.

Like, how many hours should you be asleep for?

The answer is seven to eight hours consistently is the most optimal, but over 50% of people are getting less than six hours a night, and countless studies have shown that getting less than six hours on a regular basis is equivalent to being cognitively drunk, and under four hours a night is obviously even worse.

There is a very small genetic minority that can handle really low hours, but chances are you and I are not it, especially if you clicked on this video.

So if you're struggling with energy and being tired, the first place to look is the sheer number of hours you're getting.

Do whatever you can to regularly get as close to eight hours as possible, and if you aren't already, you'll likely feel a huge difference.

And number two, just before we jump into the changes you can actually make today, an important question to ask yourself is, what is your chronotype?

These might just seem like cute terms, but we can actually see genetic differences that make some people more prone to get up early and others to stay up late.

And it's not simply a matter of making yourself go to bed at a different time.

If you're naturally a night owl, but you're trying to make yourself fall asleep early, you won't be getting good quality sleep because it doesn't match your innate circadian rhythm.

It's part of the reason teenagers are so desperately exhausted in school because their chronotype naturally shifts to later at night as they go through puberty, meaning early mornings are exceptionally hard.

Later start times at school increase class attendance, decrease behavioral and psychological problems, and decrease substance and alcohol abuse in teens.

I know your schedule isn't always your choice, but if you have the flexibility to match your chronotype, you'll be going a long way to feeling less tired.

Also know that your chronotype can change throughout your life.

All right, so I thought the easiest way to break down these science-backed tips would be chronologically, starting from the moment you wake up and going through your day all the way to your bedtime and sleeping habits.

But before we do that, I wanna take a quick moment to thank today's sponsor, Google Career Certificates, for sponsoring this portion of the video.

We know that good sleep improves your cognitive ability, memory capacity, reaction time, productivity, creativity.

What better way to use those advantages then to get a certificate that can fast-track you to in-demand jobs in under six months without the need for a college degree or prior experience?

Google Career Certificates not only lead to job opportunities by improving tangible skills, but you're able to take them at your own pace and on your own terms.

They're available in job fields of IT support, data analytics, project management, and user experience design, and they recently launched the Google Digital Marketing and E-commerce Certificate, which focuses on the skills that employers are hiring for.

These certificates are taught and developed by Google employees who are subject matter experts working in these fields, and upon completion, you can connect directly with top employers who are currently hiring.

And unlike many other learning experiences, you won't be sleep-deprived because of these.

I started taking the marketing course myself.

You know I love learning, and it's amazing what it feels like to learn from someone who's a literal expert at Google in their field.

Head to grow.google.com certificates to start learning job-ready skills that will help you in job applications and interviews.

Thanks again to Google Career Certificates for sponsoring this portion of the video, and now back to more tiredness tips.

All right, what do the first moments of your day likely include?

It's maybe time to change your alarm sound.

Studies have shown that melodic alarms, like those that play music, not only reduce perceived sleep inertia and tiredness in the morning, but actually improve psychomotor abilities and reduce attention issues compared to neutral alarms.

Personally, I love an alarm that starts quiet and slowly builds over time so that I'm not jarred out of sleep.

But ultimately, you just wanna choose something that's melodic, like music.

Your body goes through multiple sleep cycles every night, from light sleep to deep sleep to REM sleep and then back to light sleep.

And if your alarm goes off in the middle of deep sleep, you're way more likely to feel sleep inertia and groggy when woken up.

Now, the problem with the snooze button is when you're getting close to your natural waking time, the body starts preparing itself by releasing hormones and increasing body temperature.

But alarms often cut this process short, which is why you feel tired, especially when sleep deprived.

But by hitting the snooze button, you're basically telling your body to restart another sleep cycle and head back towards deep sleep.

This means you'll have the same problem when the alarm goes off again and may feel even more tired.

Honestly, you're much better off getting that extra 10 or 20 minutes of sleep time than setting your alarm early and just snoozing it a bunch.

Recent evidence has shown that as little as 30 seconds of physical activity can improve perceived alertness in the morning.

This may be because of an increased cortisol awakening response.

Important to note that while participants felt more alert, they actually didn't perform any better on tests with morning exercise.

But hey, sometimes you just wanna feel better.

Expose yourself to bright light in the morning.

Light exposure is key to regulating your sleep patterns.

Of course, sunlight is the best way to trigger this, but studies have even found that bright artificial light in the morning can help stimulate wakefulness.

Even beyond just the morning, make sure you're being exposed to daylight.

Try to get outside in natural sunlight for at least 30 minutes a day.

And if you have problems falling asleep, experts recommend one hour of morning daylight exposure and to turn down the lights before bedtime.

First thing in the morning when your body hasn't taken in any fluids for a while can be super helpful.

Studies have shown that not only are alertness and concentration improved with hydration, but so are cognitive abilities and your mood.  We all know her, we all love her.

I mean, obviously caffeine's like a secret cheat code for feeling less tired.

Your brain naturally accumulates adenosine through the day, making you feel tired, but caffeine binds to these same receptors, blocking them from making you feel tired.

Except with chronic caffeine use, your brain actually creates more receptors, meaning you need more caffeine to block that adenosine accumulation.

For the most part, people can have a perfectly healthy relationship with caffeine.

The bigger problem seems to be how close to bedtime you're drinking it.

Since the half-life of coffee is around six hours, that means if you have a coffee at 6 p.m., by midnight there would still be 50% of it in your body.

And this caffeine has a direct impact on sleep quality.

Ultimately, trying to contain your caffeine intake to the morning or midday will not only make it easier to fall asleep, but it will actually improve your sleep quality through the night.

Speaking of stuff you're consuming, let's talk about diet.

Now, anecdotally, I personally feel a huge difference when I'm eating healthy consistently, and so this has become a major focus area for me.

I can immediately feel energy changes when I'm not eating well, but the science behind this area is tricky because there's so many different diets and everybody's body reacts differently to food.

There are some studies that show correlations between whole food diets and higher energy levels, or that higher levels of processed foods make people feel more tired.

Further research has found that high sugar and low fiber diets also impact non-REM sleep quality and result in more awakenings at night.

Without trying to give you diet advice, I'll just say that for me, my food intake has personally played a huge role in my energy levels.

But the hardest part was that it wasn't an immediate thing.

It's been sort of over a long-term habit change that I could really see those differences.

I still obviously let myself indulge, but now I can immediately feel the difference when I've eaten really unwell.

We all have a general idea of what healthy eating is, so do what feels right for you within those guidelines.

Similar to coffee, though, you don't wanna be eating too close to bed because that can cause indigestion, which impacts your sleep.

This one has been the other game changer for me, which I know is so annoying to hear.

I used to hate exercising, but I started by just adding more walks in my day and have slowly worked my way up to proper resistance training and cardio.

I'm actually really proud of how far I've come.

Sleep studies show that exercise increases total sleep time, especially non-REM, and increases the overall quality of sleep.

On average, subjective alertness improves, and the time it takes participants to fall asleep decreases with fewer waking times across the night.

But an interesting takeaway from these studies is that the relationship between exercise and sleep isn't always consistent on a day-to-day basis.

So just because you worked out hard today doesn't mean you'll see or feel those benefits tonight.

Much like diet, it's the long-term changes that seem to make a bigger difference.

Ironically, studies also find that while exercise improves sleep, sleep can improve your exercise capacity, so it's a nice little positive reinforcement circle going on there.