5 Easy Tips to Stay Alert on Long Days for Your Contracting Business

Construction is famous for early starts and long days. Once you get used to it, it may feel like second nature. But at the beginning, and especially on a bad night of sleep, you may struggle to stay alert. The problem is that you need to be wide awake to perform your tasks. Here are five ways you can help to manage alertness and stay safe while you’re working a long day.

Get More Sleep
Experts say that adults need a range of 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. Of course, this depends greatly on your own personal needs. Some people run just fine on seven hours of sleep, while others need nine just to function. If you’re finding that your biggest trouble with alertness is just waking up in the morning, you might need to get more sleep. You might also need to tweak your sleep schedule so that it’s more consistent. Many people discover that they don’t function as well on sleep schedules that swing from one extreme to another. If you’re used to catching up on the weekends, you might need to try to fit in a few more hours during the week.

Time Your Caffeine Consumption
If you’re accustomed to consuming caffeine or other types of energy boosters, it’s important to time them correctly. What goes up must come down, which means that 6 to 8 hours after you take it, you may start to feel a crash. The last thing that you want is to go through a major caffeine crash while you’re working on heavy equipment. Instead, get a sense for when you typically start to crash and plan to avoid it. If you find that you’re ready for a nap early in the afternoon, that might be time for a second cup of coffee to keep you going.

Eat Regular Meals
Although alertness relates a lot to the drinks you consume, it’s also tied to meal time and size. As a business owner in construction, you may not have a lot of time to take breaks for small meals. This leads a lot of people to try to pack in a lot of calories and nutrients at lunch. But there’s a problem with this. If you’ve been working for several hours and then you eat a big meal, your body is going to need rest time to metabolize it. That’s why people get sleepy after a big lunch. If you find that this is happening too frequently, try to space out your meals to provide a break at least twice during the workday.

Take Breaks to Move or Stretch
There’s a reason that many safety experts recommend limiting the amount of time you spend on one particular task. The longer you focus on one repetitive activity, the more tired you may feel. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, repeating the same action over and over again increases the likelihood that you will stop paying attention to what you’re doing and make a mistake. Second, repetitive movements create stress on the body that can wear you out faster. Give yourself regular breaks at least once an hour to get up and move or stretch. The break will help to keep your mind loose and alert as well.

Don’t Overcorrect for Tiredness
Although being tired on the job may almost feel like it’s part of the job description, you don’t necessarily need to manage it too heavily. You probably know what it feels like to have drunk too much coffee or too many energy drinks. It makes your heart race, makes it harder to think, and increases the likelihood that you’ll make a bad decision. Overcorrecting for tiredness can create a lot of problems on the job, and some of them relate to the safety of yourself and others. One of the best ways that you can avoid this is set limits on your consumption of energy boosters, and give them time to kick in before you focus on work.

Sleep is a vital part of running a contracting business. So is becoming a licensed contractor. To get started, visit CSLS today!