Blaise Tapp: Tired? A morning walk will leave you bright eyed and bushy tailed
One of my few golden rules, which also include not arguing with idiots, is to avoid moaning about the youth of today.
To be fair, I do much better with the latter than I do at sticking to the former, largely due to the fact that harping on about the shortcomings of any generation that isn’t your own, leaves you at extreme risk of coming across as an unoriginal curmudgeon. The stick that Millennials and Gen Zs get is as unfair as it is over the top and is driven by the jealousy of folk who realise their chance to make a mark on the world is rapidly diminishing.
There are some truly brilliant young people out there, leading me to be reasonably confident that the future of our planet is in pretty good hands with this lot, although they couldn’t do any worse than our current crop of world leaders and innovators. I do, however, have one observation to make about those who aren’t old enough to know what VHS was - they tend to go on about their need for more sleep much more than those who came before them.
Maybe I’m suffering from an acute bout of selective amnesia but I can’t recall a time when it was acceptable as it is now to reply ‘knackered’ whenever an acquaintance or colleague casually enquires how your day is going. These days, talking about one’s tiredness is nearly on a par with discussing the vagaries of the weather.
So it comes as no surprise at all to learn that one in eight adults say that they are tired all the time, with one medical study revealing that in industrial countries such as ours, we get an hour’s more sleep a night that tribesmen and women in Africa who trek up to 25 miles a day looking for their next meal. The reason so many of us feel so worn out, even after we’ve just woken up, is due to an inefficient circadian rhythm. Apparently.
It appears that, regardless of how much kip we get each night, we are likely not to be bright eyed and bushy-tailed unless we adopt a number of good habits, including getting out into the morning light, within an hour of waking up, which is hard to do if your office is your bedroom. Also, filling your face too close to bedtime is also a real problem when it comes to getting restful sleep.
So it appears that our mothers were right all along when they banged on about fresh air being good for you and how late night snacks must be avoided.