Why we feel tired & disturbed after driving and tips to avoid it

Most of you might be driving daily 1 to 2 hours. I don’t know how you feel after driving for 1 hour but I used to feel tired and disturbed after driving

Initially I used to think it’s a common thing to get tired after driving for continuous 1 hour. But one day I got a thought that “when I do exercise which will involve more physical work, I am not as much tired and disturbed as I feel after driving”. So I thought that there might be something wrong which I am doing because of which I used to feel more tired.

For many days I was not able to find what wrong I was doing. One fine day when I was reading a book on meditation, I understood why I used to feel more tired after driving. And doing a small change has brought a lot of improvement.

Now I will tell you what change I have done, so that you can also try and get benefited.

First let me tell you the mistake which I used to do. I used to think of some random thoughts while driving, instead of concentrating completely on driving.

Driving random thoughts – getting tired while driving

Most of the people will be doing it knowingly or unknowingly, but many of us don’t know the adverse effects of it.

To understand this we should know little bit about the working of our brain. Brain will be working at 2 levels.

1. Conscious level
2. Sub conscious level

Thinking process, doing new or different works and all will happen at conscious level. Here you will be aware of what you are doing

Routine works or habits will happen at subconscious level. Here you will be doing the work but you will not be doing it with 100% consciousness.

If you are new to driving or if you are driving in a place where you are not familiar with route, you will be driving in conscious level. You will change the gear, speed or use break with consciousness.

But once you become habituated with driving and route, you will be driving at sub conscious level. When you are doing an activity at sub conscious level, there are high chances that our conscious mind will tend to think of random thoughts.

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If you are habituated with route and driving, you might have experienced this. After starting the driving, for initial few minutes you will be driving at conscious level and then slowly you will move to subconscious level, where you will start thinking about random thoughts and just before reaching your destination you will come back to conscious level.

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Now let us know what is making us more tired and disturbed after driving.

Once you start driving at subconscious level and at the same time if you are thinking about random thoughts at conscious level, your brain will be over loaded because of which we feel tired and disturbed.

Let me explain it in bit detail

When you are driving at conscious level your brain will be doing only one activity, that is recording what all it see, hear, sense and try to keep you alert and safe.

sensing while driving – getting tired while driving

But when you are driving at sub conscious level and if you are thinking about random thoughts your brain has to do multi-tasking. On one hand you brain has to record everything and should keep you alert and on the other hand it has to deal with random thoughts.

working of brain while driving – getting tired while driving

Generally during driving we will be moving at higher speed (for example 40 km/h). So our brain should be working at higher efficiency, so that it has to record everything in very less time. So faster we drive, the more load will be on brain and on that if we overload our brain with random thoughts it will be exhausted, because of which we feel tired and disturbed.

So if we can reduce the over load on brain by stop thinking about random thoughts, we will not feel tired. More over if the load of random thoughts increases your brain might not be able to record the things properly and may not be able to keep you 100% alert, which might lead to accident.

And this random thoughts will not help you. We might think of planning something important while driving but end up thinking about some current affair. And all this random thoughts will disappear once you stop driving.

So stop thinking about random thoughts while driving and just concentrate on driving. Initially it will be difficult and your mind keeps wandering, but try to bring it back. With little bit of practice you can stop thinking about random thoughts which will help you in driving without much tiredness.