I used to suffer with broken sleep, and my partner complained about my snoring and heavy breathing keeping him up. Ended up getting tested for sleep apnoea but it came back negative - turns out I just had uncontrolled asthma. I take a preventer inhaler now and I sleep like a log. It’s made it so much easier to get through the day.

As others have pointed out, this sounds like a sleep disorder. A healthy person who gets enough sleep should not have trouble staying awake for an 8 hour shift. This can be a serious condition and needs to be checked by a doctor. The good news is sleep disorders - and there are various kinds - can be resolved fairly quickly with treatment. Going straight to stimulants is not the answer. You should start with your primary physician and consider seeing a specialist for a sleep study.

When I was working three jobs, I’d go take a nap in my car instead of eating lunch; a thirty-minute nap kept me going for the rest of my shift. I’d have a granola bar for lunch while walking to/from the car.

First things first, do you get enough sleep at night?
I work a desk job and do consistently get pretty drowsy around 2pm. I find that eating a lighter lunch and moving around keeps me awake. Take a walk around the building or something, it’s bad for you to sit all day long anyways. I drink an energy drink every day as soon as I get in but I don’t know what effect, if any, it has on my afternoon drowsiness.

Get a sleep study done

Wow… Literally nobody has mentioned the easiest solution? Get enough sleep and use a regular bedtime?

Just getting “enough” sleep for a few nights isn’t going to work. You need to go to bed at the same time every night and get enough restful sleep for months so your body is on a schedule. Then you won’t be tired during the day.

If you are, you may not be getting restful sleep and you need to investigate that.

For me, it was a CPAP. I’m physically fit, normal weight, healthy otherwise, but I was having obstructive sleep apnea. Getting a CPAP was a night and day difference, as my sleep is much more restful and restorative.

Just so we’re clear are you talking about literally falling asleep? If that’s the case you probably have narcolepsy.

If it’s a matter of your brain staying active enough to be able to engage, without getting frozen, a few things:

• Limit morning caffeine. It’s an upper, and uppers crash down. The down part isn’t so useful for being alert
• Limit the size of lunch
• Avoid inflammatory foods at lunch
• Get a little exercise
• Use pomodoro timer to ensure you take a break before you need one
• Hydrate well

On that last point: breaks are like pain meds: you should take one before the need for one becomes apparent. Keeping to that strict 25-5 schedule is great for keeping me close to peak in terms of my ability to do cognitive work.

For insomnia, the best thing for me is a 5-minute meditation session using a Muse 2 device (consumer neurofeedback training device, about $250 on Amazon). If I’m having recurring insomnia, a 5-minute session on the muse gives me about two weeks of insomnia relief.

Mostly though, I do indeed avoid desk jobs in favor of jobs that have at least some physical activity. My current job is about half desk, half physical work. And lots of face to face interaction too. Interacting with others keeps me energized.

I struggled for a long time before being diagnosed with sleep apnea. I sometimes feel asleep at my desk (not willingly, just passed out) until I got prescribed a CPAP machine.

Now I just need some coffee in the morning and I’m good to go until evening.

When working in an office it was a constant stream of coffee. As soon as cup was empty, go get another.

Work from home now, stopped drinking coffee daily, take an hour nap around 1 or 2 instead.

Im still chronically tired, but feel better in general without the caffeine dependency.

Have you looked into possible causes for your fatigue, exhaustion, and insomnia? It could be worth some investigation (e.g., blood work, sleep study, ADHD assessment).