How to Stay Awake While Driving Late at Night

More automobile accidents that occur worldwide each year are related drowsiness than to alcohol consumption.  If you have no choice but to drive late at night, here are some tips to stay awake.

Open the windows and let the wind blow through the car.  If the weather is too bad, adjust the air conditioning to cold and turn it on full blast.  If anyone in the car complains about being too cold, point the closest vents towards the driver and close the rest.  Ask them to cover up with something or if they are old enough and wide awake; let them take a turn driving.

Turn on some loud music.  Don’t choose soft piano music or talk radio.  Find some heavy-hitting rock and roll; something that you will want to sing along with.  Keep the beat on the steering wheel so that your body keeps moving.

If you are fortunate enough to have passengers in the car, do not let them sleep, but instead have them talk to you or play some travel games that require you to stay alert but nothing that distracts you from watching the road.

Shake your head every now and then and scream out loud.  Try drinking drinks that contain caffeine, like coffee or sodas.  If you still feel tired, find somewhere to pull over.  Get out of the car and do some exercises, like jumping jacks to increase your heart rate.  If you can find somewhere that is open late at night, go inside and splash some cold water on your face.  Buy a fountain drink with ice.  Keep a piece of ice in your mouth until it melts and then replace it with another.

Telecommuting: Bringing the Work Back Home

The Industrial Revolution brought people out of cottage industries and into the public workplace. Years of long commutes back and forth to work and the stresses of dealing with heavy traffic and with strange office politics have left much of the workforce in search of a well-deserved break. Many people have discovered a path back to their cottages. They are the telecommuters.

In recent history, technology has opened a door of opportunity to employees that allows them to work from home. These employees are evolving into telecommuters. Modern communications technology and a drastic improvement in computer capabilities now allow workers to perform their jobs from home instead of requiring them to commute to and from the workplace.  In years past, if someone wasn't working from home, it meant that they didn't have a home and they were typically labeled a nomad. As time went by and people began congregating in centralized locations to perform their work duties, the idea of working from home became synonymous with being a nomad. It was even rumored that a person working from their home would likely wander from job to job. In present times, it seems that history is repeating itself and workers are making their way back home. (Whitford, 44)

A telecommuter, or "distance worker", as they are often called, is an employee who opens a channel between their place of work and their home to conduct business away from the office. (Wiscombe, 18) This channel may be a telephone line with a modem, a cable line with a broadband modem, or even a T1 line. Using this channel, an employee gains access to files on their computer and other company resources including, but not limited to, internal company servers and mainframes. Some businesses even offer a connection to their servers through a secure website on the Internet. There are many other contributors to the increase in telecommuting. Rick Howell, the vice president of human resources for The Heathman Group, a Portland Oregon based chain of hotels and restaurants, says, "The Internet has certainly helped speed things along, but there are many other forces driving the trend toward telecommuting. Email is a big factor and cell phones, laptops, fax machines, and wide area networks play a big part, too." (Whitford, 44)