Fatigue Meaning

Fatigue is a feeling of tiredness or lack of energy. It can be mental or physical tiredness and is different from drowsiness or sleepiness. The English word fatigue came from French. It was ultimately derived from the Latin verb "fatigare", which means "to tire out" or "to exhaust."

Fatigue is associated with work and production in which the capacity or energy to work more is reduced due to doing a job for a long time. According to Eysenck et-al (Encyclopaedia of psychology,1972), Fatigue is a condition that occurs because of various stress, which leads to reversible impairment of performance and works.

Types of Fatigue

Fatigue can be of the following four types:

Physical Fatigue: It is also known as physiological or Muscular Fatigue. Physical Fatigue means Fatigue of the body. This Fatigue occurs when the various body parts cannot do some work skillfully and properly. When the body parts and their muscles work in excess, glycogen is consumed in excess, and its supply fails; this causes physical Fatigue. The main causes of this type of fatigue are toxic waste products which are the side products of a physical task or are produced due to the shortage of oxygen.
Mental Fatigue: It is also known as psychological fatigue. This type of fatigue includes some mental conditions. It is a result of the stress due to mental tasks. Its main focal point is the central nervous system. Mental Fatigue is due to boredom. The main cause of boredom in the child is due to lack of interest. Whenever a person does any mental task, chemical changes occur in the cells of his nervous system. Glycogen also gets consumed. Consequently, this type of fatigue occurs in the higher centers of the brain. In simple words, we can say that due to the continuous working of the nerve cells, the glycogen gets consumed, and fatigue produces the main toxic products.
Necessary Fatigue: In every person's work, the consumption of some amount of energy is natural. In industrial psychology, the main purpose of experimental studies is to reduce fatigue because fatigue reduces productivity, a feeling of unhappiness in a person is produced, and his power or energy decreases. In the industrial sector, this type of fatigue can reduce by a method of selection of employees.
Unnecessary Fatigue: "Unnecessary fatigue is a decreased capacity for work not by nature of the work or nature of individual doing work, but by unfavourable working method or conditions of work". In industry, whatever methods are being explored to eliminate fatigue are in fact to reduce unnecessary Fatigue.

Symptoms of Fatigue

In order to identify the state or type of fatigue, help is sought from various symptoms caused by fatigue, some of the symptoms are as follows:

Reduction in production.
Reduced efficiency.
A sense of weakness develops as a result of fatigue.
A person feels difficulty in adjusting to new conditions in the state of fatigue.
An individual feels heaviness in body and mind.
A person's physical adjustment gets disturbed.
Stress or tension is visible on the face.
As a result of fatigue, the quality of the work done by a person gets adversely affected. The occurrence of errors increases.
Due to fatigue, a person's happiness disappears after the completion of the task.