The energy management question

If you are feeling energetic, you don’t need much time to get what you want done. But, give yourself in a lethargic state large amounts of time and you will likely not get much done. Hence, it follows that energy management is way more important than time management. A key first step in good self energy management is – what activity best recharges your batteries?

For most people, the answer to this question is one of sleep, food, exercise, listening to music, interesting work, social time or a hobby. The answer does change according to context. But, it is very likely every one of us have a stack ranked list. Knowing the list is helpful because you have a clear action when you’re feeling low energy. If you’re feeling low energy in the middle of a work day for example, you just work through your list and rule out what’s not possible. If taking a nap is not possible and if you just finished lunch, perhaps you could take a quick walk or give a friend a call? And, if it is closer to the end of the day and you aren’t feeling the best, maybe the best thing to do is wrap everything up and go to bed.

So, how do you figure out the list? You might have a hypothesis intuitively. But, there’s few better ways to understand this than to test it over a period of time. Observe your energy during the day and get good at understanding what works best when you feel low energy. Try out different solutions during bouts of low energy and make your list over time. A likely side effect of doing this is also understanding what causes bouts of low energy. For example, there might be certain kinds of food that may not be helping. Or, you might find that going two days without exercise has very negative effects on your energy.

Our productivity is a direct function of our energy management. And, understanding how to do that well requires us to keep asking ourselves that question – what activity best recharges our batteries?

Thanks to Lifehacker for the image