Manage Your Energy: Work Smarter Not Harder
Back at the start of this year, I read a book with the Hustle Sanely BFFs called At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor by Carey Nieuwhof and if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you do! It really helped paint a clear picture of what it means to honor your energy.
Does this sound familiar: you have a to-do list, you’ve prioritized your tasks clearly...but you still struggle to get it all done and you’re drained at the end of the day? Like what gives? Sometimes it’s not about getting more organized or more disciplined. Sometimes the missing piece is making sure that your schedule honors your energy!
So what does it mean to honor your energy?
Honoring your energy is about working with yourself instead of against yourself. It’s putting “work smarter not harder” into action. It’s creating your life schedule in a way that makes sense for your energy levels.
We’re all wired so differently. You can’t just take what you see working for others and try to force yourself into being wired like them. That’s like when you see a toddler taking a square peg and trying to fit it in a round hole. It’s frustrating and using your energy on something that isn’t meant to work.
When you hear the phrase “honoring your energy” – think of “managing your energy.”
Before I can tell you how to be a better manager of your energy, we need to chat about capacity. Here is how capacity is defined:
01. the maximum amount that something can contain (aka how much you can hold)
02. the amount that something can produce (aka how much you can do)
Here’s a good way to think about it:
We all have an energy tank. Every day it starts fuller and as the day goes on, our energy decreases, so the energy in our tank lessens. Sometimes it decreases faster because we are doing higher-energy tasks and on other days our energy lasts longer because we are doing lower-energy tasks.
When you’re aware of this, you’re able to structure your days and weeks in a way that helps you be the best manager of your energy.
Something to keep in mind – your actions are going to determine how full your tank is at the start of each day. The choices you make today affect your energy tank tomorrow. When we’re not honoring our energy and our capacity, that’s usually when feelings of burnout and overwhelm creep in.
K so let’s back up and talk about the different types of tasks that I just mentioned.
Not all tasks are created equally. Different tasks require different amounts of energy from you, even if they take the same amount of time.
High-energy tasks: tasks that require a lot of your mental energy
These tasks tend to drain you (not in a bad way per se, but you can feel that you need a brain break after doing them). These might be tasks that you find yourself procrastinating on.
Low-energy tasks: tasks that don’t require a lot of your mental energy
I like to call low-energy tasks “low hanging fruit tasks” because they are easy to “pick” off of your to-do list. This is tricky because yes, they don’t require a lot of your energy individually but if you stack many low-energy tasks together, you’re still going to drain your energy.
Pay attention to the energy that certain tasks require from you. When you know which tasks are high and low energy for you, you are able to strategically plan your days and weeks to help you be a good steward of your energy.
What does not honoring your energy look like?
- Packing your day full of only high-energy tasks
- Filling your day with too many tasks in general
- Allowing distractions to run your attention
Example: Keeping your email inbox open all day instead of having specific times to check your email
- Winging every day and hoping you can “fit in” all your tasks
What happens when we don’t honor our energy?
- We create unnecessary resistance and that results in:
- Burnout / exhaustion
- Procrastination
- Setting ourselves up to do tasks without excellence
- Feeling overwhelmed/out of control of your life
So how can we honor our energy when it comes to our schedule? By aligning the two as best as we can. One of the best ways to practically manage your energy is to create your schedule in a way that makes sense for your energy levels.
When creating your schedule you can’t overload yourself with high-energy tasks all day long. That causes us to burnout or wind up completely exhausted at the end of the day leaving nothing but crumbs for our loved ones and ourselves.
A little pro tip: Sprinkle high-energy and low-energy tasks throughout your day to help keep your energy levels stable.
For example, I write so much better in the mornings than I do in the evenings. If I try to write a podcast script after 2:00 PM, it takes me 3 times as long as it does to write one first thing in the morning. I know that my morning energy is best suited for creative tasks like writing and that my afternoon energy is best suited for administrative tasks like answering emails or reconciling Quickbooks.
It wouldn’t make sense for me to use my creative morning energy to get my admin tasks done, right? When I play into my strength of writing best in the mornings, I get my writing done much quicker and it’s almost always better quality than if I try to do it at the end of a work day.
We have to stop creating our schedules solely around how much time a task takes but we need to pay attention to how much energy they take, too. That’s what allows you to operate in a peacefully productive way instead of feeling frantically busy all day long.
So how do you go about honoring your energy with your schedule? I’ve got 3 steps to help you with this:
01. Do an energy assessment.
Okay so this isn’t groundbreaking information but there’s no way that you are productive 24 hours a day. There have been a few studies done that have told us that we are actually only productive 4-6 hours a day. So ¼ or less of a 24-hour period. When you do an energy assessment, you are figuring out when your prime energy is. You’re also figuring out when your energy is the lowest. In the book I mentioned earlier, they use the terms “green zone”, “yellow zone”, and “red zone” to describe your energy levels and that’s a really helpful analogy.
Here is how I define each zone:
Your green zone is the times of day and/or times of week when you feel the most mentally sharp and have the most energy
Your yellow zone is the times of day and/or times of week when you feel somewhat mentally sharp and have moderate energy.
And your red zone is the times of day and/or times of week when you don’t feel mentally sharp and your energy levels are low.
02. Categorize your tasks by zone and importance.
So once you assess your energy and figure out what days and times you’re in each zone, the next step is to define what tasks fit into each zone.
The easiest way to do this is to keep track of all the tasks you have to do in a week (like just keep a running list as you’re doing each one for an entire week) and decide whether it’s something that you need high energy, moderate energy, or low energy for. I also suggest taking the importance of tasks into consideration when doing this. So you might create a chart with 3 columns labeled: task, energy required, and priority level. For the task, you obviously write the task, for the energy required write “high” “moderate” or “low”, and then for priority level write “high” or “low.”
So let’s do a few examples from my life:
Task: Writing podcast scripts; high energy; high priority
Task: Group coaching calls; high energy; high priority
Task: Running errands; low energy; low priority
Task: Responding to emails; low energy; low priorityTask: Date night; moderate energy; high priority
03. Create your schedule so that your most important tasks are getting your best energy.
Now that you are aware of your energy levels and what kind of energy the tasks you do on a regular basis require, you can strategically create your schedule so that it honors your energy.
In the Peacefully Productive Schedule course, part of what I have my students do is perform an in-depth energy assessment and then use that information to build a schedule that supports them.
So how do you do that? Play schedule tetris! You look at when your highest energy is and try to schedule the tasks that are the most important are require the most energy from you during those times.
I shared a similar example earlier but to refresh:
I choose to write my podcast scripts early in the day, when my mind is fresh and my energy is the highest, and to answer emails in the afternoon when my energy is lowest because writing podcast scripts is a higher priority and requires more energy than answering emails. It just makes sense!
Now, I’m not naive – I know that it’s not possible to perfectly align your schedule and energy. For instance, I do my group coaching calls in the afternoon (usually between 3-5 PM EST) which is not my green zone – it’s my yellow zone. Of course, I’d love to do my group coaching calls in my green zone but my green zone doesn’t match up with the time that most of my students are available for coaching calls.
Our schedules and routines are tools, not chains.
Maybe you’re in the same boat and you work a 9-5 that doesn’t offer a lot of freedom in scheduling your tasks so it’s a little more difficult to align your schedule with your energy. That’s alright – there are other ways you can honor and manage your energy well. And remember that you probably work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, which means that you still get to play schedule tetris with the rest of your time to prioritize your tasks in a way that best supports you and your family.
HOW TO HANDLE NOT BEING ABLE TO ALIGN YOUR ENERGY WITH YOUR SCHEDULE:
These are other ways to honor your energy if you can’t fully align your schedule with your energy.
What else affects your energy?
The amount and quality of sleep we get
What we put in our bodies (food, drinks, supplements, etc.)
Our movement (stretching, exercise, etc.)
Mental hygiene habits (journaling, meditating, etc.)
How we spend our time (routines, schedules, etc.)
The types of tasks we do/how we pair tasks together
The amount of margin
IF YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE OF SOME SORT OF YOUR SCHEDULE (FOR EXAMPLE, BECAUSE OF WORK), WHAT CAN YOU DO TO STILL HONOR YOUR ENERGY WHILE AT WORK?
Use batching to group like tasks together (certain times of the day and/or certain days of the week)
Use time-blocking to help you create a realistic game plan for your day and to help you evenly distribute high and low-energy tasks
Leave margin in your day to account for “emergencies”
Sprinkle self-care throughout your day (instead of feeling like you have to wait until the end of the day to earn it)
Examples:
- Listen to your favorite podcast while you do low-energy tasks- Make a cozy drink as you transition from your high-energy tasks to low-energy tasks or vice versa
- Keep a bottle of your favorite essential oil at your desk so you can roll it on when you need emotional support
I hope this helped you if you are struggling with managing your energy and your schedule! It’s been life changing for me to operate this way so I hope you’re ready to put what you learned here today into practice! 💃🏻
Wanting more support when it comes to creating your Peacefully Productive Schedule?
If you found this blog post helpful and you would like to listen to the full podcast episode,
tune in below!
