Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time
You can have all the time in the world. But without energy, you'll have a hard time getting things done.
Key Takeaways:
Everyone gets 24 hours. Whether you're good at managing it or not, you get 24 hours.
We get energy from four different groups of factors: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
Flow state is when you do a task without any disturbance, have a central focus, and enter the “zone.”
We need two things: the time to do the task and the energy to do the task. Think about this fact, the amount of time we get in a day is fixed. Everyone gets 24 hours. Whether you're good at managing it or not, you get 24 hours. But managing time and measuring energy is a bit different.
Time and Energy
Both need to be managed well. If someone manages their time well, they'll have the time to do all the tasks that they need to do. If someone manages their energy well, they'll have the energy to do all the tasks that they want to do.
Many talk about time management but not many speak about energy management. Consider how important energy is to do a task. You can have all the time in the world, but if you don’t have the energy, you won't get the task done. If you think about it, the more energy we have, the more efficient we can be in our tasks.
Doing meaningful work in as less amount of time as possible with as much energy as possible is the goal. The following idea is based on Tony Schwartz's article in the Harvard Business Review where he worked with company presidents, top-tier executives, and CEOs regarding energy and time.
According to Schwartz, to have more energy, we need to know what gives us energy. We get energy from four different groups of factors:
physical
mental
emotional
spiritual
Of the four factors, we will focus on physical energy and mental factors.
Physical Energy
The first group of factors we're going to talk about are physical factors. To do any task, you need physical energy or mechanical energy to get the job done. How do we increase our physical energy?
Get enough sleep and rest
Consume good nutrition
Get enough sunlight
Get enough exercise and movement.
Schwartz gives the example of Gary Farrow, a vice president at Wachovia Bank (which has now been acquired by Wells Fargo):
Gary had this typical busy executive lifestyle. He rarely ate healthy. He would have two large meals a day, not get enough exercise, not get enough sleep, and he was overweight.
As part of the experiment done by Schwartz, Gary started doing everything right. He started exercising regularly. He started going to bed on time. He started to eat regularly. With all these changes, the results were impressive. Gary lost 50 pounds, and his energy levels went up. Previously, he would schedule difficult tasks for the morning because that's when his energy levels used to be high. But now, he was more productive and could take on the same difficult task in the evenings, as he could in the mornings.
Doing the right things like getting good exercise, good nutrition, sunlight, movement, and sleep, will give you a great energy boost and help you maintain your physical energy,
Mental Factors
Now, the next group of factors we're going to talk about are the mental factors. The most important of mental energy factors is focus. This is something we all lack. Our surroundings, our digital devices, and the internet are making it much worse. These distractions take away our focus, and therefore our mental energy.
As Schwartz explains, in his article, a temporary shift in attention from one task to another, like stopping to answer an email or take a phone call, increases the amount of time necessary to finish the primary task by as much as 25%.
There's a phenomenon known as switching time. The more switching time you have in your tasks, the more amount of time and energy it's going to take to complete the tasks. It's much better to work 90-120 minutes (or however long you can work) with full focus and no distractions, than it is to work for hours with a lot of distractions in it.
Try to attain the flow state. Flow state is when you do a task without any disturbance, have a central focus, and enter the “zone.” When you feel like you're in the zone, you are in a state of flow. It's easy to enter flow state if you love the tasks that you're doing. Even if you don't like the task, if you simply just avoid distractions, you can focus much better and get the task done much quicker.
When you achieve flow, it not only keeps you efficient and engaged, but you feel quite refreshed. After finishing the task, you feel energized instead of feeling groggy and tired. Grogginess and tiredness after working on a task are indications that there were a lot of interruptions, distractions, and a lot of switching time.
So basically, try to achieve flow when doing a task. It will feel great.