Energy Management: Your Personal Energy Management

In preparing for a learning session on personal productivity for an upcoming annual meeting for an IT consulting company, I gained more clarity that personal productivity is closely tied to how you manage a key commodity - your energy.  

Your energy management is resource allocation.  Since many of our clients are involved in resource allocation of technical resources (their staff and their own), thinking of this in similar terms may help you.

The amount of energy (e.g. calories as measurable units) you have available each day is relatively constant.  That means that the better you are at using your energy on the activities that are most likely to yield desired results, the more you accomplish your objectives in a shorter time frame (assuming you are clear on key objectives).

Let's bring this down to a practical level.  You have an energy cycle each day.  One improvement you can make is doing key activities that require more energy at your peak energy times.  This helps insure that key activities get accomplished (i.e. before you run out of energy for them).

For example, the time of day I am generally most mentally vibrant is from 6:30 am to 8 am.  I normally work on more mentally demanding tasks (marketing plans, studying new technologies, analyzing information) during this cycle.

My energy from 8 am - noon is also high.  Being that communications with customers is one of my highest priority activities (and one that I spend 6 - 8 hours a day on), I focus on higher importance customers communications in the morning.

I experience an energy drop in the afternoon.  During that time, I will be involved in activities that build up my energy.  I may take a lunch break, read, get quiet time, run an errand, or other actions that build up my energy.

My energy renewal at this time may also be caffeine (which I do not use in the morning), scheduling internal or external meetings at this time (because they normally take less energy), or exercise (yes, I am fortunate to have autonomy to do so on some days). 

Then I am good to go until 5 pm.  If I work past 5 pm, it is normally on actions that don't take a lot of brain power (e.g. lower priority e-mail communications, prioritizing actions, reviewing receivables, etc.)

At night, the energy I have depends upon the demands of my family.  When I am involved in family activities that drain me (like shopping), I fade fast.  On a good night, I'll spend time playing with my daughter (which is energy giving), eat a meal, and get an hour of reading or studying done.  As an introvert, I get energy by doing activities alone (e.g. meditating, reading, fixing things in the house, building things, etc.)

In addition to being smart about allocating your activities to be in sync with your energy cycle for the day, it is prudent to know what drains your energy (so as to minimize these in your life) and what gives you energy (so as to do these more consciously more often).

Some of my energy givers include:

• Mental conditioning
• Mobility
• Exercise
• Quiet time
• Reading
• Meeting new individuals
• Being in a new place
• Changing tasks
• Productive use of my time
• Trying new activities
• Taking risks
• Doing things that I am afraid to do (e.g. Drop Zone, jet skis, four wheeling)

Some of my energy drainers include:

• People who have a developed habit of complaining
• Too much socializing
• Involvement in activities that bore me (e.g. shopping)
• Watching others do things (TV, live sports)
• Sleeping more than eight (8) hours
• Too much sun
• Too much sugar in my blood 
• Change of sleeping pattern

Another factor is your work environment.  Realizing that some elements of your work environment are not under your control, focus on those that are.  For example, when we moved to a new education center, my workstation was in the nerve center (our euphemism for server and storage room).  I found, after working in that area over a period of months, that I would experience a significant energy lag in the afternoon.  I was able to be productive ten (10) hours a day when I worked in an area that had natural light (and less so in the nerve center).  So now, I am a roving worker - working in whatever windowed room is available that day (I work using a laptop).   Being that change gives me energy, changing rooms also gives me an added energy boost.

Here are some work environment factors for you to consider:

§         Independently or collaboratively 

§         Autonomously or supervised 

§         Quiet or active environment 

§         Length of time you like to work

§         Prefer focus on one task for a while or moving between tasks often

§         Do interruptions normally energize you or irritate you 

§         Working with scheduled planned in advance or figure it out as you go 

§         Do you enjoy attending meetings with others 

§         Is it important to have your work environment uncluttered 

§         Do you prefer routine in your day

      Again, I recognize that an office worker can only control some of these aspects.  Even if you can only improve one, that may get you some extra productivity.

      My expectation is that if you improve one or two habits from these ideas and put them into practice, it would be realistic to have a 2% to 4% gain in the amount of work you get done - and in today's age where the worker productivity (at least in the USA) is at an all time high, even 2% is significant.