Overwhelmed by an endless to do list? Feel like you’re constantly putting out fires with no time to reflect? Exhausted by the end of day? These were some of the questions we looked at our latest workshop, Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time.
Energy is the stuff that keeps us, quite literally, alive. It has no time boundaries. We identify how we spend our energy day to day and how we would choose to spend our energy in the future.
By the end of the workshop, participants said they learned to:
1. “Own your energy.” Choose what you want and where you want to focus your energy. You have the power to do that.
2. “Decide.” Identify areas that you value and how energy flows there. Design your goals based on that.
3. “Be okay with your choices.” Take control of the things you don’t want. Say no. Learn what to let go of. And be okay with it.
We also looked at from where we draw our energy: our body, mind, emotions, and human spirit. Adapted from an article entitled, Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time, written by Tony Schwartz & Catherine McCarthy for the Harvard Business Review in 2007, we shared some tips for managing energy in these areas, such as:
• Identifying times of day for renewing physical energy
• Expressing gratitude and appreciation
• Focusing on “big rocks”
• Allocating energy to areas in your life you deem most important
Energy management requires patience. It requires us to choose. To see. To decide. To acknowledge what we want most. To create habits that support that energetic field. And when life’s circumstances get us off track, to choose energy that serves us best.