Oh, your productivity – it’s frustrating, isn’t it?
You have scheduled all those jobs-to-do. You’ve turned up, you’ve got it all ready. You’ve killed distractions, procrastination and other time wasters, but… you still cannot finish things on time. Your productivity is poor. You feel tired, frustrated and doubt yourself and your chosen path.
You curse your time management skills and buy another productivity book, course or app. You use all your motivation-boosting tricks. You shovel yet another chocolate/energy drink/coffee into yourself and put off going to bed for another hour. You push on. It’s got to be done. You can do it!
But it still does not really work. So you start all over again.
Stop!
There is nothing wrong with your motivation or time management skills. Don’t flog that poor productivity horse.
If you’re struggling to get jobs done even though you have fantastic motivation, the best productivity tools and top-notch time management skills, listen carefully – I’ll share a secret with you.
In this world of faster, cheaper, better, we’ve got it all wrong.
We say time is a finite resource and we should therefore use it wisely. Yes, but on the other hand – time is also a renewable resource. As long as you’re alive, you will have another day to your disposal tomorrow morning.
All you need is to get out of bed.
But, even if you have heaps of motivation and oceans of time, but you’re so tired or sick you can’t even get out of bed, will you be productive?
I know, because I’ve been there. Squeezing tasks, meetings and calls into every available minute of my day, saying yes all those potentially fantastic opportunities and then cutting back on sleep to find time to achieve my goals.
Yes, I have accomplished a lot in a short period of time.
But then, things started to crumble down. I began to feel exhausted, washed-out, my creativity dwindled and I started feeling quite disengaged.
Don’t let the productivity drive mislead you away from the real productivity
Don’t make the same mistakes. Don’t let the productivity drive mislead you away from the real productivity. Ditch that drive to fill in every single gap in your diary. Stop blaming yourself for a sleep-in or a round of your fav procrastination habit. Even though your excellent time management skills may make you more productive in the short run, in the longer run, you’re risking hitting the wall of burnout.
I’ve been there, done that. I have also found an alternative solution.
1. The secret to lasting top-notch productivity
I’ve learnt it the hard way. Once proud of my superproductivity, I started struggling to get some really easy tasks done. I had to rethink my not just my priorities, but also my principles. Getting more done in less time with ‘zero waste policy’ had to be replaced with more downtime and much slower pace.
It took me a long time to feel at peace with my realisation, but since I’ve got it right, I feel much happier and fulfilled. I’m still working on some of the aspects, but I know I’ll get there. I’m on the right track with my productivity now.
So what’s the secret, you ask?
It’s our energy that is the most precious resource and we should be managing energy, not time.
I’m sure you already know about the importance of sleep and breaks on your performance and productivity. As a quick reminder – sleep deprivation leads to a considerable decline in our ability to learn and recall information, our decision-making and other cognitive abilities as well as physical performance – oh, yes, those with sleep deprivation get tired quicker than those who sleep enough.
But there is more to energy management than just being physically or mentally tired.
The creators of the Energy Project advocate for a different view of human energy. Their research shows that nearly 60% of workers are ‘physically depleted, emotionally drained, mentally distracted and lacking in meaning and purpose’. The Project identified 4 types of energy – all of them essential to our work-life balance and overall wellbeing:
- Physical energy – your physical health, ability to move your body at the required speed, in the required direction; the biggest influencers of your physical energy are sleep and nutrition
- Mental energy – is about your ability to focus on the job at hand, distractions, procrastination, but also time for tough decision-making, willpower battles, bigger-picture work: strategic, goal-planning and tracking and reflection
- Emotional energy – refers to your emotions and happiness in particular, because positive emotions boost productivity and happiness makes people 12% more productive while unhappy people are 10 % less productive than an average person
- Spiritual energy – is a little more complicated and refers to doing what really matters to you, maintaining integrity, being driven by a sense of purpose and autonomy.
So is it about having enough rest and vacations/holidays/weekends?
The drive to manage energy, not time is not a new fad, but has been present and researched for some time.
Studies show that there is a lot of truth in the old saying: ‘All work and no play make Jack a dull boy’. Moreover, not only dull, but also disengaged and less productive.
Quality leisure time is linked with better physical and mental health, as well as ability to cope with stress and demands of work. But sadly, the effects of holidays don’t last very long. Apparently, after about a month your stress levels return to pre-holiday state.
Energy management is a life-long and life-wide approach
2. For best productivity, know your natural energy rhythms
Now, you know why energy management is important, let’s look at the how-to.
We all have our own rhythms and cycles. Just like with being a lark or an owl – a morning or an evening person. Your energy ebbs and flows through the day (and night). The first step to managing your energy is to understand your own natural rhythms.
The easiest way to go about it is to simply track your energy throughout the day.
Track your energy throughout the day
Theoretically, you may want to track all four types of energy, but from the practical point of view: physical, emotional and mental should initially do. Why? Because spiritual energy is about value alignment, integrity and how we prioritise what’s important to us. High spiritual energy is the harbinger of Flow – the ultimate top-performance sweet spot. It also often sits at the top of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (self-actualization) , while physical, emotional and mental energy are more likely to be addressed at the lower levels. You need to get first things right first.
To track your energy levels, you need a pen and a piece of paper. If you prefer, you can use any tracking app, or just simply your diary. Here is how you go about it:
1. Set up a reminder to check your energy states and record your impressions every hour
2. Make your first entry shortly after you wake up. If you miss a time, don’t worry. Just check and record your state as soon as you can and record the time you did it and then get back on track
3. Use a scale: I use 1-5 scale with 1 being the lowest energy and 5 – the highest.
You’re very welcome to design your own.
In this study the researchers used 1-10 scale with the following descriptors:
1-2 very low
2-4 low
5-6 neutral
7-8 high
9-10 very high
I think it’s unnecessarily complicated. The more choice you have , the more you’re likely to hesitate and generally overthink it, and as a result make an estimation from your head rather than your ‘gut’. Go for what you do feel rather than what you should feel, or conclude this is too time-consuming and just dump the whole exercise.
So don’t make it too complicated (e.g. 1-10), and when using numbers or other descriptors, have a good sense of what you mean by that – it’s good to have a point of reference, e.g. I know that my physical energy level 1 means that I am 5 minutes away from falling asleep (or have actually fallen asleep), or physically unwell to the point of needing to stay in bed; Mental energy at 5 – usually means I’m in Flow.
4. Have a separate column for ‘context’ – this is where you can describe (briefly) where you were at the time, who with, what you were doing at the time this may give you better understanding of potential connections between your energetic states and your actions/environment/context
5. It’s good to add some description to your recordings, e.g. when noting your emotional state, you can mark what emotion you are experiencing e.g. low emotional energy may mean that you’re anxious or sad, or just ‘flat’
6. Run it for a few days, ideally over a week, or at least include weekends, so you can have a better overview of various aspects of your life.
7. Analyse the data
Here are two snapshots of ‘1 day in life’ from my energy tracking. This is just a simple way to illustrate how you can use the energy tracking idea in practice. (click on the file to see a larger version).
Depending on your preferences, you can look at the raw data (see the table on the left), with narration, but you can also create a visual representation (a chart). You can do it quickly in Excel or in Google Sheets in Goggle Documents, or just simply on a piece of paper with a table.
(I’ve included a sample Energy Monitoring Table with a chart in the pdf copy of this post – scroll down to the bottom and click on the button)
I’d recommend doing both. The chart will help you identify any patterns. The narrative (descriptive context columns) will help you identify any triggers/causes for certain states of mind, emotions or your physical performance.
These two sets of data can serve two different purposes: identifying patterns in your energy flows and identifying and addressing areas for improvement
First of all, look for patterns in your energy flow.
As I mentioned above, you need to track your energy levels for a few days at least, and I’d recommend including enough of weekdays, as well as weekends, so that you can see if there is any difference between them.
On the above example, you can see my own energy trackings from two consecutive days. Even though there are some days variance (these are usually explained by what was happening at the time-> see below)-> you can see an overall pattern emerging across all three types of energy tracked here:
– I’m at my best in the morning,
– there is a dip at lunch time
– the afternoon/evening are reasonably OK
– there is another dip in the late evening
You can go even more granular into it, looking at ‘subsets’ within the pattern. So to use my sample charts,
– I have my best\very best time, mentally and physically between 7-8 am, with a brief dip around 9am
– late morning is a little worse but still good
– a significant drop in performance across all three energies around lunchtime
– coming back on board around 2pm and managing quite emotionally and physically, but mentally at 3/5, which is not very impressive
Analyse your results trying to identify periods of time where you usually are at your best/good enough/so-so/really bad. Usually, these periods form ‘performance zones’. You can see my ‘performance zones’ on the picture below – a screenshot from my diary, with 4 ‘performance zones’ identified: Prime Time, Good Time, So-So Time and Really Bad Time.
If you can’t see a clear pattern across all these energy levels, pick 2 out of three- the two most important for your type of work/activity, e.g. since my work consist mainly of mental tasks, and my emotional state can affect considerably how I perform my mental work (as it is probably the case for many people), I’d look at those two type of energies for indications as to where I sit in the performance zone.
Identifying and addressing areas for improvement in energy management and productivity
The Contexts column of your energy tracking table should provide you with some insights into possible causes for your scores, which, in turn, can help you identify ‘areas for improvement’ in terms of your energy management for better productivity.
For instance, dips in physical energy are usually triggered by me feeling hungry. I can manage this better by scheduling breaks, and meal/snacks breaks in particular at times when my physical energy is about to drop off.
My emotional and mental dips are usually linked with anticipatory anxiety or excitement when I’ve got something important (or unpleasant) later on that day and I’m struggling to concentrate because my mind keeps rushing ahead to that anticipated event. That’s why, whenever I can, I try to schedule those things as early in the day as possible.
Explore the Context column to seek understanding behind your specific peaks and lows. This exercise may be a start to changing/tweaking your schedule, or even lifestyle to improve your performance.
This is a whole new topic and I will write about it at some other point.
3. Align your productivity schedule with your energy pattern
The point of this exercise is to end up with an idea what your energy pattern or patterns look like. I say pattern or patterns because some of us may have a separate pattern for weekdays and another one for weekends.
If you can’t see a pattern clearly, i.e. every day in the week looks different, I suggest you go over the Context column and analyse your triggers. Again, look for patterns there – you may find that your ability to concentrate depends on what time you got up, or even more likely – what time you went to bed the night before, whether or not you eat regularly, or interactions (or lack of thereof) with specific people. You may want to tweak what’s in your control and run this exercise again to see if any clearer pattern emerges.
Once you’ve got your pattern(s), use it as a basis for your planning and scheduling.
You can create ‘zones’, just like I do (see the picture above). I find it helpful when planning my tasks.
The key principle is to align your performance zones with your tasks, taking into consideration what type and how much energy a given task require and aligning it with your personal performance peaks and troughs.
To get this right, you need to understand yourself and your own energy flow (that’s why you start with identifying your patterns), but also the nature of the tasks you have to complete and your personal strengths and weaknesses. And this will allow you to maximise your productivity.
For example, some tasks will require a lot of time, but not much mental focus or emotional resilience – for me it’s editing of my posts, so I schedule t in the afternoon, when I’m still generally OK, or even in the evening (my ‘so-so time’). For tasks that require sitting at a desk for prolonged periods of time, I need to consider my physical energy though and manage it accordingly.
Some tasks may be really quick, but intense in terms of mental and emotional energy they require. If I can, I’d always try to schedule them in the morning, at my best time.
The magic that happens when you align your jobs with your individual flow of energies is that you end up always working at the top of your game – wherever that top performance is at the time. It’s simply because you end up doing a job that requires the amount of physical, mental or emotional energy you have at the given time. That’s 100% productivity!
Since I changed to energy management, the number of my unfinished tasks dropped and so has my frustration level.
I am able to make the most of various ‘time zones’ in my diary and feel OK about not doing any writing in the evening anymore.
The biggest gain however, has been the shift in my exercise routine.
As you can see on the screenshot from my diary above, I marked the time zone between 5.15 and 6.30am as ‘so-so’ time, while in the energy-monitoring table you can see all high scores in that time period. If you look carefully, you can see that the diary screen shot was done in mid-March, and Energy tracking in May. What happened in between those points in time? I looked at my energy pattern and decided that since my morning time was not of my intellectual use (due to a couple of reasons, mainly my low physical energy and the anticipation anxiety prior to school run time), I shifted my exercise routine from evening to a morning slot and now go for my run every other day. The time between 6 and 7am has become highly enjoyable and also strangely productive from a creative point of view.
4. Don’t forget to procrastinate renew and recuperate
One of the most important things when managing your energy is… energy renewal.
As I said in the opening to this post, energy is a renewable resource, but we need to allow, or even facilitate the renewal.
Have you even worked long hours? I mean 12+ hrs per day… How long were you able to sustain this pace?
I have been there, too. When you a junior doctor/doctor in training, you not only have to work long hours, you are EXPECTED to do so. Normal ward work, then on-call duties, whole weekends spent at hospital. Well, there is even a little competition who can work longer hours… I’m guilty of doing that, too. At some point, I was doing 50-55 hrs working marathons, because I also had an evening job as a language tutor. Yay!
But I was young and passionate about everything I was doing at the time. I didn’t have a family. I thought I was invincible. I also needed the money very badly.
I was able to sustain it for a couple of months and then I crashed.
Sounds familiar?
I did recover pretty quickly – a week or two away in nature did the trick. These days, a middle age woman, with a family and my competitive streak a bit less prominent than in my younger years, a much more pragmatic approach to life and work, I am less willing to sacrifice myself for the sake of… well – what?
I still work long hours at times, particularly when I’ve got an interesting project on the go. But I always make sure I schedule breaks and time for renewal and recuperation.
Can you work productively for 100+ hrs per week?
Some people asked me if it’s possible to work 100hrs/week. You can check my responses in the linked Quora threads, but the answer is really simple: although you may be able to pull off all-nighters and long working weeks, one every so often or for periods of time, this is unsustainable long-term. Our body and our mind are just not able to take it.
So, make sure you allow your body, your mind, and your emotions to recover and recuperate.
How to recover and recuperate
- Take breaks
In the day-to-day work or study schedule, make sure you take breaks. The way our mind work, when it comes to attention and concentration, the optimal periods of time for work/study are 60-90 min intervals called, the ultradian rhythms (also good summary here). Schedule your jobs in those intervals and take shorter breaks after every interval.Schedule longer breaks every 2-3 hrs – usually these would be your meal/snack breaks.Keep your physical energy up with appropriate nutrition. ‘Brain food’ is glucose, but your brain needs a steady supply of it, so avoid simple carbs at the preference of complex ones and include protein into your diet. Don’t forget to water your brain as it’s 73% water – BTW water works best as a drink.Breaks will get you through the workday, but life is more than just day-to-day stuff. In the longer run, it’s all about balance. Make sure you put aside time to attend to your physical, emotional, mind and spiritual needs.
- Make sure you get enough sleep, exercise, sunlight and regular, nutritious meals
- Look after your emotions
Your emotional energy replenishes when you engage in activities that bring you happiness. So spend time with people you love and who love you – your friends and family. Do things you love doing. Do things for others. Don’t forget to count your blessings and appreciate what you have – it increases your sense of happiness.
- Give your brain/mind a break, too
Breaks are crucial to productivity. Your mind is likely to renew the energy when you take breaks from the day-to-day demands and disengage from your work completely (i.e. switching off your work phone and not checking your emails on weekends and evenings). It’s also about allowing yourself time for daydreaming, reflection, creative thinking and focusing on stuff that has long-term value to you.
- Don’t forget your spiritual needs
Your spiritual energy level will depend on your ability to be faithful to your values and principles, having the sense of control over your destiny and decisions, having a ‘noble goal’ – a clear sense of purpose that you are able to pursue.
And last, but not least – procrastination
Yes, you are allowed to procrastinate. You’re even allowed to schedule some.
Scheduled procrastination is a rather new concept and is becoming popular among some productivity fans. It fits perfectly with the idea that one cannot continue working at max capacity all the time. Downtime is necessary not only for renewal, but also for creative thinking and reflection, and well – maintenance.
So factor in some time every day for your favourite structured or unstructured procrastination.
So schedule regular short sessions to do all those pesky organisational tasks, like clearing your ‘to-file’ file or backing up your systems to smooth everyday running of your business/life. This will save you time and energy wasted on looking for stuff or losing documents when your computer refuses to cooperate.
But don’t feel guilty about spending some time doing stuff you do that don’t have a clear goal for.
Yes, you can play Candy Crush, flick through a book, or even – browse the net! If you want to ‘bump it up a level’, unleash some proper creative energy. Go for a walk, lie on the floor with your eyes closed listening to music, or go out for lunch. Whatever you do, don’t see it as being lazy, or wasting your time. It’s not always a threat to your productivity. These are important for energy renewal and creativity, so just embrace it.
Embrace it, schedule it, enjoy it – but don’t go overboard on it. You may use it in your breaks, short or longer ones. Stick to your schedule and return to your workspace as soon as the 5 or 20-30 minutes is over. You should feel refreshed, re-energised, and even full of new ideas.
Still feeling tired, irritated or empty? Put away your diary and stop looking at the clock. Don’t flog that exhausted horse, it will not get you there today, no matter how hard you try. So stop trying.
There is another way of improving your productivity. A way where you don’t have to push on against your tiredness and negative emotions. Where you can work at the top of your game, with time for family, play and, pardon my French, holidays. A way where you can be much happier, relaxed, fulfilled and in tune with your natural flows.
For top-notch productivity, stop managing your time and start managing your energy.
Grab a piece of paper (or download my template) and start tracking it now.
Grab a pdf copy of this post with some bonus tips and an Energy Tracking template. Click the button below, enter your email address – and enjoy!
