Productivity

Productivity Tool Overview: Energy Management

Mondays are productivity days at SimpleProductivity blog.


Photo by @alviseni

I have long believed that true productivity requires a variety of methods. Some days you need to may need to focus on a specific task and power through. Some days you may need to sprint through a bunch of tasks. Some days you may need to focus on your energy. All of these strategies will help you get things done, but work best under the right circumstances.

This June I will be looking at my go-to tools – the ones in my productivity toolbox. I will look at how to use them, what they are best at, and when I use them. Today we will look at energy management.

Intro to Energy Management

Energy management is a fancy way of saying matching tasks with the energy you have available. When you have low energy, it is best to have a list of tasks that require little or no energy. When you have high energy, you have a list of tasks that require high energy.

What It Is Really Good At

Energy management is good at keeping you on track.

I’ve talked about default behavior before. This is what you do when you don’t have something specific to do (or sometimes instead of something you should be doing).

This could be checking email (my default behavior), Facebook, Twitter, surfing the web, or any number of other things. Since these things generally are low energy, you have a chance of replacing them with another low-energy activity. Energy management allows you to bypass default behavior and instead do something productive.

Energy management also works for the high energy. If you see a task on your list and it is high-energy, you know enough not to attempt this after you have had a long day. It is best to tackle the task when your energy is at its peak.

How I Implement This

This one is an easy implementation. Since I primarily use an electronic task list, I tag the tasks as #le (low energy) or #he (high energy). I’ve color-coded the labels so I can see at a glance where the task falls.

When I Use It

I find that I have to consciously use energy management when I have low energy. Instead of defaulting my behavior, I am slowly training myself to look at my task list and do one of the low-energy activities on there.

I am also training myself not to do the low-energy activities when I have the capability of doing a high-energy activity. Sometimes I will do something like social media as a way of stalling doing something that requires effort, even if I have the energy.

Conclusion

Energy management is a key component of my selection of tasks. By balancing the choice of what I can do with the amount of energy, I get more things done.

Over to the Readers

Do you take your energy level into account when you are doing tasks? How do you balance the two?


Photo by @alviseni. Licensed under Creative Commons.