I’m part of a mindset that doesn’t believe my work is the only description that defines me. In the 18 waking hours of my day I spend 8 committed to my company and the other 10 committed to me. This is focused on fulfilling other creative and personal endeavours. I’ve experienced recently that it’s not time I need to manage, but my energy. Think about it, one can’t control time, but one can control energy. The skill of getting a lot done, efficiently and effectively, in one hour has been the biggest skill I’ve earned over the last few years.
Now why is this important? Sounds exhausting? That’s what I thought as well before I jumped on this wonderful journey of doing more with my time. Gifting your mind an outlet to do more by managing your energy and mental strength makes you better at your core job, fulfilled as a person and educated as a human.
I’ve had a lot of young colleagues come to me and say I don’t have time to think or do other things. In full disclosure I’ve been that young person too. Leaving jobs and positions to move on to another one where I’m exhausted all over again and repeating the same sentence “I don’t have time to think or do more with my life. I’m always tired.” The key word here is “tired”.
Now to manage my “tired” I trained my mind to operate in compartments:
1) tasks & activities that make me money today
2) tasks & activities that could make me money tomorrow
3) activities and experiences that make me happy
4) events I can’t control and need to not obsess over
By breaking my day down into these 4 parameters I found time to launch 3 personal projects. Focused on my mental and physical strength daily, spent quality time with my young daughter, kept the fire alive with my partner, hung out with my friends and kept my mom happy while having a full-time high stress job.
So the point of all this is that your level of energy directly impacts your personality. How you come across to potential employers, investors, colleagues, friends, family, partners etc. Stephen king said, “Amateurs wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work”. My interpretation of this statement is simply finding inspiration in every experience and training your mind to extract the good and store it for later use. So, you are not always seeking other people to provide inspiration for you but have a repository of reference points that spark ideas.
The best way to manage your energy is to know that you have an endless supply of it, unlike time, you control how much energy to dispense into what. The realisation of that put into practice is freedom. Everyone will find their own method, but for everyone reading this is mine.