Manage Your Energy [NOT Your Time]!

 

As multifarious demands in our everyday life keep rising [with NO end in sight to slacken at all], many of us keep putting even more hours, WHICH inevitably lead to burnout [spelled S-T-R-E-S-S]. Meanwhile, we tend to take for granted WHAT fuels our capacity WHICH translates to our ENERGY.  And WHAT has the old school taught us all along?  It's NO less than increasing our capacity for MORE time and MORE time.  And WHAT's the huge BIG miss here?  In this vast forest we live in, we're missing this very basic tenet that TIME is finite BUT ENERGY is different.  To quote an in-depth study, ENERGY has four wellsprings, namely, our body, our emotions, mind and spirit.  And with ENERGY being indeed a finite resource, I was surprised sometime back WHEN I realized that intermittent breaks restores ENERGY.  NOT to tear down that 'workaholic' mindset BUT sitting for long hours on your desk OR even performing other rigorous work non-stop, it's a NO-NO!!!

I've witnessed first hand in the past, accountants beating their monthly processing cycles, staring at the looming deadline to close the books YET they CAN'T just do it yet because of disparities in the numbers that need to be reconciled.  NOT to downplay the importance of accountants BUT I did witness [many times in fact] they were literally burning the midnight oil and pitifully, I'd witnessed them rushing for a bladder break WHEN it CAN'T wait any farther.  Pitiful indeed😌😌😌

Rejecting that role of a victim [of TIME] and instead viewing events through hopeful lenses can lead us to reap benefits with NOT so top-heavy efforts.  And if there's an unnecessary wild card, inject technology [a.k.a. social media] into the equation and you've got a new ballgame that can go berserk anytime soon.  Many of us will have that sense of there just NOT being enough hours in the day to do everything we need to do.  Tasks that should take only few minutes can stretch into hours, seriously😡😡😡

For many of us [YES dude, do include me as one of the guilty parties in the past], WHEN we run out of time, the default [and ONLY solution] is to work later into the evening OR even over the weekend, WHICH in the end, leaves many of us feeling exhausted, stressed and worst, burned out at times.  BUT WHAT IF working less was the key to getting more done???

Our takeaway:  Let us totally destroy and debunk that age-old time management myth!  YES, for folks at the workplace, it is an easy trap to fall into, it's drilled into us that working solidly for donkey hours will increase our output and BETTER STILL, impress our bosses, ouch😡  My practical 2-cents?  I always believed that very key to maintaining FOCUS and ENERGY in shorter bursts was to apply flexibility to those segments.  At the end of the day, in time, it's all about finite resources and more often, being smarter will do more wonders than just having the sheer luxury of time over and over again.  YES dude, let's MANAGE OUR ENERGY [instead of TIME]💚💛💜