Finding Energy during Exhaustion

Wishing all of those in the United States a Happy Thanksgiving this week! May we all remember the many things we have to be thankful for???

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Over the past few months, work has seemingly become more exhausting, less motivating, and busier than ever. At least that is what Harvard Business Review, American Psychological Association, The Washington Post, and dozens of workplace surveys tell us (and have for some time now).

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The thing is, we are at another intersection as a workforce. As has occurred dozens of times in modern history, we have a confluence of different generations transitioning throughout their stages of career and all are working to manage through ever-evolving expectations, environments, economical states, and experiences v. expectations.

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When I first entered the corporate working environment in 2007, several elements of the workplace were also in transition. We were getting used to jeans in the workplace in place of more traditional attire such as dresses and slacks. Leaders were trying to adopt the idea of mobile technology playing a bigger role in the workplace and being able to work while on the move. There was the emergence of open workspaces versus cubical and office-based work. And of course, social media was gaining major traction (and distraction) with the workforce. Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers were grappling for the mid-senior leadership roles and the early millennials were entering the workplace in droves. Just like today, competing ideals, expectations, and varied experiences were all intersecting in powerful ways. All under the looming backdrop of “The Great Recession of 2008”, the greatest economic downturn since The Great Depression of the 1930s.

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But like today, many reported feelings of being exhausted by their workplace expectations and challenges (granted, the reasons, environments, and challenges may have differed). When we reflect on that time, we can learn a lot from our past experiences and apply them today to help us move forward in ways that we are energized by, inspired by, and motivated by.

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Finding energy during times of exhaustion is hard, but a few widely adopted learnings can be the key to regaining that energy, inspiration, and motivation to lean into our work right now:

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• It starts in our minds – How many times does someone at work ask how we are doing, and we reply with “busy”? It’s kind of comical when we think about it in hindsight, but this is a common reply! Now think about how you may have felt when you replied with that answer. Chances are, the feeling of tired, exhausted, overwhelmed, and the like was only deepened. Now think about a time that you replied more thoughtfully and shared a positive response instead. Maybe something like a response, I received last week; “I am doing well, I have a lot going on, but it’s all stuff that is helping me win right now.” Just reading that may evoke much different feelings than “busy”. The way we think and speak is a big difference-maker in how energized and motivated we are. And we each own that 100%.

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• We each need purpose – When we work on a passion-project, we seem to have endless energy and focus and that’s because we are closely connected with “the why” behind our efforts. Yet when we dive into our more common work, that connection more easily becomes lost and our focus, energy, and motivation go away with it. Having purpose is intrinsic to all our personal needs, but it doesn’t always have to be a beautifully altruistic pursuit of bettering humanity. Purpose can simply be connecting the effort we put forth to something we each personally care about, no matter how big or small that is. So, when we are embarking on work, tasks, or other duties, think for a moment, at what level do I care about what I am doing. Then focus in on that.

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• Embrace Kinetic Energy – In physics, Kinetic Energy is the energy an object possesses during its motion. Meaning a wheel rolling down the road has kinetic energy that allows it to keep moving. For us, we can harness the kinetic energy created by leveraging the above 2 concepts to get moving and then harness this energy to keep moving. Continuing movement means that we do our best to ignore the distractions that entice us to stop progress. It also means that we protect our perpetual motion so that we can avoid the need to pour energy into getting started all over again. This will come in many forms, but it can be a simple as organizing our time to protect the golden hours of creativity and inspiration to do that kind of work in the morning, or that we tackle our most annoying or undesirable tasks first thing each day. Mark Twain famously said, “If the first thing you do in the morning is eat a live frog, you can go through the rest of the day knowing the worst is behind you.”

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Having energy, motivation, and focus is hard, especially right now. We have dozens of aspects of our lives that are constantly trying to steal those things from us. However, we are all in control and the courtroom judge in that battle; ?we simply must choose – do those things win and take energy from us, or do we rule in favor of the things we control that preserve the inspiration and motivation to succeed? ?