Manage Your Personal Energy

We currently find ourselves in strange, uncertain times. As we spend all of our times cooped up in our homes doing the same thing each and everyday, it's more important than ever to manage your personal energy. This will have powerful effects on your motivation, focus, efficiency, and of course... energy.

However, when it comes to managing your personal energy, don't copy me. I don’t think my personal habits are that helpful, but I do have a trick that I use. You need to understand something I call a Personal Energy Score. This is simply a measure of how many units of energy you possess at any given moment. It’s not an exact metric, but rather a general measure of how much force you can apply to a problem. The scale starts at zero.

You never want to hit zero.

Everyone has a baseline personal energy score. Those who naturally have a higher one may enjoy a slight advantage. But the real winners are those who know how to manage their energy. They have learned to manipulate other areas of their lives to muster more energy for when times get tough.

Throughout the day, people and activities will add and subtract from your score. Everything you do, every situation in your life, affects your energy level. Dealing with some people drains me, while interacting with others makes me feel like a teenager with a new Adderall prescription. Things you enjoy tend to increase your score, but not always. I now enjoy public speaking (when it's allowed), but I’m totally spent after an hour on stage. Conversely, I dislike aerobics, but after an intense workout my energy could power an aluminum smelter.

Suppose you wake up with a score of four. After eating, showering, and downing your triple-shot latte, you’re at six. Then you join your morning zoom calls, check your email, and you’re back to five. After a half-day’s work, you’re down to three. Then you encounter a problem that requires four units of energy. Game over—you’re going to quit or fail. Guaranteed.

Now consider the same day with a few minor adjustments. You wake up half an hour earlier to check your emails and prepare for your calls. You're mentally preparing for your day by playing your favorite album. Now, instead of losing an energy unit during your morning work routine, you gain one. The whole day changes. You succeed! And all because of bit more time and your Klezmer Hits playlist.

Most people attempt to manage a difficult task by summoning willpower, or by “working smarter, not harder.” That’s never worked for me. What I can do is arrive with such a massive energy surplus that even my inefficient, simplistic approach succeeds. I eat the same bowl of oatmeal every single morning. Others may think that’s boring, and it is. For me, it removes the stress of wondering what to eat. There’s an economy of energy that derives from predictability. And maintaining predictability in many small areas of my life gives me the energy to be highly unpredictable when it counts.

When you start seeing elements of your daily life in terms of energy economics, you naturally begin to manage your personal energy. If you can plug a dozen little energy drains, you’ll have the surplus to defy the gods.

I just spent three years writing, or mostly re-writing a book, The Innovation Stack. It went through eight complete rewrites until I finally finished it. Then, after the publisher thought it was done, I added one more chapter. The only way I could face such a repetitive and thankless task was by having a massive energy surplus every time I sat at the keyboard.

Don’t copy me. Learn to manage your energy, and do whatever works for you not just in the morning but throughout the day.

Originally published on Quora.

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