Master Your Time and Energy: A Whole Brain? Approach

Managing your time can feel like an endless juggling act. Deadlines, meetings, and personal commitments all demand attention—but what about your energy? While time is finite, energy is renewable, and knowing how to manage both is the key to thriving, not just surviving.

Whole Brain? Thinking can help. By understanding how your thinking preferences shape how you work, you can manage not only your time but also your energy with greater clarity and balance. Here’s how.

Understand Your Energy Patterns

Energy ebbs and flows throughout the day, and understanding your thinking preferences and energy patterns is the first step toward better managing your energy. Whole Brain Thinking? can help you plan your schedule with the tasks that align with your preferences. Self-assess by noting when you feel most productive and what environmental factors (like noise or lighting) help or hinder your focus.

Break Big Projects Into Mini-Goals

Breaking tasks into smaller chunks helps maintain momentum. And you can use Whole Brain Thinking? to align those mini-goals to the patterns in your energy levels and thinking preferences.?

Take Regular Breaks

Breaks help reset your energy and improve focus. Whether it’s a walk, a chat with a colleague, or a Pomodoro-style work session, stepping away recharges your thinking. Whole Brain Thinking? encourages breaks that align with your style—creative thinkers might explore an art project, while relational thinkers benefit from socializing.

Manage Your Cognitive Load

Every brain has a limit. To avoid burnout, organize your day using techniques like time-boxing. Schedule work that matches your least-preferred quadrant during high-energy periods so it feels less taxing, and leave preferred work for lower-energy times to reenergize yourself. For example, relational thinkers might tackle detailed analysis first thing in the morning, leaving collaborative tasks for later.

Create Flow-State Routines

Routines reduce decision fatigue and help you manage energy effortlessly. Whole Brain Thinking? can guide you in setting up flow-friendly schedules. For example, designers might block mornings for creative work and afternoons for meetings. Encourage team-wide practices like meeting-free blocks, giving everyone time to focus deeply on work aligned with their preferences.

The secret to true productivity isn’t doing more; it’s doing the right things at the right time with the right energy. When you sync your tasks with your thinking preferences, you’ll not only get more done but feel more fulfilled.

Your Whole Brain? Reading List:

• How to Understand Yourself Better as a Leader
• Mind Hacks to Help You Grow Beyond What You Know
• Learn Something New Every Day

New Year, New Heights: Building High-Performing Teams in 2025

The workplace is evolving fast, but teams that embrace cognitive diversity are solving problems faster, innovating better, and staying resilient. Ready to build a team that thrives in 2025???

Ann Herrmann-Nehdi recently partnered with Training magazine for a webinar where she shared:

• How to create inclusive, high-performing teams.??
• Ways to supercharge problem-solving with diverse thinking.??
• Strategies to improve team dynamics for the future of work.??

Watch the webinar on-demand.

About This Newsletter

Are you bringing your Whole Brain? to work?

We created this newsletter to help employees at all levels decode and harness their cognitive diversity through the Whole Brain? Thinking Model. Each issue highlights actionable tips for better understanding your thinking preferences — and other people’s preferences — so you can unlock better thinking, performance, and results in your flow of work.

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