Prioritizing your Energy

Your B.Y.E. will constantly change, and that is okay

It has been a little while, I did not go anywhere, and I am not here to say ‘apologies for my late response’ as you would in the corporate world.

How many people do you know that are great at ‘multi-tasking’ but not good at ‘multi-completing’. I know many instances, where many projects or tasks, both big and small, get started and are left open aired. None of those boxes get ticked.

The reason for my little absence is because of prioritizing, but not prioritizing the blog or work but family and friends. Over the past few months I have had to balance best friends weddings, family visits, career moves, business visits. Both personal and professional, and I had to decide how best to Budget my Energy.

I could put a measly 5% or 10% into everything going on in my world and be average across the board, or…

Or I could set up my weeks to prioritize a few big rocks in the week and then sprinkle that with small wins of sand. Watch a 2 min video of this concept here

Keep in mind that with expat life, opportunities do not linger, doors do not stay unlocked, it is very necessary to train yourself to be fully present and in the moment. This idea is thrown around loosely, but what does that mean?

Dedicating your time to something, simply means, removing other distractions that are not applicable to the moment at hand. If you are at lunch, then check Instagram stories later. If you are at a business meeting about marketing of a new specific event for the following Thursday, then do not ‘act busy’ checking emails about a Christmas Dinner that is four months out. You might be doing many tasks at once, but none of them actually receive your attention. When your family visits, understand that they are there for a finite time, and then they will be gone, until the next time you cross paths. That is in the hope that absolutely nothing happens in between and the opportunity to meet again arrises. So why is it, that every notification on a work WhatsApp group needs to be responded to during a family holiday or outing? Why do we install our email on our phone to reply with record timing and showing our opinion on the matter, and have the record of how long it took you to send this ‘ground breaking email opinion’ etched into the thread that will disappear and become irrelevant when the situation is solved?

I am not telling you not to be on top of things in your professional life, the opposite actually. Get on top of things in your professional life by ‘zooming out’ . Look at your week or month, prioritize a few ‘big rocks’ and dedicate a time slot of 15 or 30 minutes, even an hour, to be 100% focused on that topic at hand. Schedule a walk after it, where you can scroll and get your social media dose applicable to the addiction, but do not try do them both at the same time.

If you finish the task before the dedicated time that you have allocated, then use that time for personal tasks, side hustles, walks, doing nothing or scrolling. You have earned it.

If you are so important in the chain of command and decision making that you have to be answering emails or texts during family time, then be proactive and set up a time that suits all parties. Budget 1 hour of emails and ‘access to work’ every day, but keep it at a consistent time and inform both professional and personal parties involved that this time slot is dedicated and prioritized. What you will find then is any party that has a mutual respect for your time and energy will fit into this time slot, and those that do not have respect for your energy will be easy, very easy actually, to notice.

If there is communication outside of that time slot, then you answer with, ‘Good day, I am with family, is it an emergency?’ If it is, then deal with it and everyone should understand. The lesson here is that if you do not respect your own energy enough to set boundaries then do not go around whining that other people do not respect it either.

The ease of access to communication has made us lazy when it comes to prioritizing and being present, and I am not preaching about this, I understand that I am flawed in the words I write and am constantly working on it too. I also know that it is easy to read this and say, ‘It is not that simple’. I know. Go back and read the first post, What is B.Y.E. , I never said any of this is ‘simple’ but if you want the desired outcome of being efficient without draining your energy then “make a plan” as we say in South Africa. Such a loosely used term that ironically leads to no such action of planning. Really though, take 1 hour in your week to prioritize 4 ‘big rocks’ to achieve, and set specific times to leave your notifications and be fully present. If you have family in town, dedicate blocks of time to them as well as smaller blocks of time to focus, and free up your energy, for family time later on.

I have a few dear brotherly friends of mine, that say that they are bad with social media or communication or WhatsApp. My quick fix to this is I dedicate half hour slots into my week that allow me to be ‘glued to my screen’ and a part of the matrix, but it is a specific time that I use for non- specific tasks which surround personal communication and media platforms. I am pretty sure that 30mins every two days for a week will get all your ‘media obligations’ out of the way and possibly give you a sense of ease or relief that it is not a procrastinated task that you need to get to sometime. Take the blue pill, jump into the matrix, and then set an alarm to take your red pill after 30 mins and get back to reality.

In conclusion I will say that all your tasks are important, family should not be neglected and your profession should allow for you to afford better things with family and fun, however when you ‘‘zoom out’ you have the ability to look at the timeline associated with these different and important tasks, and with that view, I suggest to spend an hour to prioritize and dedicate time in your week, not day, where you can effectively manage the task at hand, tick the box, and feel a sense of accomplishment.

P.S. A sense of accomplishment trumps a sense of importance, any day of the week

Have a stellar day ahead