Time ≠ Energy
Manage what's most precious
Many people in today's world still think about their work ethic in terms of time spent, using the same frame of mind as industrialists and every worker from the 19-20th century, where productivity was not measured with the quality of the work though with the hours spent on It. This has changed greatly with times and now more and more individuals came to the right conclussion that what they should be focusing on in order to get the best results is not the time they take to do something, though the correct use of their mental and physical resources effectively to achieve the most effective outcome for a particular project or situation. That's why in this article I'll present you with the importance of taking energy as a more important factor to take into account when trying to be productive than time and many tips that might help you manage your reserves better. Let's begin:
Why It is more important?
Time is something fixed, which you can't change or control. When a particular minute passes, It is lost forever and another one comes to take Its place. Even trying to separate your time into separate slots will prove useless, as a lot of of unexpected events will happen that can take a great amount of your day. On the opposite, as something that you feel and that is deep inside of you, energy is something you can control by being more mindful of your rest, the activities you spend your time in and by assessing the way you react to specific scenarios. In this way, energy is something that you can regulate having a careful approach to things, leaving you more margin to operate while recognizing your limitations.
Now that we know why energy is something way more important than time for us when trying to tack a subject, we can begin to talk about some useful strategies to use when trying to break the bad habits we might have with regards to scheduling our time and become more effective managing our routines.
Find the time of the day when you are most productive
This range can vary from person to person, as some people feel the most refreshed early in the morning, while others can have bursts of energy deep into the night. Your task in order to work with more focus and increase the quality of your work is to use those "peak performance" hours to put in practice those things that you consider the most important to the success of your project. An example of this might be using the first hours of the morning to work in your business or making your thesis.
Taking high amounts of energy and being important are not necessarily the same thing
In the course of the day our energy gets depleted by a great amount of things, and most of these are not even really important to our development. For some It might be in the form of answering too much pointless emails and for others It might be making phonecalls. So, to get your resources to where It matters you have to be savvy with regards to how you spend your day, separating those meaningful activities that might use a great deal of brainpower from those that are equally as tiresome though not as unexpendable for the completion of our goals.
Be flexible with your routine
You might craft the perfect routine and write It as a To Do list. However, one thing you surely don't know is what might happen tomorrow or the day after, so It can be easy for you to get frustrated in case of the unexpectable happening, derailing all you have planned for the day and leaving you in a cycle of unhappiness for not being able to do any of the things that you planned. So arranging your routine in a looser way leaving you room to bounce back from something that came out of the blue might be the best use of your energy for what matters.
I hope that with the pieces of information presented in this article you can be more mindful of how you spend your energy, recognizing It as a resource as valuable as time, taking the tips presented as advice for the way you approach work and plannifying. Thank you for your support and good luck!