Energy Management tips

Sleep Better

Make getting 7-8 hours of sleep your highest priority. After breathing, sleep is our most fundamental need. It’s also the first thing we’re willing to give up in an effort to get more done. The fact is that even small amounts of sleep deprivation make us vastly less efficient.

Walk the Talk

Take 30-60 minutes to reflect on the qualities you can't stand when you see them in others or in yourself. The opposite of these qualities is a reflection of what you stand for. Choose the one that you believe you embody least well. What specific activity could you build into your life to close this gap? When our behaviors are aligned with our deeply held values, we feel better about ourselves and more connected with others.

Take All of Your Vacation Days

Frequent vacationers are healthier and happier than infrequent vacationers. Try to make your vacations work-free. Leave your laptop at home. Don’t check your BlackBerry. If you need to do work, designate an hour or two in the morning to devote to it, and spend the rest of the day relaxing and renewing.

Plan Your Meals

Decide in advance what you’re going to eat, in what portions, and at what intervals. It’s the best way to avoid endless temptations, unconscious cues, and “that-looks-good!” surprises that override our self-discipline and cause us to go off track.

Focus on the Positive

Concentrating on a positive outcome rather than avoiding a negative one leads to greater persistence, flexibility, creativity, motivation, and satisfaction. In short, expecting success makes us more likely to succeed.

Do One Thing at a Time

Research shows that when we multitask, we retain less and have more difficulty applying what we learn. It also increases the time it takes for us to finish any given task by 25%.

Feel Your Feet, Hold Your Fire

Become aware of what you’re feeling physically when your emotions turn negative. That may mean noticing your heart beating faster, tightness in your chest, or butterflies in your stomach. When you sense you’re getting frustrated, annoyed, or anxious, apply “The Golden Rule of Triggers”: whatever you feel compelled to do, don't. Instead, take a deep breath – in to a count of 3, out to a count of 6. Feel your feet to ground yourself. This will decrease your physiological arousal and return you to a relaxed state. Then you can make a choice about how to respond.

Control Your Anger

Pay close attention to how long you stay angry because that feeling is poisonous to the body. The physiological feeling of anger moves through you in under a minute. After that, it’s your choice whether to stay upset.

Surround Yourself with Creativity

Begin any creative project by immersing yourself in the known. The best ideas tend to emerge by extending, deepening, rethinking, and reframing existing knowledge.

Do the Right Thing

The next time you find yourself in a difficult or challenging situation, ask yourself: “What is the right thing to do here?” Under pressure, we sometimes take the expedient route and then rationalize the choices we've made, but most of us instinctively know the difference between right and wrong if we stop to think about it.

Slide Towards Sleep

Begin powering down at least 30 minutes before you go to sleep. Avoid anything stimulating, such as the Internet, mystery novels, and intense conversations. Instead, look for ways to relax and quiet down.

Stay Active and Moving

Make sure that you get up and move around periodically throughout the day. Too much inactivity can cause weight gain and other health problems, as well as decreased focus.

Show More Appreciation

We’re far quicker to notice what’s wrong than to celebrate what’s right in others. It takes five positive comments to offset the impact of a single negative one. Write a note of appreciation once a week to someone in your life and send it by snail mail. Small gestures go a long way. Studies show that even a small gift of candy to medical residents improved the speed and accuracy of their diagnoses.

Make Boundaries Between Home and Work

Define clear stopping points at the end of each day so that when you're with your family or friends, you're truly with them. If you need to work when you're home, set aside designated times to do it.

Practice Random Acts of Kindness

Find small ways to make the people around you feel better. Nothing is more important to us than feeling valued and appreciated by others.

Exercise Regularly

Set specific days and times to do at least three 30-minute cardio sessions and two 30-45 minute strength-training sessions. How much we move influences our health, our energy, our mood, our focus, and our productivity.

The Benefits of Meditation

Try to incorporate meditation into your life, starting with just a couple of minutes at a time. At the most basic level, meditation is simply a means of relaxation and an antidote to stress.

Use a Pedometer to Track Your Steps

If you’re struggling to find the time or motivation to start an exercise routine, buy a pedometer and record the number of steps you take every day. Shoot for 10,000—the recommended amount to ensure you are fit and getting enough movement in your day.

Rev It Up Mid-Week

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, your energy is at its peak. Tackle the most challenging work. That means addressing the most difficult problems, taking on writing assignments, and having strategic discussions.

Reflect on How You Make People Feel

After a conversation, ask yourself whether the person you were talking to walked away feeling better or worse. If it’s the latter, what could you have done differently?

Change Channels on Friday

By the end of the week, your energy levels are usually ebbing. This can be a good day for more open-ended work such as brainstorming, long-range planning, and relationship building.

Park Your Worries

If you struggle to fall asleep because you’re ruminating, put a pad of paper and a pen beside your bed. Whatever you’re worrying about before you go to sleep, write it down. Do the same if you tend to wake up in the middle of the night. This is a powerful way to calm your mind and get a better night’s sleep.

Do the Most Important Thing First

Most of us have the highest energy and the fewest distractions at the beginning of the day. Decide the night before on the most important task for the following day. Try to do it first thing, for 60-90 minutes without interruption.

Do Interval Training

At least once a week, do an interval workout. Buy a heart rate monitor to better gauge your efforts and push past your comfort zone for an interval of 30 to 60 seconds. Then take 30 to 60 seconds to allow your heart to drop 30-40 heartbeats per minute. Interval training burns more calories than continuous training, more effectively lowers the resting heart rate, and increases immune response.

Give Others Your Undivided Attention

In meetings at work or conversations at home, give people your full focus. Try to listen without interrupting. Make sure that if you were asked to, you could repeat back what you just heard.

Reflect on Your Missteps

At the end of the workday or before you go to sleep, take a few minutes to ponder this question: “Was there a situation in which I behaved badly today?” Next, ask yourself, “How would I have behaved at my best?”

Take More Breaks During the day

Taking a break every 90 minutes throughout your day keeps your body in alignment with its natural rhythms. Just as we cycle through stages of sleep at night, so we go through similar cycles every 90 minutes throughout the day, moving between periods of high energy, and then dipping down into lower energy.

Make Boundaries Between Home and Work

Define clear stopping points at the end of each day so that when you're with your family or friends, you're truly with them. If you need to work when you're home, set aside designated times to do it.

Create a Transition Ritual

Find an activity that allows you to make a transition from work to home. Take a few minutes to stop at a park, listen to music, or make a call on your way home to connect with someone you love. The key is that by the time you get home, you're not still at work.

Daydream on Purpose

Schedule at least one hour a week to brainstorm or strategize around some issue at work. You can help access your right hemisphere by doodling, daydreaming, or going for a long walk—anything that lets your mind wander. That's when breakthroughs and spontaneous connections are most likely to occur.

The Benefits of Time Management

Set specific times during the day to perform certain tasks (e.g., I will work from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. on the most important task of the day). This will help ensure that you address the most important tasks rather than simply reacting to external demands.

Practice Realistic Optimism

We can’t change what happens to us, but we can make a choice about how to respond. Challenge the story you’re telling yourself when something happens that makes you feel bad. Is there a more hopeful and empowering story you can tell without denying the facts?

Take a Power Nap

Especially in periods of high demand, try to find time for a 10 or 20-minute catnap in the middle of the day on weekdays. Taking a short nap between 1 and 3 p.m., especially on days when you’ve worked intensely in the morning, will have a remarkable impact on your ability to focus later in the afternoon. Alternatively, simply lean back in your chair with your eyes closed for 5 to 10 minutes.

Take Back Your Lunch

While periodic breaks at work are critical, it is also extremely beneficial to take an extended break in the middle of the day to eat lunch. By getting away from your desk, and preferably out of your office altogether, you will come back to your desk more focused and fueled to face the rest of the day.

Put Yourself in Someone Else's Shoes

When you’re feeling righteous, try applying the “Reverse Lens”. Put yourself in the shoes of the other person and try to imagine what he or she is feeling. Empathy allows you to value others which reconnects you to them and makes you feel better.

Keep an Emotional Journal

Start a journal to build your awareness about how you are feeling at different points during the day. Choose one or two specific times to check in with yourself. Observing our emotions allows us to be more intentional about our behaviors and more effective with others.

Practice Deconstructive Criticism

When you feel the need to criticize “constructively”, don’t assume that you’re right. Be curious and open-ended rather than making declarations and coming to conclusions.

Turn Off Email Once a Day

Try shutting off your email completely for at least one hour a day. Use that hour to devote all your attention to a significant task or larger challenge before you. Resist interruptions.

Accentuate the Positive

Make a list of activities that you enjoy most and which make you feel best. Intentionally schedule at least one of these activities into your life each week. For example, attend a concert, go bike riding with family members, or take a class. We all bring more energy to the activities we enjoy, and pleasure itself can sustain our energy.

Start Slow on Monday

If possible, as you gear up for the week, focus on low-demand administrative tasks, including setting goals, organizing, and planning.

Eat Slowly

Take more time to eat your meals. It helps to put your  fork down or take a sip of water between bites. Your body doesn’t recognize that it’s full for 20 minutes.

Chase Your Passion

Think of the aspects of your job that you find most challenging, enjoyable, and meaningful. What specific steps could you take to spend more time engaged in these activities?

Track How Much You Eat

If you find you’re eating too much or you are skipping meals too often, log your eating habits for a week. Tracking what, how much, and when you eat is the first step to changing your eating habits.

Practice Mindfulness

Once in the morning and once in the afternoon, stop and take a few moments to focus on your breathing. Simply be aware of what's arising and then let it pass. You may notice physical sensations, emotions, or thoughts. Learning to observe yourself helps to free you from the compulsion to act on every feeling that arises.