An important element of my approach to planning is that, instead of focusing on all the things you may need to fit into your plans, I focus on the concept of managing your time and energy. Noticing the changes in your energy can be key to figuring out your priorities.
Think of the energy as a wave with peaks and troughs. For some people that waveform is shallow. For others it’s almost spiky. Ideally, you would recharge *before* a crunch. Whether you can do that or not, you will need to recharge *after* a crunch.
It’s also important to talk about ways to manage energy on a smaller time scale. The energy needs and energy effects of your activities vary, even when they take roughly the same amount of time. You can organize your work over a day, or a week, to break up energy-draining activities with energizing activities.
This may be a new perspective for you. Most people haven’t really thought about which activities are draining and which are energizing. This differs for everyone.
If this is you, the first step is to start noticing.
It may be frustrating that you can’t use this information to make your life better right away. Think of it in research terms: you are observing and making notes.
Making the effort to notice, even if you don’t change anything, will pay off.
When you have collected enough data, you can start to make hypotheses and design experiments to test them.
A well known example of energy variation.
One example of what I mean by energy draining and energizing, is introversion and extroversion. Although these terms get used for a lot of things, one of the primary definitions is about energy management. Introversion and extroversion are on a continuum. As with most things, only a small proportion of the population are at the ends, but describing the poles helps you figure out where you might be.
I am a pretty extreme extrovert. Being around other people is like plugging myself in to recharge.
- When I was teaching, within the first few minutes of walking into a lecture theater with 100+ students in it, I would perk up, even if I was feeling low energy beforehand.
- I always hated working in libraries. Too quiet. Too few people.
- I even sometimes resist going to my sewing room to work on creative projects on the weekends because I’d rather be in the room with my partner, even if we are not interacting.
- Although online engagement is not the same, I am such an extrovert that I have noticed that online engagement helps. It’s like a low voltage recharger that takes longer but still recharges me.
If you are closer to the introvert pole, being in a place with lots of people drains your energy, even when you don’t need to interact with them.
- You might be a really good teacher, but you need to recharge before you walk into the classroom and are drained afterwards.
- You might discourage students from asking questions at the end of class because walking back to your office alone gives you some vital recharging time.
- Your commute, especially if you do not use public transport, might be an important recharging time in your day.
- If you are a parent, you may find the constant demands of children particularly draining and really crave time alone, even though you love your partner and children dearly.
This is *one* example but I hope it helps you understand what I mean by managing your energy.
You can organize your activities to limit the energy drain. Or, you can alternate between energy draining and energizing activities.
What to notice: feelings
This example suggests some things to notice about all of your activities.
You may have a noticeable *feeling* of being energized or being drained. You have likely been ignoring this feeling because it’s just how things are for you. If you can notice “I feel drained” or “That seems to have perked me up”, that’s a good place to start.
No judgement. Just observe.
Emotions have physical sensations. It’s a lot easier to notice and name a physical sensation than an emotion. There’s a lot of science about nerves and hormones and things that explains this but, for our purposes, just knowing that emotions and physical sensations go together is enough.
Stopping to do a quick body scan throughout your day and making some notes will give you useful data. If it’s hard to articulate you can try drawing/doodling something that expresses the sensation.
- Notice where there is tension.
- Notice where there is pain, tingling, or other sensation.
- Notice a “funny feeling” and where it is in your body.
- Notice your breath without trying to change it:
- Quick or slow?
- What part of your thorax is moving (shoulders, ribs, etc)?
- Nose or mouth?
- Are you sighing?
You can combine those 2 types of noticing.
- When you notice that you are feeling drained, what bodily sensations go with that?
- What bodily sensations do you associate with perking up or feeling energized?
What to notice: context
Once you’ve noticed that you are feeling drained or perked up, the next step is to figure out what elements contribute to that feeling.
Observe as many details of the situation as possible.
No judgement. No need to decide whether it’s correlation or causation yet. Just observe.
- What activity are you engaged in?
- Where are you working?
- What is going on around you?
- When was the last time you ate something?
- When was the last time you drank something?
- Have you been in one position for a long time? What position?
- Have you been moving? Lifting things?
- Have you been talking/singing/or similar?
- Have you been listening to someone else?
- Have you had to think/make decisions/grapple with problems?
The more specific you can be the better. For example, if the context is teaching, think about the specifics of that particular instance of teaching.
You might also compare similar situations. Continuing with the teaching example, paying attention to other instances of teaching, and noticing whether you feel equally drained/energized can help you spot the small differences that might be significant. Or help you notice things like planned vs unplanned interactions with students.
It’s okay to notice only some of the context. You’ll build up a more detailed understanding over time, and start to notice patterns, or things that might be relevant that you’ve been dismissing.
What to Notice: the stories you tell yourself.
The “without judgement” part is hard. Humans are natural storytellers. You may have been noticing physical sensations for years. You have probably “made sense” of them in some way. That’s what I mean by “stories”.
The stories you tell yourself are probably not untrue. However, they may not be the whole truth. There may be other ways to interpret this data.
It is important to notice the stories so you don’t dismiss important data.
If you notice a physical sensation, note it and what’s going on when you feel it, even if you think you know what’s causing it. Don’t tell a new story about how Past You is wrong. Notice so you can check whether there is anything you might have missed.
Sometimes the stories you tell yourself are actively unhelpful.
As Devon Price pointed out in this interview about their book Laziness Does Not Exist, the “laziness lie” encourages us to doubt the physical sensations in our bodies. We learn to dismiss feelings of fatigue. The “laziness lie” is a powerful cultural story, with deep cultural roots, so it’s not easy to counter. It is, however, important to notice it when it comes up.
There will be other stories. You are doing the same thing with the stories that you are doing with the sensations.
Noticing. No judgement. Just noticing and making notes. Collecting data.
Do not rush the process.
With practice, your observations will improve. Your observations will become more nuanced. You’ll develop a larger vocabulary to describe the sensations. As frustrating as it is, there are real benefits to taking time to notice.
Giving yourself time also allows you to do this badly.
Confession: I am a terrible record keeper.
It’s okay if your notes are incomplete. It’s okay if you are really good at noticing *and* taking notes for a while, and then you are not. Noticing without taking notes is useful.
It’s hard to do this when you are really overwhelmed, even if it would be really good to know what “really overwhelmed” feels like in detail.
You also want to give yourself time to notice patterns.
This very personal data will help you make better decisions about what strategies might work for you. It doesn’t matter if 80% of people find a particular strategy helpful if you are in the 20% that don’t.
You want to collect enough data about the sensations, what’s going on when you feel them, and the stories you are telling yourself, that you can figure out what the problem is that you are trying to solve *before* you start trying to fix things.
That said, you can form some preliminary hypotheses and test them as you go along.
Perhaps just by paying closer attention to particular situations to get better data on them. Perhaps by experimenting with changing something to see what effect that has.
The goal of an experiment is to learn something. If you try something and it doesn’t have the effect you’d hoped for, look for what you learned. That will help you figure out what to try in future.
Inside the Planning Classes of the Academic Writing Studio, we plan 3-month chunks of time. We choose quarters to ensure big transitions in your year are obvious. We look for crunch points that occur in that period. We also look for places where a gentler pace, or even recharging, might be possible. Then we experiment, together. Join us!
Related Posts:
Managing the energy you use to make decisions
Managing your energy (this is a more general exploration of energy across longer periods of time.)
This post was originally written using discussions and notes from the Planning Class in Spring 2021. It was edited and sent to the newsletter on October 15. Re-edited in August 2024. Added to the Spotlight On: Burnout in August 2024.
