Nadya Eka Lestari
TechInAfrica — An article in Harvard Business Review written by Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy’s titled “Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time,” shares four guides on how to manage your life better. The strategy focuses on how to develop more energy through energy management instead of gripping endless time management as we all know.
Physical Energy
No drinking during the weekday. Getting to bed earlier might sounds like a bit of more accurate advice, but cutting drinking during the week needs to happen first.
If you don’t have a glass of wine in you, it will be easier to say to yourself “don’t watch that episode of West World, and get to bed.” If you do have a few glasses of wine, your inhibitions are down, and your judgment is off.
You’ll be more likely to think “I deserve another episode of Westworld.” While this is a normal thought to have (especially considering how hard you work), it won’t help you tomorrow. We need your nighttime personae to help out your morning personae. So save the wine for the weekend and get more done this week.
Emotional Energy
Meditate. Start with an awareness of your breath. When you breathe in, make sure your belly expands. Not the other way around.
If you have trouble clearing your mind, make sure you at least have a mantra.
Sometimes clearing your mind can mean simply controlling what you’re thinking about. Simple mantras can help too. Some like to think of one word. If you can push your brain to “say” that word, you’re effectively quelling the chatter, this might creep up and create anxiety and depression.
Mental Energy
Reduce interruptions during your day by only checking emails at designated times. But make sure your team knows those designated times. If everyone knows that they won’t hear from you until 6 pm, you’ve created a buffer for deep work.
The more long stretches of deep work, the more you’ll be able to get into the flow and create higher quality work.
Spiritual Energy
Protecting your spiritual life starts with self-awareness. Knowing things that you’re good at would help. You call it your ‘superpower’.
If there are edges of work that you’re not good at, delegate, or as for help or reassignment. The more superpower work you can get to, the more spiritually aligned you can be at work. And, yes, it is possible to be spiritually aligned at work. It’s called “doing what you love.”
How to put it all together?
- Allow team members to have downtime for meditation or quiet contemplation.
- Get to the gym to renew your body. If you can’t get to a gym, get outside for a walk. Renewing your body renews your mind and fuels your spirit.
- Recommend a company-wide policy to reduce the amount of time you spend checking emails.
Source: inc.com
