☄️ Managing our natural energy cycles

How to make the most out of the ebb and flow of life

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All living beings experience energy flux — the coming and going of energy within us. The things we do can either increase or diminish our energy levels. For instance, rest and nourishment enhance our energy levels, while work and play diminish them.

Research

I’ve been researching this topic for a while now, and I have four main takeaways from all I’ve read:

1. What matters is energy management, not time management
2. One secret to happiness lies in how attune we are with our energy cycles
3. Rest is the counterpart of work (one can’t exist without the other), and it is unnatural to be in a high positive state all the time
4. Hacking your energy cycles is tempting but leads to highly unproductive results in the long term

Let’s dive a bit deeper into each one of those, one by one.

Time is not what needs to be managed, energy is.

We assume that every hour is created equal, but this is far from reality. You may be on peak performance at 9am, but highly unproductive at 1pm; you may have an incredibly productive Monday, but a Wednesday full of distractions. What we don’t realize is that our ups and downs, our highs and lows, eventually cancel each other out, and we end up producing a steady-state output. You shouldn’t be hard on yourself because you’ve had a bad day, you should have trust that tomorrow will be a good day. As an analogy, think of investments — a stock may go down, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll give up on it. Patience is key as you navigate the ebb and flow of life.

Learning to listen to our bodies

Our bodies have natural rhythms throughout the day, the week, the month and the year. Learning how to be attune to these, and being compassionate when we find ourselves in a down period, can contribute to sustainable positive emotions and higher levels of productivity. As said in Psychology Today: “If one manages to find ways of replenishing and expending energy as and when one needs to, one can oscillate between states of joy/excitement and calmness/peace without ever venturing into the negative territory.”

You need to be inquisitive about what your body is telling you. Why am I unable to concentrate right now? Why have I been unproductive today? What is my body telling me I need? When do I feel most energetic? What times of the day work best to do certain kinds of work? What do I do to manage my energy during the day? These are just some example questions that can help you become more attune to your body’s needs.

Rest and recovery

When in a down period, don’t think you can just ‘power through it.’ Rest and recovery are essential and not optional. Rest doesn’t necessarily mean sleep. In fact, I almost never take naps during the day because I have found it makes me more tired afterwards. Some examples of ways in which you can rest and recover are: going for a walk, meditating and reading.

Energy cycle hacks

There are none. Hacking your energy cycles by, for example, not sleeping and drinking lots of coffee, can be tempting but highly unproductive. Your body will eventually catch up to you. It always all seems fine, until it’s not and your body crashes. The amount of time you’ll spend recovering will cancel out the time you spent pulling all nighters.

The System

Time to show you a process I use to listen to my body’s needs and manage my energy cycles better.

Setup

You can take a look below at the most recent Energy Log I filled out. This is how I reflect on my natural energy cycles to understand myself a bit better. I try to do this once or twice a year, but sometimes I feel like I’m not attune with my cycles anymore and I find it helpful to do it at a more rigorous cadence.

Again, I’m an Asana fan (and employee 🤪) so I have all my processes set up there, but there are a ton of apps where you could do this, or you could go the old-school pen and paper way. Anything is fair game!

You’ll notice first that I have several sections with questions. The screenshot is not long enough to show all of them, but here’s a complete list:

1. When do I feel the most energetic?
2. When do I find myself having the most moments of clarity?
3. When am I most motivated?
4. When do I feel least energetic?
5. When do I find myself having the least moments of clarity?
6. When am I least motivated?

You probably also already noticed the two additional columns I included:

• Impact: with two options (⬆️ Positive, ⬇️ Negative)
• Type: with five options (💼 Work, 🎨 Play, 🥗 Nourish, 💤 Rest, 📅 Time-related)

Feel free to make these your own! But the important part is that you’re keeping track of whether an activity has had a positive or negative impact on you, and what part of your life it is affecting.

It’s a very simple set up, nothing fancy.

Process

• As I mentioned earlier, I do this once or twice a year, sometimes I do it more times than that based on how attune I feel with my energy cycles.
• I usually take a week or two to observe myself, and I drop things into this project without categorizing them (I add an “Inbox” section temporarily). Whenever I feel like I have low or high energy, motivation or clarity, I make a quick note.
• To make it even more low lift and avoid introducing any friction to your day, use an app like Email Me or Captio to help you capture these ideas on the go from your phone (and even from your watch). I find that the more high lift something is, the less likely it is that one will do it.
• After 1–2 weeks, I take 30–60 minutes to review the inbox, add each to the sections/questions they pertain to, and fill out the type/impact fields.
• Then, I sort by Type (and toggle off ‘Sort within sections’) in Asana and voilà!

• I get a detailed analysis of what increases or decreases my energy, clarity and motivation for each part of my life.
• I then review this list, and make an actionable plan.

My Energy Profile, as of 7/25/2021

💼 Work

• Find as many “blocks” of time as you can for deep-focus
• Plan what I’m doing tomorrow the night before (see 📓 Staying on top of what you do at work)
• Work in 90 minute intervals, with 20 minutes of breaks in between
• Avoid scheduling meetings all day, and don’t schedule more than 90 minutes of meetings straight

🎨 Play

• Talk to my parents and grandparents at least once a day
• When I feel stuck: go for a walk or paint
• When I need motivation: go to the gym or journal

🥗 Nourishment

• Eat oatmeal for breakfast, avoid simple carbs
• For snacks, eat either fruit or nuts, avoid processed foods
• Make sure to not under- or over-eat
• Avoid coffee and sugar

💤 Rest

• Take long showers to relax and unwind
• Sleep between 8–9 hours no more or less than that
• Don’t take naps after 3pm

📅 Time-related

• Schedule “blocks” of focus time in mid-mornings and 1–2 hours after lunch
• Avoid doing deep work after lunch (schedule a bunch of meetings then)

What is yours?

This is such a worthwhile exercise. Even if you do it just once, it will pay dividends, I can assure that. Test it out and let me know what you think.