Note: This article is an excerpt from the “Stocking Your Leadership Super-Powers” book. Enter your info in the sidebar and I’ll send you the e-book free of charge.
You can have all of the ambition in the world, but if you don’t learn how to harness it, you’re hosed.
Energy management allows you to set the pace at which you accomplish things. Energy management shows people that you expend appropriate amounts of energy on appropriate tasks. Energy management allows you to prove to yourself you can accomplish your goals.
Energy management is prioritizing the most important tasks, and focusing the most energy into those tasks. Subsequently, you reserve smaller amounts of energy for less important tasks.
Energy management is different from time management because you have to manage your energy based on priority as opposed to based on the time you have allotted for something.
For example, you might allot 5 hours of your time to looking over your personal budget. Chances are you’ll stretch your energy to fit that allotted amount of time. But if you say, “I’ve got to get this personal budget stuff done accurately in less than 2 hours so that I have time left over to eat, do the dishes, walk the dog, and get a shower,” then you’re concentrating the bulk of your energy into a smaller time frame to ensure that you have time to spend smaller amounts of energy to get other tasks done.
This also works the opposite way.
You don’t want to pack in and concentrate your energy on things that aren’t as important.
Say you need to get a project done for school and you’ve got 4 hours to do it. You don’t want to spend all of your energy worrying about where you’re going to eat for dinner, what you’re planning on wearing the next day. You’ve got to harness that energy and use as much of your willpower as possible to complete that project in less than 4 hours. It’s not budgeting out your time. It’s increasing the energy you use in that amount of time.
Leaders of energy management focus on their main priorities with high amounts of focused energy. Leaders are able to get the most out of the time they use.
In return, people begin to associate the leader with high energy, and they can trust the leader to be energized.
For instance, I used to know two girls who wrote their final papers in British Literature. One girl wrote her paper over 2 weeks in short, 1 to 2 hour bursts every other day. She wrote an “A” paper. She never felt stressed about the assignment, and the night before it was due she went out to a movie and a dinner with some friends. She prioritized her energy so she didn’t have to get “stressed” out.
Another girl didn’t start writing her paper until the day before in one 4 hour burst. She ended up rushing through it and got a “C” on it. She wanted to go out with friends, but couldn’t. She didn’t prioritize her energy and ended up getting stuck and stressed.
Super Energy Management Building Activity:
As a leader, you want to avoid negative urgency at all cost. When you’re afraid of a deadline, you lock up and freeze. When you get pushed to do something at the last minute, the leadership principles get thrown out the window and you throw something at the wall and hope it sticks.
Many times it doesn’t, even though you might feel you’ve accomplished something great.
As a leader, you want to use positive energy management. You want the sense of urgency to get something done because it’s important, as opposed to it’s threatening you.
A great way to plan out the use of your energy is to first determine those things that are most important to you. Look back at your purpose, vision, ambition, and determine what the most important things are in your life, relationships, career, finances, education, health, and spirituality.
Some people ask “How do I know what my greatest priority is?” and the answer to that question is tricky because it depends on the individual’s purpose, vision, and ambitions.
Ask yourself the following questions of all your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly actions to figure out what your priorities are:
- How clear is my vision of the future? How critical is the task to my vision?
- What will the impact of completing the task be? How will the task help me achieve my vision? What’s the return on investment?
- What will happen if I procrastinate and not complete the task?
Some things may seem urgent to you, when in fact they aren’t and your time would be best spent elsewhere. And vice-versa.
Use your powers of foresight to keep a journal that has plans for your day, week, month, and year. Set aside blocks of time to accomplish your most important tasks for the day, week, month, and year.
