Time Management Rethought
4 Strategies to Manage Your Time Without Looking at Your Calendar
Feeling exhausted, depleted and fatigued at the end of a workday is sadly a common experience of people working in tech. Working a job that requires you to sit at your desk, staring into your laptop for long hours at a time contributes to rising levels of Zoom fatigue and burnout. The burnout rate of people in tech has significantly increased during the pandemic, with more than 64% reporting being burned out.
Effective time management is the key to combat exhaustion and burnout - but not in a way you would expect!
Why your calendar won’t help you with time management
Looks familiar?
You won’t find the answer to better time management in your calendar. In fact, looking at your calendar will most likely give you more anxiety and stress than you need. It’s not about optimising your calendar and productivity in order to fit even more meetings in. In order to better manage your time, you have to start with your energy.
Understanding your energy management
Like time, you have a certain amount of energy during the day. And, like you manage your time, you can manage your energy.
First, we need to look at energy sources. Energy is closely related to how you treat your body, your mind, your emotions and your spiritual - or meaning - needs.
Physical Energy: You create physical energy when you treat your body well. This includes nutrition, movement and exercise, but also sleep and rest.
Emotional Energy: Enhance your emotional energy through cultivating a greater awareness for you emotional states and needs. Being frustrated, irritated, angry or feeling inadequate can point to a lack of emotional energy.
Mental Energy: Boost your mental energy by being intentional with your focus, eliminating or limiting distractions around you. If you struggle with concentration or find it difficult to make decisions, your brain needs a break.
Spiritual Energy / Meaning Energy: Create spiritual energy through activities that are aligned to your strengths and values, pursuing a meaningful goal towards a positive future.
How your busy workday undermines your energy
If your calendar looks like the above and you feel depleted at the end of the day, review your habits. Do they look like any of these?
Energy Management
Which of these apply to you the most?
The more you identify with these, the more you will lack energy in one or more of these domains. The paradox is, that the less energy you have, the more you feel that you don’t have enough time in the day. If you don’t prioritise your energy, you will always chase time.
How to use your energy to master your time management
Use these 4 strategies to better energy & time management:
Review your energy: where do you lack energy the most right now? What quadrant is in need of a refill?
Analyse your behaviours: what are you currently doing or not doing that contributes to you running on empty?
Set a goal: which behaviour do you want to change first? What would be better if you achieved that change?
Make a plan: what steps do you need to take to support that change?
Set yourself up for success!
Breaking habits is often challenging. You will be successful on some days. On others you will struggle. Download your free copy of the goal planning coachbook to increase your chances of success ⬇️
