Why I Stopped Worrying About Time Management
Shifting to Energy Management
My alarm clock sounded at around 4:45AM. Without thought, as I was lifting myself out of bed I said to myself, “Uuuggh, this isn’t working.” I had been trying to be a 5AM writer girlie for weeks and my body still wasn’t acclimating itself. Long story short, I ain’t a 5AM writer girlie– not now at least. Who knows what the future holds. Anywho, I’m heavily in a flow state at this time of my life. It’s worked better for me to sharpen the tool of effective energy management over time management. This IS NOT to say, I don’t manage my time. Time management is essential. This IS to say that I manage my time around my energy. Energy takes precedence when I’m allocating time for business and/or leisure. This transposition inspired me to prioritize meeting myself where I am, while continually dismantling the destructive thought patterns that arise from not being where I think I'm "supposed to be" in comparison to societal benchmarks surrounding time/age and identity.
After many failed attempts of trying to move at a pace that just didn’t align, I had to start thinking differently about how I needed to move forward. Navigating a disability puts me on a completely different frequency of energy and time, which is what I had to accept. To give you perspective, basically the energy it takes for me to rise from bed and get dressed is equivalent to the energy it takes to go for a morning run around the neighborhood. All that to say, my energy reserves drain rather quickly on tasks that the average person is hardly affected by. Thus, slow and steady is the pace I needed to adopt in order to be well while aspiring towards my goals.
Though my given circumstance is rather unique it doesn’t take away from the beneficial universality of effective energy management. Burnout stats have consistently risen since the pandemic and according to SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) :
Burnout in the workplace is not new—but it is worsening. SHRM’s Employee Mental Health in 2024 Research Series, released for Mental Health Awareness Month in May, found that 44 percent of 1,405 surveyed U.S. employees feel burned out at work, 45 percent feel “emotionally drained” from their work, and 51 percent feel “used up” at the end of the workday.
So no, you may not be affected by chronic illness or disability buuut you may be burning the wick at both ends for your hustle. The hustle has always been about time, but what if you turned that hourglass on its side and took a different approach? What if productivity looked less like the hustle/grind and more like feeling safe in your body and sound in your mind? So much so that you trust yourself to establish a workload that does not exceed your capacity to show up for yourself in other areas of your life? Yes, you are capable of amazing things but only as much as you nurture the vehicle carrying you forward.
Time Focused vs Energy Focused
Time Focused
Being time focused incited a “what next” mentality within me. I was constantly jumping to the next thing in my mind before I was physically done with what was right in front of me. My mind was always in a rush. When we are constantly driven by the ticking of a clock, a sense of urgency is established. In many cases this ticking clock drones in the back of our minds telling us to hurry up with everything.It’s not just limited to our work projects, it spills over into our daily activities even when we think we’ve checked out. When we’re in line at the grocery store, hurry up. When we’re in traffic, hurry up. When we’re cooking dinner, hurry up. When we’re getting dressed, hurry up. Stop and smell the roses much?! Ain’t nobody got time for dat!
This state of urgency can form low grade anxiety that negatively impacts our nervous system and ability to truly be present within our daily lives. When we narrow our focus solely on beating the clock, we run the risk of existing in a robotic performative state. The concept of time is better used when we become the masters of it, not slaves to it. When I started questioning my perception of time, I began to ask myself –how might things shift for me if I got more in alignment with my personal clock? What shifts might I see by checking into my circadian rhythm?
Energy Focused
Shifting my focus to energy rather than time required a level of body awareness that escaped me several years ago. I was out of touch and this approach made me realize it. I had been ignoring many of my body’s cues in favor of productivity.The unconscious practice of numbing took me further and further away from my internal sense of knowing. My intuition grew dim. Becoming energy focused caused me to wake up to the subtle alarms ringing inside of me that I’d kept placing on snooze. In reorienting myself to energy focus, I became slowly but surely better able to place triggers, like headaches, irritability, and decreased motivation. I further recognized sources that contributed to influxes of energy. I could pinpoint my peak times of productivity throughout the day, week, and month especially around my cycle. It definitely tied into my cycle, which I explore more in my Womb Centeredness and Mental Health post. Being energy focused put me into a mentality that encouraged more self check-ins which continue to mend my mind/body relationship dynamic.
Implementing Effective Energy Management
Effective energy management is not about doing whatever you feel whenever you feel like it, it’s about addressing how you feel and taking a progressive step forward. Sometimes that progressive step could even look like stepping away for a bit. Implementing effective energy management is a practice of leveraging your personal rhythm. Emphasis on personal because high energy time, level of focus, hunger frequency, and bedtime cues vary person to person, lifestyle to lifestyle. Each of these areas of focus operate like gauges on a meter informing you how to proceed. For instance, if you're high energy and scatterbrained in the morning but mentally clear at night, it would serve you to add daily planning into your nightly routine.This way your early rise is spent actively in motion rather than in a contemplative stillness. For some, the opposite may be true. If you’re not aware of your personal rhythm, open a note or journal and track these areas of focus for 30 days. I’m sure there’s a fancy app available somewhere, but I'ma pen to paper kinda girl.
Once you've figured your personal rhythm, you can now look at time like a puzzle piece rather than the entire puzzle. The idea is to bend time towards you. It's important to be mindful that when you're working amongst other people's energy field, their concept of time will be personalized to them therefore respect and compromise is a must for harmonious connections. It is also necessary to know that your personal rhythm is not static and can change circumstantially or at will. Making time a puzzle piece versus the whole puzzle gives you the flexibility to prioritize your tasks in buckets according to personal rhythm.
When I started thinking deeply on energy management vs time management, it brought into clear view my goals and my ideals of success. I began to question how they came to be what they are, which took me deeper into investigating the ways I was conditioned to perform and show up in society— a rabbit hole I happily went down, but for the sake of this post…I'll save that conversation for another day.