RULE 12: Manage Your Energy

Have you heard of time management? Of course you have. Everyone has. I hope you’re good at it and doing everything you can to improve. There’s always room to manage our time better, and the more effectively you work, the more you will achieve and the more time you’ll have left over for yourself as well.

What gets less well promoted is the need to manage your energy. I don’t know why this is, since your energy is one of your most essential resources and it doesn’t look after itself. You need to bring plenty of energy to what you do at work, and it’s your job to make sure that energy is there when it’s needed.

In part this means looking after your physical energy. Make sure you stay fit and healthy, and don’t wear yourself out when you have work the next day. Just as we make the kids go to bed on time when it’s school tomorrow, so you should make sure you don’t stay up late, overeat, get drunk, wear yourself out, skip breakfast, or otherwise reduce your potential at work.

And don’t forget your mental energy. What time of day do you work best? On a full stomach or just a comfortable one with no hunger pains? What environment makes you most effective at work—quiet, busy, pressured, noisy, companionable? We’re all different, and you may not have total control over your working day, but you can make sure those tasks that need concentration get allocated to times when you’re best able to concentrate and so on.

And there’s emotional energy too. If things are going badly in your home life, you need to find ways to bolster your emotional mood before you get to work in the morning so your job isn’t affected. If you’re under emotional pressure at work, again, you’ll need to come up with constructive ways to keep your energy levels up—go for a run at lunchtime, tackle the person who’s bugging you, talk to your boss about your worries.

Finally, your spiritual side needs room to stretch to feel energized. For some people this can happen outside work, while others need to be doing a job that gives them a strong sense of moral worth. Only you know where you stand on this, but make sure that your job isn’t cramping your spiritual energy, or in the end both you and the job will suffer.

IT’S YOUR JOB TO MAKE SURE THAT ENERGY IS THERE WHEN IT’S NEEDED.