Let me admit something \u2013 I frequently struggle with wearing myself out.\u00a0 I\u2019ll wake up one morning with plans of all that I\u2019ll get accomplished and it falls flat.\u00a0 I\u2019ve exhausted myself in prior days and my body and mind demand a reprieve.\u00a0 Often I blame this on having a chronic disease and how it can be unpredictable.\u00a0 The truth is that although this might be part of the picture, I also have a tendency to overdo things.\u00a0 As a professional organizer, I feel like I should be better about this not happening, yet I\u2019m human as well as I recognize it and am working on it.<\/p>\n
Somehow, many of us strive to just work harder.\u00a0 As if that\u2019s the answer \u2013 \u201cIf only I could work harder and faster, then I could manage\u2026\u201d\u00a0 This is not the answer.\u00a0 We only have a limited supply of energy, whether you have health issues or not.\u00a0 We all need a certain amount of sleep to re-energize ourselves.\u00a0 The truth is that we need to work smarter.<\/p>\n
I was fortunate enough to get into the expo of ASTD (The American Society for Training and Development)<\/a> last year and was intrigued with a booth there: The Energy Project<\/a>.\u00a0 Although I found the people manning the booth to be rude, I was captivated by the ideas presented.\u00a0 Since a year ago on coming across them, I\u2019ve been fortunate enough to attend a few webinars they\u2019ve put on.\u00a0 Eventually I buy his latest book and read that to get more in depth information.<\/p>\n One of the things Tony Schwartz, the CEO of The Energy Project, says is that we have 90 minutes maximum of focused attention before we lose that energy.\u00a0 After that, we need to take a break for renewal.\u00a0 He recommends doing this throughout the day, after 90 minutes of focused work to build in intermittent renewal breaks, as we have cycles like our sleep cycle.\u00a0 He says how long those breaks are depends on you and what will help you renew your energy although it can be as little as 5 minutes \u2013 it\u2019s about the quality of the renewal, not how much time we spend.\u00a0 If we can implement those renewal breaks throughout our day, he says that we\u2019ll be even more productive.<\/p>\n This makes sense to me.\u00a0 I also know that I\u2019m notorious for getting so absorbed into something that before I know it hours have passed.\u00a0 This is not healthy \u2013 I want to be conscious about what I\u2019m doing and how I\u2019m spending my time.\u00a0 I found a Mac program that helps me address this issue for when I\u2019m on the computer for long stretches, Dejal Time Out Free<\/a>.\u00a0 It fades the screen for me at the intervals I\u2019ve set \u2013 for resting my eyes and reminding me that 90 minutes have passed with the option of postponing the break or even skipping it altogether.<\/p>\n I\u2019m still practicing applying this when I\u2019m not at the computer.\u00a0 I know what I need to do; I just forget to set the timer!\u00a0 I\u2019ve talked before about how using a timer (Time I<\/a> & Time II<\/a>) can help us get control of our time, and now we can use it for our energy too.\u00a0 I\u2019ve my timer handy so that I can use it both for the focused attention as well as to track my breaks.\u00a0 It\u2019s been amazing how refreshed I\u2019ve felt at the end of the day when I\u2019ve applied this process during the day.<\/p>\n As an entrepreneur, I could always be doing more work.\u00a0 That\u2019s not including my other roles as wife, friend, daughter, or the various values I hold in my life and I want to spend time on.\u00a0 This is not any different from anyone else as we all have many roles and values that we need to attend to in order to feel we\u2019re handling things well.\u00a0 If we can use this 90 minutes cycle to focus on those various aspects, we\u2019ll find more balance without the exhaustion from overextending ourselves.\u00a0 It\u2019s a process and we can train ourselves to stay focused and then enjoy the break before digging back in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Like the sleep cycles we all have, we have cycles of energy. We need to maximize our energy without neglecting the renewal part of the process. We can use the timer for this as well and avoid regular days of exhaustion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[10,8,18,9,25,22,4],"class_list":["post-369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-timemanagement","tag-behavior","tag-discipline","tag-goals","tag-motivation","tag-postaweek2011","tag-productivity","tag-routines"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-5X","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":373,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}